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Buried alive posted:I've sometimes heard that english/western European weapons were essentially big metal clubs in the area of 10-20 lbs. Are there any surviving historical examples of those that were intended for combat? Or is that more from the mistaken attitude that katana > all. Probably none. There were the occasional parade/ceremonial sword that weighed above 8 lbs, but the only example I can think of is very much disputed, Piers Gerlofs Donia was a huge man said to be able to bend coins with his thumb, index & middle fingers, and he had a sword that weighed 14 lbs and was 7 foot long – but even then we do not know if that was his fighting sword or not. I am leaning towards not, because he acquired it from plunder, so it was not made specifically for him. Generally a longsword would weigh around 3 lbs (with some heavier war swords around 4 or 5 lbs), a pollaxe or halberd might weigh 7 or 8 lbs. In fact, according to Tsurugu-Bashi Kendo Kai, knightly swords were typically lighter than katana of similar size. Obdicut posted:Did the use of war-dogs continue during the Medieval period? I know that the use of them by the Romans and the pre-Roman Britons was mainly in scouting and guard duty, but they did actually use them it pitched battles too. War dogs certainly saw some use, I am not sure how deliberate it is or not. But at Agincourt, Sir Peers Leigh was wounded early on, and he was saved from capture because his mastiff fought off the French knights. We do not seem to have large waves of war dogs though, except for maybe very early medieval (kind of more post-Roman) or the conquistadores against Native Americans (and I am not sure that was entirely battlefield use). War horses were certainly trained heavily, since a war horse was expensive. Some were even trained specifically to kick forward while the knight on top was fighting. So the answer is probably yes, but the sources I am familiar with do not mention the desensitisation specifically. Nektu posted:If you can hit him, he can hit you. Evading attacks for a prolonged time is hard to say the least and incredibly error prone (probably would be your last error). Forgive me, but you appear to be responding to the exact opposite of the part of my post that you quoted. Unless you are actually agreeing with me, but the phrase “the big problem with the way you imagine it" kind of implies that you have gotten the wrong impression, because your criticism matches the opposite of what I describe. INTJ Mastermind posted:When and why did it become unpopular for (civilian) men to walk down the street armed with a sword or dagger? About 1800-1850, although the swords popular to wear in public were becoming less threatening before then. By 1400 a knightly sword or longsword would be common, by 1600 a long rapier was in style, by 1700-1800 you get smallswords or sword canes, and then specialised duelling swords or epees designed to draw blood without being lethal. The reason for the change was partly convenience. A longer blade was kind of inconvenient to carry around if you were not planning on using it. Later on duelling became more formalised and less accepted, and it was more likely to involve pistols etc. Under those conditions, there is less of a reasonable case for carrying bladed weapons in public. Railtus fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Feb 6, 2013 |
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Feb 6, 2013 21:36
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Nektu posted:Maybe? Lets see... I see what you mean, thanks for clarifying. To make sure I have not confused other readers I should clarify as well. By striking from a safe angle I was referring to aggressively shutting down their options for attack, such as with the bind (restricting their sword for the benefit of those who do not study swordsmanship) or moving behind a path of safety created by your attack so that the angles they can strike from their current position are already covered. The idea is it is preferable to stop them from throwing their attack in the first place than to try stopping it once it has begun.
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Feb 6, 2013 23:44
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Vigilance posted:How much of an issue would fatigue be in battles? It must be loving exhausting battling for a while in heavy armor, even if you're in great shape and used to it. I imagine it was brutal on the horses, too. It was very much an issue, it was also managed. I think Emperor Maximilian wrote down about the need to rotate your troops through the ranks in battle so that they could rest, and even have a barrel of water at hand for each 8 men or 8 ranks, I do not remember which. People in armour do fatigue a little more quickly, but not that much more quickly than an unarmoured man fighting. Armoured combat certainly stressed economy of movement to avoid becoming tired. Still, you could actually use less energy in armoured combat since you do not have to move as much to defend. Knights would often have more than one horse; one for travel and one for battle or having remounts during combat. Kaal posted:As a counterpoint, this study takes are more critical view on the weight of plate armor. It's worth reading, though I'd note that their 15th century armor was twice as heavy as normal since it was designed to stop bullets and heavy crossbows. Not only is their armour much heavier than normal (and the quote indicates the people conducting the study are unaware of that), they made another major mistake here. quote:The breast and back plates of the medieval armour also affected breathing: instead of being able to take long, deep breaths while they worked up a sweat, the volunteers were forced to take frequent, shallow breaths, and this too used up more energy. I asked Dierk Hagedorn (head longsword instructor at Hammaborg) about this, and he never experienced anything of this nature. No one else I know who owns armour found this problem either with the suits they wear. To me it seems likely that the armour the BBC study used armour that did not fit the wearer, which is going to affect the amount of energy used significantly.
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Feb 7, 2013 13:03
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Essay is finished. I have a dissertation to work on but this should be making a fairly constant pace.Rodrigo Diaz posted:This is old but It depends what you view as “made his career.” By 1188 William Marshal was 41 years old, granted a large estate, and in royal favour. Most of the parts of his life I find interesting came later, but this was fairly late into his life and it was his success in tournaments more than his success in battles that got him there. MoraleHazard posted:
You’re welcome. Thank Wiggy Marie, she convinced me to start this thread. Overall, not true. The average life-expectancy was fairly low, although this was mostly caused by infant mortality. Then we get the Black Death after 1350. Then we get wars. This means we cannot take the average lifespan from birth at face value. At least in England, people seemed to expect to live into their 50s & 60s. Bishop Isadore (from Spain, 7thC) wrote that “seniority” was from 50-70 and “old age” was 70 and up. People did die younger quite a lot, but the interesting thing is life expectancies seemed to get longer as people got older. What that indicates is people were more likely to die young, which was what brought the average age down. A source on the subject: http://sirguillaume.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Old_Age-Height-Nutrition.pdf Some notes I made reading through it: English medieval landowners expected to live into their 50s & 60s. 20% of the young adult population (20 years old) lived to 60. 50% of those who reached 60 reached 70. 50% of all babies died before age 25. I hope that helps! Wiggy Marie posted:This is more related to the culture: how much of a role did superstitions and folklore actually play in medieval life? There's a perception that diseases = possessions/demons/spirits, etc., and of course there's tons of documents with "monsters" (large fish) and such from the time. Is there any way of knowing how much stock was put into these? Good question! The main obstacle with examining the influence of superstition is that much of the information out there on superstitions tended to be from the historiographical “dark ages” – essentially the older school of historians that portrayed the medieval period as backwards and ignorant, which seems to be generally unreliable scholarship. That said, there were certainly areas where superstition had influence. Trial by Combat was one example, since the expectation was that the rightness of one’s cause would help one in the fight. Ish. There were a lot of examples of people questioning it with very non-superstitious views. One Pope wrote to the Teutonic Knights telling them to stop imposing trial by combat on people they converted. Kleines Kaiserrecht openly stated that innocent men were wrongfully convicted for being physically weak, etc. It is more likely the superstition element was really just a convenient excuse for retaining a pre-medieval custom of single combat. Trial by Ordeal happened, although interestingly enough the Church was opposed to it. Priests were forbidden to cooperate since the Fourth Laterin Council (1215), although that also implies that priests needed to be forbidden from going along with it. For much of the medieval period, witch-hunting was outlawed – in the Lombard Code of 643, in the 794 Council of Frankfurt, the Bishop of Worms around 1020 was writing against the superstitious belief in magical potions, magic, curses, night flying etc. We could use this to argue that the sources were clearly anti-superstition… but there was clearly enough superstition around for people to go to the trouble of writing against it. Otherwise it would be like someone writing about where they stand on the issue of albino octopuses named Jerry. Then around 1320 the Church made magic-use a punishable offence, although most Inquisitors did not take it seriously. There were cases of accused witches in Milan (1380s onwards) who confessed to having participated in white magic. The Inquisitors were not sure what to do – the women confessed, but they clearly were not harming anyone – the Inquisitors just sent them on their way with a few words about being more careful around superstitions. I could say more on this and the development of witch trials, but it might be getting off-topic. My overall conclusion is that superstition was clearly present and influential enough for the Church to spend a lot of time and effort trying to fight it. One questionable source was Kitab al-I’tibar, an Arabic text by Usamah Ibn-Munquidh, who describes a Frankish physician diagnosing a woman as possessed by a demon and cutting a cross into her skull (which killed her). But, Kitab al-I’tibar is a sort of poem/tale where the author was expected to take liberties with the facts in order to tell a more compelling or educating tale. One interesting belief was in the healing power of relics, which follows my favourite trend in medieval history – when they get things right for the wrong reasons. People would travel to a holy site in the hopes of receiving healing upon completing their pilgrimage. This means holy sites would have large numbers of sick people travelling there. So the church set up hospitals in those locations, meaning that people would get at least some healing or treatment after all. Beneath this avalanche of examples I get the impression that there was not necessarily a distinction drawn between the magical and the mundane. Medieval bestiaries would feature a hippopotamus and a cockatrice (rooster-snake-dragon that turned people to stone) without explicitly viewing one as magical and another as non-magical. This is a very rambling response but the overall theme is “it depends.” :P My overall theme is enough people put stock into superstition for other people to be complaining about superstitious people.
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Feb 13, 2013 23:59
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Xiahou Dun posted:Any good resources on non-ecclesiastical Medieval music? I do a little, but most of it's really late. Interesting question. My advice is to look for work by individual composers. James. J. Wilhelm had a book called Lyrics of the Middle Ages, but I have no idea how good it is. Bernart de Ventadorn has music intact for at least 18 of his poems. Apparently Trouvere music tended to survive quite well. Perotin from around 1200 wrote the Allelulia Nativatis, although that might still fall under church music. Gaucelm Faidit has 14 melodies surviving - http://www.trobar.org/troubadours/gaucelm_faidit/ Again, music is outside my area of expertise, but hopefully those name-drops might give you something to work with. I have never heard of Corvus Corax before, but I love ravens and crows in general. Their music is certainly pleasant to listen to, and from what I can tell it sounds like they were using the same musical instruments as back then – so I think with those two criteria they are going to produce something fairly similar to medieval music. monkeyharness posted:Thanks for the excellent thread. In reading through it, I think it kind of speaks a bit to a couple of question that I have always wondered about when watching movies/documentaries on warfare during the Medieval period: How did anyone walk away from a Medieval battle without some form of crazy grievous injury? At the risk of sounding flippant, one way was winning, another was surrendering (not always reliable) and a third was running away. Although this is more for knights than the footmen, armour worked really well. A good suit of mail was very reliable, there were stories of Crusaders on foot covered with arrows and seeming completely unaffected. A coat-of-plates was very reliable too, able to stop a couched lance fitted with a graper. Essentially most armour used at the time would stop most hand-held weapons – at least initially. Once you got stunned you were more vulnerable. However, it is important because generally the guys with the least protection were more likely to be archers or in the back ranks or otherwise less exposed to danger. Late-period pike phalanxes seemed to have their best armoured troops at the front, and early period formations such as the Boar’s Snout seemed to recommend having the guys at the point of the wedge be the most well-armoured. To a degree you are right. Re-enactors doing shield walls and other competitive battle simulations found that most people never saw the guy that scored a killing blow on them. My guess is that both individual warriors and their commanders actively avoided the kind of exhausting, confusing mass of bodies you describe – precisely because it was so dangerous. A good case for it is made by I-Clausewitz; http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/141128.html Essentially formations staying in good order was what stopped the swirling mass of confusion and death. If one group lost cohesion first, that would be the group that started taking lots of casualties, and the carnage that followed would be fairly one-sided. The only times both sides would end up in a swirling mass would be if both groups lost cohesion at the same time, which was more common post-1500 during pike-and-shot, referred to as ‘Bad War’. As opposed to the nice friendly kind of war. Another thing to consider is fear. Quite a lot of people would hold back from the fight, there were complaints about soldiers “fencing” with the pike, which is standing at full pike length and just poking at each other with neither side continuing their advance more aggressively. Battlefield medicine, from what I could tell, was moderately advanced. I did find this - http://www.strangelove.net/~kieser/Medicine/military.html - which I find fairly trustworthy because it openly points out the limitations of its own information. GyverMac posted:What would be the best weapon (non-ranged) to give a mass of fairly untrained people? A shield and a spear? Either spear and shield or pike. Spear and shield was more common in the earlier stages, pikes were more common later on. What was popular was reinforcing pike phalanxes with dismounted men-at-arms (knights fighting on foot) so that you had the skilled men there for when the enemy did get close. From what I can tell, halberds tended to be more popular with skilled troops, although that could be more related to cost than to usefulness. The Swiss Reislaufer tended to have a core of halberdiers in their pike squares who were also well-armoured men. Among Landsknecht the guys with halberds were most often Doppelsoldners (double-pay men). Halberds can be pretty unwieldy if you do not know what you are doing, I think you would need training to use the axe-part effectively, particularly at closer range. On the other hand, just because someone lacks military training does not mean they are necessarily unskilled in the movements needed to use a halberd or other polearm effectively. One trick that worked quite well were weapons based around farm tools. The English billhook was a weaponised version of a gardening tool. Occasionally grain flails were modified to become weapons. These could help mitigate the level of training required.  bewbies posted:Terry Jones' Medieval Lives did a great thing on minstrels/jongleurs/troubadors. The "Song of Roland" that the guy performs is probably very close to what the real thing sounded like. Anne Whateley posted:I'm not sure. I watched it awhile back, so I don't remember specific quibbles, but I remember being irritated a lot. Rodrigo Diaz posted:Maybe not past the fifth grade for people who like history but some dude came into this thread asking of medieval people stank so bad we'd pass out were we to meet one. Some things are vexingly persistent, like constant witch-burning, 20 pound swords, the all-powerful longbow, medieval people being inherently stupid, etc. and Medieval Lives goes a little way to correcting that. Terry Jones is very fond of alternate takes on ‘common knowledge’. In some regards this is a good thing; he shows that peasants were not virtual slaves, on the other hand he gave a very one-sided account of the knight – John Hawkwood and the White Company was not really the best example of knightly conduct. I think he could be far more balanced in his consideration of the evidence. A good criticism of Jones’ analysis of Chaucer’s Knight is here - http://www.ueharlax.ac.uk/academics/research/documents/FiloGina.pdf
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Feb 14, 2013 22:19
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EvanSchenck posted:The first part of the answer is that masses of untrained people were not a common sight on the medieval battlefield. It's a myth. Battle was the domain of military aristocracy, and most battles were clashes between well-equipped professional soldiers. Peasants were often caught up in wars, usually as passive observers or as victims of raiding and "foraging." This was partly because wars were mostly fought to resolve disagreements between rival kings or lords, to which peasants were not party; mostly it was because even a small force of professionals could overpower a huge mob. To give a few examples, the Battle of Visby was depressingly one-sided, even though the peasants had some armour and equipment. Another thing would be the 'success' of the chevauchee tactics during the Hundred Years War (well, they succeeded in looting and burning villages, but failed at their goal of winning the hearts and minds of the people whose homes they just burned down).
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Feb 14, 2013 22:24
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:"Winning the hearts and minds of the people" was not a primary goal of the chevauchée, at least not in the campaigns of Edward III or his sons. Speaking strategically their chief purpose was to draw the French into unfavourable battle-- Crécy and Poitiers being the most famous examples from this period. They also served to help pay for the armies and of course to supply them, but Clifford Rogers has done a pretty good job of showing that their chief purpose was to provoke the Valois onto the field. I am being a little ironic in my description; I figured I did not have to repeat the more nuanced commentary I made in earlier posts. Thanks for the source though, is the work by Clifford Rogers Wars of Edward III: Sources & Interpretations by any chance? I would be surprised to hear Crecy used as an example of drawing the French into an unfavourable battle. On paper, Crecy looked like it was unfavourable for the English. If the French had not made major mistakes like attacking without having rested from the march or forcing their crossbowmen to leave their pavises in the baggage train I would have expected the French to have the advantage. On the other hand, Poitiers does fit that description better.
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Feb 15, 2013 00:51
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:I was actually thinking of War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327–1360, though Wars of Edward III would certainly be a useful companion. Thanks. I had been thinking about this a little more and the chevuauchee also makes a fairly decent Xanatos Gambit ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit ) since it becomes a lose-lose situation for the French. Either the French overextended themselves trying to meet the English or they fail to protect their people. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 15, 2013 09:35
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monkeyharness posted:Thanks for the response. What are some of the largest battles that occurred during this time period? You’re welcome. I saw some armour from the Royal Armouries in Leeds, and what is amazing is the attention to detail that goes into it. The fluting on gothic or Maximilian armour was a design feature intended for structural strength. Mail rings were often flattened to increase the surface area of the links (probably so that any strike was spread across multiple rings of mail and therefore having less chance of breaking any of the links) as well as riveted or forge-welded shut to stop weapons forcing open the rings. A general theme with armour is that a blow stopped by armour can still be effective, such as with a pollaxe or warhammer or just the impact of an axe. Or the blow might pierce the armour but their life was still saved by wearing it (such as the coat of plates vs lance or the breastplate vs arrow links below. A good list of examples of how effective mail armour could be is Mail: Unchained by Dan Howard - http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.php An important point is the thickness of the iron wire used in mail varied, so there were lighter versions and heavier versions that obviously varied in their protection. Lighter sets of mail had larger holes, which meant narrow-tipped swords could slip through, and one set of mail can be different to another - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl-ec6Ub7FM The coat-of-plates resisting a lance was based on this test by Mike Loades, I wonder if using the same foam all three times affected the test though - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJnkH1YXY8E#t=21m34s (starting at 21 minutes 30 seconds if the link is being strange). Another somewhat similar test involving a longbow and a breastplate - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3997HZuWjk
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Feb 15, 2013 20:17
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Your comment on the fluting in armour is interesting, because I had always been told that it provided more glancing surfaces, rather than that it made the armour sturdier. It could certainly do both, of course. To confirm what others have said, I have heard the fluting described as resembling corrugated iron or steel I-beams as girders. The other use I heard was the fluting on the surface could act similar to a stop rib, causing blows sliding across the surface of the plates to skim off rather than slide into a vulnerable point. With mail, it is not that rounded cross sections stop the force from being spread out, but the inner diameter you mention is combined by the flattened rings linked together also obstruct the space within that inner diameter, making it more likely that several rings will be in the way of a blow. However, that is pure speculation on my part without any sources to back it up. Also, I love The Knight and the Blast Furance. I highly recommend anyone here check out the previews online. Makrond posted:I've met people who were under the impression that if you used a pole weapon against someone with a sword or an axe they'd just cut clean through it and kill you, but I feel like it would be a struggle even with just a pine shaft, let alone the hardwood shafts everyone was using. Another thing was metal cheeks or langets reinforcing the shaft. AlphaDog posted:Edit: Wasn't one of the functions of the Zweihander to chop through pike shafts? I swear I read that somewhere but I can't find a reference now. There is a 1548 woodcut of the Battle of Kappel showing zweihanders being used against pikes in a way that may suggest hacking at them, although personally I am not that convinced. Another suggestion I have heard is that parrying hooks (the secondary crossguard) could be used to bind several pikes at once and push them aside, creating a breach your side can exploit. On the other hand, that was a later addition to two-handed swords, many bidenhanders or motantes or similar war swords did not have them and they were still semi-popular in pike squares before then. New Coke posted:Was there any kind of analogue to the guerrilla/asymmetrical warfare of today? You mention that hit-and-run tactics were common among professional armies, but was organized resistance to invaders common after the official army had been defeated? You tend not to hear about things like this nowadays, and I can think of a few reasons why that might be, but I'd be interested in hearing whether or not there were instances of that happening, or how common it was. Yes, asymmetric warfare happened, although it does not appear to be common/routine/standard enough to call it an analogue to guerrilla warfare. The main examples I know of was Hungary after the Mongols won the Battle of Mohi in 1241. However, what was more successful was just to bring all the food inside a fortified building (a nearby refuge, monastery or town) and just wait for the enemy to leave, which was more successful for the Hungarians. Most of the places with those defences were able to resist the Mongols. In fact, Hungary tended to be the main place for guerrilla warfare, typically against invasions from the east. I think it did happen occasionally in the Hundred Years War, although it seems to have been rare enough that most people did not have a ‘concept’ of guerrilla warfare, it would just be isolated incidences brought on by exceptional circumstances. Kaal makes excellent points on the subject. Medieval Europe was a very unfriendly place for guerrilla warfare.
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Feb 17, 2013 04:36
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Vivoviparous posted:Well in the interest of having this wonderful thread not die I will ask some questions. Actually, they’re good questions. Doing a quick read-around, I saw some suggestions here - http://www.richeast.org/htwm/mmed/mmedicine.html - I cannot verify that website but it does cite its sources. They mention Queen Anne’s Lace seeds being used to prevent pregnancy, and more abortion methods. I should note that abortion methods were not all that safe. Until surgical abortions, terminating a pregnancy often led to the dead foetus remaining inside the body. Some herbal remedies are suggested here - http://faculty.bsc.edu/shagen/STUDENT/Joy&Chris/contraset.html - This is also the kind of thing that in England “cunning folk” might do. Again, it lists the sources, but elsewhere it mentions chastity belts, which you should never take at face-value in reference to the medieval period. The evidence for their existence in medieval times was circumstantial at best (Bellifortis sketch 1405, which seems to be a joke) and like many ‘medieval’ torture devices they seem to be mostly Victorian inventions. I like Bernard Cornwell, his writing is fun to read, he does a fair amount of research, and he also makes no secret of when he takes liberties with the facts for the sake of a good story. I greatly enjoyed the Warlord Chronicles (a re-imagining of the King Arthur story based on the early Celtic context), I also absolutely loved Azincourt – Sir John Cornewaille is spectacularly entertaining and I love Hook’s religious experiences. My main criticisms of his writing are that he gets carried away with the subjects of corruption within Christianity (which did happen, but far less than one would think from reading his work) and the mistreatment of women. Flail type weapons were never common, but did gain some popularity during the Hussite Wars. One ordinance from the 1400s in Germany required 3 men out of 20 have flails. They were definitely inconvenient and had serious flaws, although their main strength in my opinion is that many peasants were familiar with using grain flails and so might have an easier time using them. Main-gauche & parrying daggers were generally civilian weapons, although not strictly for duelling. The context they were most likely to be used was an urban street fight or ambush. They were excellent for stabbing when either your swords bound up or when your opponent gets past the point of your sword. Civilian swords tended a little more towards rapiers, which had excellent reach but were far less effective when up-close, so having a short off-hand weapon meant you could deal with that situation quite handily. A pair of identical weapons was very rare, there is mention of a ‘case of rapiers’ in some Italian sources (I think Di Grassi) but these do not appear to be the norm. Generally two full-size weapons are more likely to get in the way of the other, and if you hold a weapon in each hand it is generally preferable for them to be able to do different things and therefore cover each other’s weaknesses. Like the aforementioned rapier & dagger being effective both at long and short reach. Battlefields did not seem to encourage dual-wielding though. Early on weapon-and-shield was most popular, while later two-handed weapons were more the thing. The sword-and-buckler was very popular, for people who wanted to switch from a two-handed weapon (a bow or a pike, for example) to weapon-and-shield quickly once the enemy got close. Occasionally we have references to warriors having multiple single-handed weapons, but it does not say if they were to be used at once. I hope that helps!
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Feb 19, 2013 17:45
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Alien Arcana posted:While we're discussing weapons again, how about hammers? I believe cavalry hammers were a thing, but were they ever in use by infantry? What did they look like? Hammers were definitely in use, I would even say primarily in use by infantry. They were relatively affordable and good anti-armour weapons to stun or slow-down a well armoured opponent. We see them mostly in the 1400s, although quite a few forms were around earlier to lesser degrees. First thing about how hammers looked is they were relatively small. A giant head is not that desirable, partly because of the extra weight and partly because a smaller head concentrate the impact of a blow onto a smaller area (not that you cannot get around the issue with a larger hammer, but the smaller ones make it easier). You see some hammer-heads split into flanges or serrated faces like a meat-tenderiser to further concentrate the force of a blow onto a smaller area. Second thing is the hammerheads were very rarely alone. They would typically be combination weapons with an axe or spearhead attached, in some cases picks. The early versions were just a protrusion on the back of an axe. It gets referred to in Norse sagas as an oxarhammer (axe-hammer) for striking a less lethal blow. Byzantine axes I was researching earlier into the thread sometimes had hammers on the back, etc. How far this was a conscious design to have a hammer head or a by-product of making a strong back so the axe is secure in place I am unsure. Later on you get much more purpose built hammers like many pollaxes, these are still not always or not entirely hammers (generally Europe liked to produce polearms with lots of different ways to kill people), but the role and prominence of the hammer seems to be increasing. Another option was the mauls used by longbowmen, primarily these were tools to drive wooden stakes into the ground, although they also seemed functional as weapons when fighting against people in armour. How far they count is a matter of opinion; I tend to think of them as tools being used as weapons rather than weapons in and of themselves. My image-search is being uncooperative, but they tend to look just like wooden sledgehammers. Railtus fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Feb 19, 2013 |
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Feb 19, 2013 21:09
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EvanSchenck posted:You should rehost those pics on imgur or something if you want to post them, else you might get in trouble for leeching bandwidth. Thanks. I tried with mallet, although unfortunately I never got quite what I was after.
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Feb 19, 2013 23:06
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Frostwerks posted:Did sword and gauntlet ever get used with the gauntlet as both a defensive tool and offhand weapon? I really don't know much about the combat of the era (or hell it may have even been after that or in fact never at all) so I'm probably full of poo poo. Was sword and cloak ever a thing? Overall, sword & gauntlet: no. Sword & cloak: yes. With sword & gauntlet, no fighting text I know of seems to specifically advise the use of both together. You could use the same techniques as single-sword with the other hand empty, but generally if you have access to a gauntlet for your left hand you are probably armoured and so to a degree those techniques would not apply. If you are not in armour, such as in a civilian context or you simply lack the resources, there are clearly much better options such as sword & buckler or sword & dagger. That said, there was some weird thing called a lantern shield, which was a bizarre combination of a shield, a gauntlet, several different long knives and a lamp all at once. Apparently it was supposed to be for a watchman at night. Sword and cloak has references for different times. Rapier and cloak is taught in Spanish rapier fencing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umKZ-Y4T66Y and Swords & Swordsmen by Mike Loades mentions bronze figurines from Villa Giula with swords and a cloak rolled over their left arm. In later-period fencing, cloaks were great for entangling your opponent's weapon, masking your figure (hold it in front of you they struggle to know where to stab), generally blinding your opponent etc. In the early period sources, one suggestion was you could use the the cloak like loose netting to absorb the energy of a blow or generally protect your forearm (which is viable unless your opponent has a sharp slicing sword) and it can be held in front of the sword handle so your opponent cannot clearly see what your sword-hand is doing. This makes blows more likely to be a surprise.
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Feb 20, 2013 00:59
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Vivoviparous posted:
Chastity belts were mostly just the Victorians projecting their own insecurities onto earlier societies. Confirmed finds are overwhelmingly nineteenth century, there are rumours of one from the sixteenth century but it is missing, and the Bellifortis sketch was from the fifteenth century. However, medieval documents otherwise do not mention the thing like it was any kind of common practise. If they existed at all in the medieval period they were rare, and generally something not discussed in public, when the medieval world otherwise had some very frank documents about sex and sexuality. Cultural trauma is a new term to me, so it is difficult to comment on. However, I will say the Inquisition would be nowhere near as traumatic as the other examples. Thomas Madden even makes the argument that the Inquisition was a force for good mitigating or reducing the damage done by secular courts - http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/madden200406181026.asp That said, I disagree with his other similar article on the Spanish Inquisition, which contradicts itself. At one stage it says the Spanish Inquisition did not have the power perform executions, then it later states the Spanish Inquisition performed fewer executions than other courts – which would only be a valid point if it had the power. http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/the-truth-about-the-spanish-inquisition In theory, the Spanish Inquisition was just. Officially they only had jurisdiction over Baptised Christians, so could not persecute Jews or Muslims. In practise things were rather unjust. The Alhambra Decree of 1492 required Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave, then Muslims later. Many chose to stay on the grounds that they had nowhere else to go, but the Inquisition was charged with investigating “false converts”. This was a very unfair situation for the Jewish & Muslim population of Spain. However, the Inquisition also did some good things. They stopped witch hunts, they acted as a control against corruption in the church, they made sure the trials of heresy were based on theology rather than mob rule or lynching. Essentially the point I want to make is the Inquisition seemed to be more of a symptom of cultural trauma rather than a cause. I certainly agree that Cornwell has grown more balanced in his treatment of the church than he once was. Warlord Chronicles was painfully anti-Christian, but Azincourt has both a corrupt priest and a good priest. I have not read most of his recent works though.
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Feb 20, 2013 13:20
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and learn something at the same time. Cornwell had some bizarre experiences as a child growing up with the Peculiar People sect/cult who "banned frivolity of all kinds and even medicine" so I cut him some slack with all his rapist/con men priests, I think he does a great job of making a case for the good the church did as well as the bad. Especially in the Saxon Series he explains the power of Christianity from the viewpoint of pagan warriors, which gave me a whole new perspective on the rapid rise of the early Church due to the practical value of the Christian religion. There's a little aside where Uhdred ponders Wodin, and how there's no sense he could ever give a drat about you personally. The gods were mercurial and did their own thing, arbitrary just like natural forces. Jesus, though. Jesus loved you and could be proud or disappointed, would punish and reward based on relatively clearly defined rules.
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For anyone interested, take a look at Google Books, Inquisition by Edward Peters. It has a fairly significant preview.Obdicut posted:Suddenly I'm seeing this Madden thing everywhere. It's weird. He's not the most credible professor on this topic-- he did a lot of bizarre press stuff after 9/11, talking about the crusades and how they relate to 9/11. And my dad, who's also a mediavalist, just burst out laughing at the idea that the church was a moderating focus. Or more accurately, how the Crusades did not relate to 9/11; there were strange ideas going on at the time, for example this speech by Bill Clinton: http://ecumene.org/clinton.htm There was also an issue about George Bush using the word “Crusade” to describe America using military force against the Middle East. Kemper Boyd posted:I think the best way to summarize the Inquisition is that they were very fair in carrying out unjust laws, which is kind of a running theme in early modern jurisprudence. For instance, Sweden implemented Mosaic as the criminal code in the 17th century, but the courts never punished the guilty to the full extent of the law. I really like that description. To me the Inquisition was not exactly a good thing, but it was kind in comparison to the secular courts of the day. SlothfulCobra posted:I read that the Spanish even developed a kind of modern racism during the inquisition. Most of the Muslims in Spain were North African in origin, so dark skin became linked with Islamist leanings. Absolutely. Limpieza de sangre or “cleanliness of blood” in the 1400s. The Spanish Inquisition came a little later (started in 1480), but the concept was firmly in place around the same time. sullat posted:Being able to bribe your way out of false/racially motivated accusations of heresy seems about the most fair you can hope for, I guess. Lot of talk about the Spanish inquisition, but as I recall, the inquisition was originally founded to root out a much more sinister menace to Catholicism; the Cathars. Does anyone know how the inquisition went about doing that? The usual torture->confess-> execute route? Or did they, too, let suspected Cathars bribe their way free? Calling witnesses was the most popular method. If you gathered the people, asked anyone if they wanted to make a confession, and that received leniency. This was also the opportunity for anyone else to make accusations. However, this suggests a relatively public proceeding, but other aspects of the trial assume that the accused does not know the identity of the accusers. If the accused told the Inquisitors who his enemies were, and the accuser was one of their enemies, then the trial would be dismissed. The identity was also kept secret to prevent retaliation by the accused. Inquisitorial records seemed to be quite detailed about witnesses, suggesting they were fairly important. Torture could be used after 1254, authorised by Ad extirpanda, although Inquisitions had been going on since 1184. So torture was not the standard. There were also restrictions on the torture, such as not being able to maim, technically only one session of torture (although the session caused by ‘suspended’ to start up again) and a confession was only valid if repeated after the one session was finished, and even then only used if otherwise virtually certain of guilt. With that in mind, torture was not that big a risk of false confessions, as they could be easily recanted... instead the risk was that the trial could go on indefinitely, with the accused sometimes held prisoner for the months or years needed for the trials to conclude. The reason for trying to gain confessions if so sure of the heretic’s guilt was to make them repent. Execution was never desirable with the Inquisition, the goal was to impose repentance and return them to the Church. The aim was something more than "Gotcha." How far these rules were followed is a fair question. It could get pretty bad; almost as bad as trials without the Inquisition. Which I think is the point I am going for, not that the Inquisition was a shining beacon or example of justice, but rather that it was a step forward. It was progress.
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Feb 20, 2013 20:47
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Obdicut posted:Are you guys going to deal with the fact that clergy started the whole "root out the crypto-Jew" thing at any point? Well, you have not really asked a question, and this is an ask thread. Your comment did not look like it needed any response from me. After doing a little reading on the topic, what I found was mob violence against New Christians – the 1449 riot in Toledo, and another in 1467. The Sentencia Estatuto issued by the secular mayor, which was condemned by the Pope. In 1465 rebels against the king published the Sentence of Medina del Campo, including some harsher treatment of crypto-Jews. These were mentioned in Inquisition by Edward Peters. Those events seem to imply the “root out the crypto-Jew” idea was circulating around Spain without the clergy, particularly when the input of the Church was to condemn some of those actions.
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Feb 20, 2013 23:00
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swaziloo posted:Thank you Railtus and other contributors, reading this thread has righted more than a few wrong conceptions for me. You’re welcome. I am glad you find it helpful. Travel was done to learn a trade, although medieval households did not entirely conform to the nuclear family of the 20th century. They might even include a few servants, including for well-off commoners, or apprentices etc. The point is households are a little bit larger. This might be important when travelling, as people tended to travel in groups. Maybe a group of the household or several people in the village travel together all heading in the same general direction. Pilgrims normally gathered together for travelling so I assume other groups would organise something similar. The relative safety of travel varied quite a bit. In 1300s-1400s Germany there was certainly a demand for learning self-defence, and travel before then (particularly the Interregnum of 1250-1273, the time of the ‘robber barons’). England appeared to have some roads known for being dangerous, and a similar period of dangerous travel during the reign of King Stephen. With outlaws, they were probably near good hunting sites rather than waiting for a traveller to rob. Outlaws also had an incentive to stay away from the road; anyone could kill an outlaw and take their possessions. Overall I think the risk of robbers on the road was mostly overstated, but it is a bit like wandering the city at night today. Hospitality was practised. If wandering you might be able to get someone to offer you a place to stay, even if only a barn. Monasteries were known for good hospitality, which led to problems of getting too many guests. Sometimes this would result in creative interpretation of their rules of hospitality; the monks might treat you like Christ himself… such as waking you in the dead of night for prayer because Christ would not mind. If a nobleman is travelling you could simply follow his entourage and hope it scares off any trouble. Obdicut posted:Unsurprisingly, that level of research isn't sufficient. You don’t have to agree with me. I find it unconvincing because Alonso de Hojeda, Archbishop Pedro & Tomas de Torquemada were doing what you mention in 1477, by which point the rest of Spanish society was already persecuting conversos. Ferrand Martinez died in 1395, within a few years of the 1391 massacre that led to large numbers of conversos. History of a Tragedy: The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain by Joseph Perez & Lysa Hochroth (page 43 for anyone interested) also gives the impression that Martinez was opposed by others in the church.
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Feb 21, 2013 05:02
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Forgive my delays, Friday was occupied with dissertation, Saturday I was working, then I slept badly and Sunday had me tired. I will not be able to answer all questions yet. Meat Mitts posted:Excellent thread Railtus. I've got a few questions- Medieval people were on average only very slightly smaller than today, maybe 1 or 2 inches shorter on average (although with peasants being a little shorter and nobles being a little taller). It was later on that people got much smaller. One of the best examples of a successful attack on a castle was the Siege of Rochester Castle in 1215, which lasted 7 weeks. Different chroniclers say different things about how effective the catapults and stone-throwing engines were, but the method was eventually to dig underneath the castle and then burn pig’s fat in the tunnel beneath to burn down the wooden supports. It caused a corner of the castle to literally collapse. I should note that most of the prisoners at Rochester were spared once the castle surrendered, including non-nobles. However, before the surrender of the castle, prisoners were deliberately maimed out of spite. Trebuchets were very widely popular, although used in fairly low numbers. At Rochester there were a total of 5 siege engines, although I’m not sure what kind. In the Siege of Acre 1191 there were 2 trebuchets. So they were popular, but you would not see many. The other form of catapult was a mangonel, but medieval mangonels were more trebuchet-like than the earlier versions. This makes it difficult to tell whether a catapult was a trebuchet or mangonel. Generally I think the trebuchets were safer, so I would prefer them. Castles evolved a huge amount. Individual castles even evolved a huge amount. Motte & Bailey (1000 AD): Essentially a ditch or moat with a stockade (sharpened logs) and the earth from the ditch used to create an artificial mound. On top of the mound was a tower, often of wood. http://resources.teachnet.ie/mmorrin/norman/images/motte.JPG These were relatively easy to build. By which I mean William the Conqueror brought three of them across the channel and assembled them once he got to England. Yes, you could prefabricate an early castle. You can probably see where the motte was on this picture. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...r_wideangle.jpg Later on, the tower on top of the mound was made into stone. These get called ‘shell keeps’. These were mostly just plain round stonework. One interpretation of the term ‘shell keep’ is that the outer walls were stone and the inner structure was still wood or timber. Compare those with Krak de Chevaliers from the 1100s. This held a garrison of 2000 men. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c5/Krak_des_Chevaliers_01.jpg/300px-Krak_des_Chevaliers_01.jpg Lots of small features were added to castles throughout the ages. The change from square towers to round towers. Stouter gate-houses. Arrow-slits changed to gun loops. Portcullises or falling gates were added. Machilocations were openings in the floor used to drop things on the enemy below. Sometimes battlements (the bits sticking out the top of the castle wall for cover) included wooden frames over the top. Eventually castles became concentric, which meant an inner castle with a separate outer wall. Essentially castles changed a lot, but only a little at a time. After cannons, castles became shorter (lower walls make more difficult targets) and thicker. They were also shaped to be more difficult targets, for example lots of triangles so you would struggle to get a good shot at a flat surface. Those complex things are called Star Forts or polygonal forts. Wiggy Marie posted:Another question: is there any way to tell how much sense of humor/sarcasm influenced the writings of the time? Basically, is there a method used to try and determine if anything written can't be trusted due to the author's own sense of humor coloring their statements/descriptions? Good question. We do not have a set policy for humour or sarcasm, we just have to guess, although what we normally do is compare it to other sources, look at the context of the source (is it a personal letter? Is it for public consumption? Is it formal?). If we know who it was written to and why, that can make it far easier to determine how seriously or literally to take the document. life is killing me posted:I really love this thread. I love history and study it a lot for fun, but I had a lot of misconceptions sprinkled with some skepticism on depictions and common thoughts of medieval life. That said, I have some questions for you medieval buff goons. On royal hostages, I think so, although I will need to research again once I have more time. It was not common or standard, although Vlad the Impaler was sent to the Ottomans. They educated him while he was their hostage, but he also is rumoured to have learned his brutality from watching Turkish practises, and developed a rather passionate hatred for them. Knights Hospitaller were different from the Knights Templar in that they started out as a hospital rather than knights, it was a hospice in Jerusalem to provide care for pilgrims on the road, but later expanded to include an armed escort for travelling pilgrims. Comparatively, the Templars started off as a very small armed force (nine knights initially), so the plan was probably to be more proactive and aggressive in hunting down banditry in the Holy Land since they initially did not have the manpower. However, the Templars were given enough resources and financial support that they started working on financial systems including cheques and letters of credit to make travelling easier for pilgrims. Essentially, the Hospitallers were healers who later became knights, while the Templars were knights who later became a heavily armed banking service. The Templars were too successful as bankers, and the French king essentially had them rounded up on false charges, tortured and executed in 1307 – because he owed them far too much money. This caused the other orders, the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights (Hospitallers for Germans) to have panic attacks and start looking to form their own kingdom outside the domain of a king. The Teutonic Knights invaded Lithuania and kept having fights with Poland, while the Hospitallers became the Knights of Malta. The Military Orders (Teutons, Templars & Hospitallers) did have a reputation for being nigh-invincible, although this was as a group rather than as individuals. The Hospitallers at Malta did hold off huge Ottoman armies, such as the Siege of Rhodes (1480) holding off maybe 20 000 (some sources say up to 70 000) with only 3000 or so men (of which around 500 were knights). Even the times the Ottomans won the Hospitallers made them pay through the nose for that victory. The big thing about the military orders that made them so effective was their discipline. Knights varied in how disciplined they were as units, they could be well-oiled machines or arrogant nobles out for glory. Knightly orders were less concerned with glory, so they would be far more reliable and organised. They were also relatively rich, which could mean excellent equipment. I suspect monastic vows were partly to make their upkeep cheaper. Wives and children were expensive, so a frugally living knight would be a bargain death machine. Body parts of saints was a thing, although it was far more popular to keep a part of the saint in a church than to cart it around. I have not read the Saxon Tales though. Shield walls were virtually ubiquitous from the Romans up until maybe 1200, where it started to decline a bit but just became one item in the toolbox rather than the default formation. Shields were getting smaller around 1250, which made its use as a formation seem less plausible, which implies the tactical change was going on sooner. Freedom depends on your typical commoner means, but most urban centres (towns and cities) had charters in which most people were free. Also, a lot of rural commoners might be free tenants, with no labour obligation etc, although unfree peasants typically received something in return for their labour obligation such as land.
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Feb 25, 2013 08:55
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ToxicSlurpee posted:How prevalent were things like pavises and tower shields? I remember reading that a pretty popular thing in and around Italy for a while was to take a big chunk of militia, kit them out with big rear end shields and crossbows, and have them hide behind their fancy little portable walls while raining fire all over everything. Pavises seem to have been fairly prevalent in central Europe from the 1300s or so. They were also used in the Hussite Wars, which had a fairly significant amount of troops who were not really trained warriors. So there may have been truth to the idea. However, most often we hear pavises used in the context of Genoese mercenaries and other professional troops rather than levies. Tower shields generally did not feature in medieval times. The closest we got were the kite shield between 900-1200, which would cover from shoulder to shin. During this time period kite shields were the main shield. A trained arbalester (a special type of high-powered crossbow) could shoot twice per minute. Then again, lots of lighter crossbows are much easier to use. You do get militia with crossbows, although they vary a lot in their power. The more powerful crossbows were more demanding (they still relied on muscle power for the huge draw-weights) and tend to be more expensive, so those would be used by more trained guys. Crossbows were more user friendly, and missiles were a much better use of lesser-trained troops. So yes there was some truth to it, but at the same time crossbows were also popular among the highly trained guys as well.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:12
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First, my apologies about the delays. I am kind of burned out by the amount of research I am doing for my dissertation, so I kind of put other research on hold. I still have dissertation work to be doing, so I will still be delayed a bit. My apologies in advance. Thank you to everyone who kept the thread going. I will start with a question on relics that is overdue (the post is so far back in the thread I cannot add it to the quote list). Obdicut Good question. I have never seen any official work addressing that subject, although it seems plausible that it was just never kept track of to a sufficient degree to cause an issue. Once you know Church X has a finger-bone of a saint, you probably do not have much incentive to start tracking down the number of other churches which had other finger bones, you just want to go to that church for pilgrimage. Basically the research needed for a medieval person to notice, cross referencing various relics in what churches, would be very demanding and time consuming. I think honestly few people were willing to make the investment needed to do the research. Also it was not too common to claim to have the whole skull of a saint, if you just have a piece of it that counts and it avoids those problems in the first place. However, it was known that not all relics were genuine. For example, in the Canterbury Tales Chaucer describes the Pardoner as selling fake relics, so the concept was generally recognised. The church also made a point of forbidding the selling of relics on occasion, which is a sign it probably happened. So the short answer is they didn’t deal with it. :P I think the church could have made a wide census tracking down exactly what relics were where and which ones were genuine etc. But it seems no one wanted to do it. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Any recommendations on books about The Knights Hospitaller? I like the Osprey books, even though they are not perfect from an academic standpoint they tend to be very accessible. Osprey Knight Hospitaller 1100-1306 & Knight Hospitaller 1306-1565. The second one covers more about their time in Rhodes & Malta etc. Scionix posted:are you familiar with the medieval, total war games? If so, are they historically sound, generally? Medieval Total War is a very fun game. I enjoy it a lot. What I would say is they did their research and then threw out the bits that got in the way of the game. They do take some liberties but it is one of the better-researched games out there. I admit my standard is influenced by how terrible the research behind most media is. The main flaw with Total War is it is about battles, while historically battles were the least popular way to fight. Also, the tax system is far more money-based than most medieval economies, but that is probably boring from a game perspective – they make no secret what the game priority is. I think I made an earlier post in this thread about two-weapon fighting. Generally two swords is bad, they tend to get in each other’s way as much as anything else, and using two swords means that if you are in a situation that puts a sword at a disadvantage, both your weapons are hindered instead of just one. Sword and dagger was popular, at least in civilian fighting. The shorter dagger did not get in the way as much, it was easier to use, and it was good up-close. This way if your enemy is too close to use your sword against effectively you can still gut him with the dagger. Two daggers are uncommon in the fight-books. Normally they depict just a dagger, with the other hand being used for grappling, but it is far more feasible than two swords. cargo cult posted:This is more ancient history but is there a direct cultural and linguistic link from whatever ancient indo-aryan tribes who created Sanskrit and founded Zoroastrianism/Hinduism to Sarmatians/Scythians and then eventually Sicambri/Frisii/Other germanic tribes? I think Scythians are mentioned as allies of Germanic tribes during the Macromanic wars. This may sound ridiculous but all kinds of Europeans have tried to claim Sarmatian/Scythian descent, from Polish nobles to Ossentians. I think Iranians were even considered "aryan" under Nazi law and of course the whole Hitler co-opting the Swastika thing. Not a clue, really outside my area of knowledge. Sorry. Lord Tywin posted:How long did the Knights in religous orders such as the Templars, Teutonic order and Hospitallers serve? How many were in for life and how many were just around for a couple of years? Military orders could do either. Full brethren were for life, while there were also Confreres or Halbbrudern who served fixed terms. The length of these terms could vary, they also had differences in their livery (the white surcoat of the Templars was permanent members only), and they were allowed to be married (although probably not allowed to marry if single at the time). The military orders wanted knights badly enough that they would accept people who could not commit to the full vows. In short, both.
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Mar 13, 2013 04:00
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Mitchnasty posted:What sort of advantages/disadvantages would a left-handed swordsman have had? Did they exist? Like a Southpaw boxing it would be unusual for the other fighter to have to deal with, although material directly addressing the subject is limited. Liechtenauer’s teachings mention that if you are left-handed you should strike from your left-side whenever possible so you do not get overwhelmed in the bind (when your swords meet). Jeu de la Hache, a French text on polearms, does have a separate section addressing left or right handers. Fiore mentions some techniques that work against left and right-handers. It seems like awareness of the concept is there, but the sources only do a limited amount of delving into it. On the other hand, most military features were built on the assumption of everyone being right-handed. The shield wall assumes your shield is going to cover the right side of the guy to your left, so throwing in a lefty who holds his shield in his right hand would leave a potential weak spot. In pike formations I have seen it suggested that the front rank charge their pikes at waist-height, the second rank at shoulder-height, and the third rank overhead and thrusting down. This works if everyone is using their pike from the same side. Buried alive posted:I've heard that left-handers were good for fighting up castle towers during a siege. Something about the combination of the spiral stair case and the fact that his weapon is on the left instead of the right is supposed to give an advantage..somehow. I've also heard that Alexander put a left-handed person at the corner of a phalanx. Phalanxes had a tendency to drift right as they moved forward, having a lefty on one side fixed that. I don't know if there's any truth to that, but that's a direction to look in. The idea is that tower staircases went up clockwise; meaning that on the way up the wall was on your right side, giving you less space to swing your sword. While the guy defending the tower had the wall to his left side, giving him more room to use his sword freely. Tower staircases were often narrow enough that both fighters were crowded, but if both were right-handed, the defender would have more room and be in a better position to thrust around the wall than the attacker would be. On the other hand, not all tower staircases went up clockwise. Rodrigo Diaz posted:If you're going to use scientific terms you should aim for some kind of accuracy. Why not simply say 'physics', which is the more accessible term, over biomechanics? The sword and shield being 'natural extensions' of the fighter is mysticism, and the point I was making has nothing to do with feeling your opponent's movement through the sword, but the fact that the Forte is stronger than the Debole, which is just leverage. I suspect that English was not their first language, which might have caused errors in their terminology. Rodrigo Diaz posted:Edit: Hey Railtus did you go to the R. L. Scott conference in Glasgow last year? If not you missed some good presentations from Syndey Anglo, Peter Johnsson and Matthew Strickland, as well as a really bad presentation from John Clements. Dierk Hagedorn also presented but I honestly cannot remember what it was about, just thinking it was decent. I didn't, sadly, but I'll see if there are any videos on it. Thanks for the heads up!
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Mar 13, 2013 19:20
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WoodrowSkillson posted:How so? Blades would be sharpened as much as the metal would allow. Why would they use duller blades intentionally? One reason given is that extremely sharp edges would be somewhat more brittle, and might make the half-sword grip safer (where you grasp the blade with one hand). There is one attack, called the mordhau or murder-stroke, where you grab the blade and use the handle as a warhammer. A less-sharp sword might be preferable if you are doing that a lot. However, I am not entirely convinced. These claims also tend to be very vague about how sharp the sword should be. Which I think is an important factor for this kind of argument. How sharp is too sharp? How sharp is sharp enough? In my opinion, swords needed to be sharp enough for a few things. Firstly, abschneiden, when you cut by pushing or pulling the edge across the target rather than striking it. This technique is taught in the fechtbucher, implying the swordsmen of the time at least expected the sword to do it. Second, harnischfechten, or armoured combat when you try to stab the gaps in plate armour. Most of those gaps have an arming coat underneath, which is made of sturdy cloth. My arming coat is strong enough to resist most of the knives in our kitchen easily enough (which probably need sharpening). However, to my knowledge sources on armoured combat do not consider the arming coat to be an effective barrier against a sharp sword. Extending that thought a little, harnischfechten is always portrayed as being against plate armour; you never see it used against a cloth gambeson. This is not conclusive proof, I know, but it points in the general direction. Third, fighting medieval underwear, a phrase perfect for taking out of context. Even someone unarmoured is probably wearing a linen undershirt and a wool tunic over the top. Even without armour, wearing multiple layers of cloth was the standard. In my opinion, if your sword is not sharp enough to cut through the regular clothing of the day, you are better off with another weapon. Yet swords were popular even if not necessarily common. Fourthly, and most obvious, it needs to be able to cut people. There were bodies from the Battle of Visby with both legs shorn off by a thin blade in a manner that suggests the bone was cut rather than broken through, and the angle of the cuts suggest that both legs were severed by a single blow. Overall, the evidence suggests that medieval people expected their swords to cut and cut well. Finally, one more thought to throw out, remember that swords varied a lot. An Oakeshott Type XVII could have fairly blunt edges, being made principally for half-swording and armoured combat, whereas a XIII was much more cutting oriented. However, as a generalisation, I would say swords cut through cloth or most leather pretty reliably. I have also heard that 20-30 degrees was a common edge bevel, but I do not have a source to back that up.
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Mar 13, 2013 20:15
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UberJew posted:I've seen videos of people demonstrating that a sword is sharp by cutting things and then half-swording that same sword barehanded with no damage to their hand. The way it was gripped means it isn't actually dangerous. Indeed, as long as you do not let the edge slide on your hand it is reasonably safe. For a few examples of those videos. First, with John Clements https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rqP1F36EMY Second, a much better example in my opinion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfb6g786Y8M I think the idea is that a duller edge is more forgiving of errors in technique when gripping the blade. Not my choice, certainly, but someone might prefer the extra security in case they get something wrong in a high-stress environment such as battle. For me, if you are not going to use the sword for cutting then maybe a sword is not the best choice. With the Type XVII swords specialised for armoured combat, I would find a slightly shorter pollaxe much more effective for the same jobs - it makes a better hammer than a mordhau, it has a spear to stab with, and if you need the fine point control of a longsword's balance then you can stab with the queue-spike on the butt of the staff. That said, the Type XVII was fairly popular in England from 1360-1420, so they maybe the knights who used them knew something I do not.
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Mar 13, 2013 22:16
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Godholio posted:I'm not seeing any reason why a sword would have to be particularly sharp. You're not really slicing in any way that strength or angle won't make up for keenness. More like clubbing, which even if it doesn't get through the adversary's protective clothing is going to make an impact...with leather or cotton particularly, but even against metal armor (and against that, you're not getting through even with a razor edge). Or stabbing. Stabbing doesn't require an edge, just a point. Then use a club, it would make far more sense. Very often you were cutting in a way that strength could not make up for. Abschneiden (slicing off) where you place the edge against the body of your opponent and push or pull the blade along their body. Cuts from the bind (when your swords have met and crossed) would often lack the momentum to compensate for a poor edge. Pressing of hands was a popular slicing technique. Johannes Liechtenauer taught there were principles of successful swordsmanship. These were the help of God, a healthy body and a good weapon, principles of offensive and defensive and of hard and soft, a list of basic techniques, he repeatedly mentions speed and trickery, of being able to read your opponent, footwork and agility. He never mentions strength, which is the kind of thing he would mention if you needed it to compensate for a dull blade or if you were going to inflict injury by clubbing. Fiore dei Liberi stated he would rather face three fights in armour than one fight without, because with sharp swords a single mistake could be fatal. Again, this is a strong sign that swords were expected to be sharp or at least to get through medieval underwear. When clubbing blows are suggested, they are invariably murder-strokes, holding the blade and using the handle to club with.  That this is suggested when you need to do impact damage suggests that clubbing with the blade was regarded as ineffective. Just as a final point to add, Sagas such as Heimskringla of the 13th century explicitly mention a king’s men being unable to kill their foes due to notched and blunted swords. When Skofnung was notched by an edge-on-edge blow they tried to whet the blade to get rid of the notch. Clearly the quality of a sword edge was regarded as important. bewbies posted:Also regarding sword sharpness, how much of a factor was cost? I'm referencing the American Civil War, where nearly all swords made were shipped unsharpened as a cost saving measure, then subsequently (in large part) not sharpened by the soldiers they were issued to 1) because they were not used much and 2) because the regiments didn't want to foot the bill to sharpen them in the field. I'd imagine sharpening all of the edged weapons for a medieval army would be a huge logistical undertaking. Cost has not been mentioned in my experience. However, medieval swords were typically associated with the professional warriors who were typically well-funded. It has never really occurred to me at all that it would be costly, since I assumed a whetstone would be fairly common. Certainly the feudal troops (knights and their household retainers) often had squires to sharpen their swords. It seemed to be something that the troops organised for themselves. Rather than having bulk swords shipped out to be sharpened for an army, you would have units called lances fournies (or sometimes gleves or just lances, depending on area) of 3-8 men, and they would typically include their own servant or squire who took care of those logistical details.
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Mar 14, 2013 08:06
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Godholio posted:I'm not, I'm basing it on the multitude of times I've cut myself by being stupid. People were debating over the degree of sharpness. I'm saying razor sharp is unnecessary. Even abschneiden doesn't require that kind of edge, which as mentioned, will weaken a blade. I'm not saying you can get away with a flat edge. Razor sharp is not necessary, but the fight-books are pretty clear that clubbing to make an impact through normal clothing rather than cutting was the wrong way to use a sword.
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Mar 14, 2013 17:43
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:It's worth mentioning that a lot of these techniques were designed for unarmoured fighting. Abschneiden (what I called draw-cutting in earlier posts) is the most obvious example. It is within that context, I think, that Liechtenauer speaks of the nature of strength, as I think strength is an inarguable boon against armour, in wrestling with half or in normal strikes. For the value of strong sword blows against armored opponents, consider the following examples from different chronicles and different eras: Excellent use of sources! With Vie de Louis le Gros it does not clearly say whether he struck armour or not, but those are beautiful contributions. Thank you! Liechtenauer’s comments on abschneiden or draw-cutting are definitely blossfechten (unarmoured combat for the benefit of other readers). When you get to harnischfechten (armoured combat) the game changes considerably. Also, by the time of the Liechtenauer tradition, transitional armour was becoming more common with the mail being reinforced, so bashing with heavy blows would be more difficult than previously. Unfortunately the earliest medieval swordsmanship manual I know of is the I.33, so we have less surviving evidence of how earlier swordsmanship was different. A friend of mine once tried bashing vs halfswording, to get very onesided results - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bdMfaymGlk Then again, earlier combat with shields might have made the use of wider, powerful blows against armour more feasible since you do not have to sacrifice as much defence for power. On the other hand, if you wanted to batter someone senseless, then a mace would be my first choice. An interesting thing is we do get the occasional literary reference to split helms but I have never seen it duplicated in reconstructive testing (which is probably one of the reasons you mentioned to be wary of reconstructive testing earlier). That said, I was very surprised to see a split helmet mentioned in a 15th century source, normally the split helmets tend to be mentioned earlier. Also, excellent point about how common knives were and the dispersal of population. That evidence is really helpful. I was more or less speculating but those details of everyday life is very good confirmation. By the way, do you know any good sources that describe conrois in more detail? I have occasionally heard them mentioned in passing as small teams of knights when reading up on the Normans, but I have never received much detail on them (most of my research has been later medieval, but it has irked me when I saw a book mention a conroi and then go on to say virtually nothing about them).
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Mar 17, 2013 18:54
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junidog posted:If I walked up to a dude in plate armor and swung a baseball bat as hard as I could at his chest, what would the result be? Would he fell it enough to throw him off? Would it not budge and I'd eff up my wrists? You might knock him back a step, but otherwise it is unlikely to inflict any meaningful injury. While the weight distribution of a baseball bat is better for impact than a sword, there is also some give to the bat compared to the breastplate. Someone trying the same thing with a blunted sword - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hlIUrd7d1Q Or another try here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3fPHAAqiLI&t=1s Probably not the perfect simulation for your example, but the general trend is swinging hard blows to the chest does not do any serious harm. On the other hand, they do not seem to be complaining about hurting their wrists either. Overall it just seems like a waste of a powerful blow. A metal-reinforced bat would do better, but on the chest if it would still barely get his attention. The arms and legs have typically thinner armour (less weight makes them easier to move), and while the helmet is usually at least as thick as the breastplate the brain is a little more susceptible to the shockwaves from the blow. There is only so much a helmet can do about a concussion.
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Mar 17, 2013 20:24
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:It is not explicit but I am fairly unshakeable in the belief that Thomas of Marle would have been wearing armour. Thomas was a fairly powerful noble, having, earlier in his life, controlled Crécy, Amiens, and Nouvion in addition to Marle and Coucy. It is during an attempt by Louis to besiege Coucy that this takes place. Thomas was waiting with a host to ambush the king and, in the words of Suger, 'seal its doom'. It is infeasible that he would not have been wearing armour for such an attack, and other circumstantial evidence points strongly toward it. The fact that Ralph considered it necessary to strike again after delivering a wound which broke Thomas's neck, plus the lack of detail for the wound (unusual for Suger) implies that it was done by percussive force rather than cutting. Additionally, any damage to the neck by a sharp blade against bare flesh or cloth would more likely have ended there and then, with blood. First thing, an announcement; there will be a delay in my next post, dissertation work is taking over. I am going to elaborate more on the differences between personal defence or duelling as opposed to a battlefield and how that might have affected things, since I think it might be an interesting topic for readers. One of the major reasons the fechtbucher rarely suggests leg cuts is reach; if you cut for the lower body, the angle of your weapon does not reach as far forward. Assuming similar-length weapons that means your opponent can strike your head or shoulders from further away than you can strike his legs, so he can just step back and brain you, and if your weapon is low enough to aim for the legs you will struggle to defend your head, neck or shoulders. In formation, the opponent cannot step back as easily, which makes low strikes less risky. The other problem with attacking the legs, that your weapon is too low to adequately defend against strikes from above, could be mitigated with a shield, since your shield could defend high while you strike low. Apparently the Sagas mention cutting at the shins quite a bit, although that is all second-hand claims. Though Towton (1461) was after shields became less popular and Visby (1361) was when shields were starting to fall out of use, but I expect shields were still pretty common among the people without access to the top transitional armour of the time, since a guy with no shield and wearing only limited armour would be highly vulnerable to arrows. I know I mentioned earlier that Liechtenauer (1300s) was the age of transitional armour, but I think the rise of two-handed weapons did not occur equally for everyone at the same time. Another issue, chicken-and-the-egg related, applies to Visby. There was very little leg armour at Visby, but a fair amount of head and torso armour. That was probably a factor behind where the attacks were directed. If someone has body armour on their chest, a shield covering their left arm, possibly a helmet, and their right arm kept back, the leg might be the best target under those circumstances. A small thing though, I looked up Towton and got a different result – according to the Osprey book, Towton 1461: England’s Bloodiest Battle by Christopher Gravett, the wounds were overwhelmingly to the upper body. Not that Osprey books are necessarily foolproof, but it might be worth looking into. Pages 85-89, on this preview of Google books: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-UlMBQYccEMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false On the differences between German, Italian and English armour (and this is not one-upmanship I swear) I remember Dierk Hagedorn once mentioning in conversation that the differences were more in how the plates fitted together but the kind of things the wearer would not even notice. I am not sure they would influence what the best choice of weapon would be against each style of armour. That said, I will definitely keep an eye out for Tobias Capwell’s book, I like everything from him I have seen so far, and this seems like a very good subject for exploration. I would also like to amend what I said about my first choice to clobber someone with: a pollaxe would be my first choice. Also lowering their head so the crown of the bascinet faces forwards had an added bonus of presenting a more glancing shape for the arrows to skim off. Although the visor was also sloped, the breaths (air holes) probably meant the visor was far weaker than the rest of the helmet. Anyway, thanks for a ton of helpful information. I have to look up the Templar Rule anyway for my dissertation. I will be a little busy this week, but I look forward to being able to give more answers soon.
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Mar 19, 2013 21:45
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Buried alive posted:Might be beyond the scope of this thread a little bit, but is there any indication that half-swording was a thing that eastern (thinking mostly chinese and japanese) cultures recognized? If not, why not? (I’m still delayed, but I got an unexpected chance to post) A little bit. You see a half-swording like technique around 20 seconds in. According to friends with a background in kenjutsu you do place your hand on the blunt back of the sword sometimes, but I have not come across it much. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEeW-CFyJVc I would not want to try fully gripping the katana blade; it feels more difficult to ‘pinch’ the blade like you might see here, probably because medieval swords seem to be wider-bladed than katana. You also have far less in the way of mordhau-related options, or the hooking and trapping with the crossguard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rqP1F36EMY That said, my experience of katana is mostly limited to bickering with katana-plonkers. What’s a katana-plonker? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzbfuI0PMdA#t=1m30s Also for fun on that subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLWzH_1eZsc Chinese sword use I know less about. There seems to be no reason why you could not use a jian that way if you really wanted. Also, I have no clue how my new avatar appeared, but thank you so much to anyone and everyone involved! It is awesome!
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Mar 20, 2013 22:12
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Von Bek posted:I'm glad you like the avatar! The picture is one of the few depictions of Hartmann von Aue, one of the great German poets of the Middle Ages, who wrote several Middle High German versions of the Arthurian epics. He was also a knight himself and may have been on a crusade or two (he wrote some crusading songs as well). The picture comes from Codex Manesse, an early fourteenth-century manuscript from Zurich which is also the biggest single surviving source of Minnesang (courtly love poetry). The text comes from Hartmann's Iwein, and means "in our days, such joy which they had in those times can never come again". He sounds perfect. I am particularly fond of knights from that period, and the text makes me think Hartmann von Aue would make a fabulous Grumpy Old Man. Thank you again, it was very thoughtful and I appreciate it.  My dissertation is going really well so far, it is examining the extent of religious tolerance in the Crusader states (all the other students I told this to immediately reply with a gasping “Oooooooo” like I chose something nightmarishly difficult). I am about two-thirds into it so far. And I forgot how I was going to end this paragraph... Thank you so much for your support. Wiggy Marie posted:This is to all of the medieval history studiers of the thread: if you were asked to dramatize (for film/TV/whatever) a particular event from the time period, which event would you choose and why? What kind of strategies would you use to depict the time period accurately? Anything specific you'd want to showcase? I'm curious about what y'all think matters most, so to speak, about the time. One period I would love to see covered is the Great English Democracy Of About Eight Weeks. This is when Simon De Monfort defeated the king at the Battle of Lewis, creating for the first time a Parliament that accepted commoners. Another option is the campaigns of Georg von Frundsberg, a German knight of around 1500, sometimes called the Father of the Landsknecht. He defended Verona against numerous attacks from Venice, apparently knew Martin Luther and showed the good sense to retreat when facing disaster. For the record, I like soldiers who are willing to retreat and save lives. Unfortunately, Frundsberg’s story lacks a happy ending; he sold off his estate to finance the army he was leading for the Kaiser, discipline broke down, and he suffered a stroke, dying in grief after having been abandoned by his “beloved sons”, losing his estate, and one of his actual sons dying. Overall, a sad end to a magnificent man. My principle strategy would be to keep people clean, go for functional garments in the medieval period (landsknecht would be… less functional, I have shown you those pictures before), battles would make sure to feature organised formations rather than Braveheart-like clashes. I would also try to work the fechtbucher in for lots of cunning martial arts tricks, I would want at least one scene where the hook of a halberd is used, or where someone half-swords, and I would make sure the knights used throws and trips rather than strikes when unarmed. I get that the fighting would have to make some concessions to drama, What I think would make excellent story material is Henry VII, the first Henry Tudor. Everyone hears about Henry VIII in English history but I find his father far more compelling. Henry VII was of Welsh ancestry, which he alternately played up and down depending on how much it suited him at the moment, he was a capable soldier but always had a clear goal for every battle. I like him because he wasn’t afraid of the unglamorous stuff. Henry VII brought stability to the country, put the treasury in the best state it had been for ages, manipulated foreign affairs to reduce the danger to the English coast. And at times, Henry could be kind. A rebellion used a boy named Lambert Simnel as a figurehead. Eventually Henry defeated the rebellion, captured Simnel… then pardoned him and gave him a job in the royal household, since he recognised that Simnel was essentially a kid who had been used as a puppet by people Henry had already killed when crushing the rebellion. What I would really like to do is focus on the things he achieved that other monarchs overlooked. Rather than feud with France, Henry got them to pay him a pension that helped considerably towards securing his rule. When he defeated Simnel’s rebellion at Stoke Field, Henry had the larger army. And I think that deserves recognition as a military achievement, because he was able to assemble the army very quickly and effectively to counter the invasion force (the rebellion had a ton of Irish & German support). I would also love to try something with the Templars or Hospitallers. The main thing I would do with the Templars is bludgeon with a crowbar anyone who suggests using them as fanatical Muslim-haters (one of my favourite real-life stories of the Templars is them repeatedly throwing someone out of their church for trying to hassle a Muslim - the Muslim in question who wrote about it was Usamah Ibn Munqidh). Blue Star posted:Here's a weird question: for how long have people been interested in medieval history? Were there medieval historians back in the 1500s or 1600s? When did people start reconstructing Old English or Old French? I would say people were interested in modern history since medieval times. You get chroniclers such as William of Tyre and Fulcher of Chartres early on. Later on you get guys like Gottfried Christian Voigt and Voltaire in the 1700s, who you could arguably call historians, although to be honest a lot of the work from that period is at the root of everything we get wrong about history. For example, Voltaire was more or less the person who introduced the idea that the Arab world should hold a grudge over the Crusades, and Voigt created the myth of the “nine million women” burned at the stake. Voigt, in 1784, made the claim that nine million women had been burned at the stake as witches. What he based this on is astonishing. He found archives recording a period of 20-29 years with 40 executions, and he assumed that 40 executions in that period would make an average of 133 per century (despite the 40 period he checked being in a time and place of a witch panic). From there, he assumed that the entirety of Europe was undergoing a witch panic of the same intensity for 1100 years… despite witch hunting only really being a thing for maybe 250 years. So he took the number of executions from a single panic-stricken town in a time of trouble, and multiplied it by the entire population of Europe (I think the population of Europe from HIS time, far higher than Europe had for any of the 11 centuries he was talking about) for 858 000 per century. Anyway, this got used by Nazi propaganda in the 1930s blaming “Semitic Christianity” for the deaths of German women, and radical feminist groups in the 1990s, blaming all men. I will avoid getting drawn into that tangent, since it's flame-bait. I use the example to illustrate a point. There were certainly people trying to study history in the 1700s, they were just often terrible at it, and far too much work from that time ended up being used for hatemongering. 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Mar 23, 2013 01:39
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:
Shields to my knowledge did not disappear completely until much later. I think there might have even been a resurgence of shields for some places in the 1500s, although that is a general impression I get rather than based on any specific source. I think of the rondeleros used by the Spanish, or the many gun-shields Henry VIII bought, it leads me to think shields were regaining some popularity. Not that Henry VIII should ever be used as an example of what sensible men were thinking. Another thought is civilian swashbucklers, named after the noise their shield made as they walked. Just doing a brief look for ordinances: Coutiliers from the mid 1400s have equipment of helmet, leg armour, haubergeon, jack or brigandine, dagger, sword, then either a demilance or voulge (1446) or light spear described as a javelin but seems not to be intended for throwing (1473), but no shield is mentioned. Charles the Rash of Burgandy issued a 1472 ordinance in which pikemen were required to have a targe, although I wonder whether I should interpret it as a buckler or something strapped to the arm without taking up the hand. A German ordinance I mentioned at the start of the thread (Duke Albrecht) had the guys with body armour of iron or jerkin, sword or knife, helmet, then a main weapon (pike, gun, crossbow etc), but it does not mention shields. There are a few suggestions that shields are unusual, for example cited here - http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_armies_burg.html - and it mentions two-handed swords being used a secondary weapon, which was probably incompatible with shields. Overall, it seems like there were fewer demands for shield-bearing troops after 1400, although that does not stop individual soldiers from bringing their own. After all, I can see professional soldiers bringing more than the minimum amount of protective gear. My suspicion is different areas seemed to make different levels of shield-use. It is possible that as armies moved more towards pike-and-shot warfare, that it was the wealthy that retained the shield for longest. I know less about what individual nobles wore, but I hope you find that info helpful. I have never read Pillars of the Earth, or seen the TV show, sadly, so I cannot give a good answer. kimbo305 posted:Somewhere on the Great Wall, there's a little museum showing some period weapons, one of which was a solid iron guandao (like glaive) listed as weighing 37kg. It certainly looked that heavy. That just blew my mind at the time as being way too heavy. It must have been ceremonial, right? Useless even for the strongest calvary guy to try to drag around. Oh yes, 37 kg has to be ceremonial. To put it into context, it is nearly 1/3 of the weight of a fully armoured man using it. Xiahou Dun posted:O, and I'm pretty drat sure they had chainmail, but I don't have a source handy. "The Jesuits and the Koreans are at one in asserting that the Chinese army of counter-invasion was a thoroughly efficient force, and they are also in accord as regards its equipment…it was very strong in cavalry, all the horse-men being in iron mail ‘on which the best swords of Japan could made no impression.'" (James Murdoch, A History of Japan During the Century of Early Foreign Intercourse 1542-1651. Chronicle, Kobe Japan, 1903. p. 343). Shamelessly pinched off ARMA article on knight vs samurai. Chamale posted:What were the heaviest handheld weapons ever used in warfare? I know there's a tendency to exaggerate weapon weights for various reasons, but I'm curious to know the real answer. Heaviest handheld weapons tend to be those that blur the line between handheld weapon and portable artillery. Early muskets often required a forked rest to aim with, sometimes arquebuses used them too but it was not as necessary. Pikes seem like a good bet though. At the very least they were the most cumbersome. Halberds tend to weigh maybe 3-4 kg. If pikes were anywhere near 8 kg then that would make them far heavier than other weapons. Generally, 4 kg is large polearms and the biggest two-handed swords. Blue Star posted:Oh, I just thought of something: when did taverns and inns start becoming a thing? Like with fancy names and everything? Can you give us a run-down on what drinking establishments were like throughout the Middle Ages and how they changed over the centuries? Fair question, I had assumed that it would really have been a continuation of the inns and taverns around since the Romans, although that would not necessarily make them common. Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England by Compton Reeves. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 – suggests the 12th and 13th centuries in England, becoming common by the 15th century. Considering that England had no shortage of alewives that would probably influence the importance of taverns, whether to make them unnecessary (because there is so much ale at home) or as suppliers. It seems the larger inns with signs were a feature of the 1300s onwards, pictures being convenient and preferable when literacy was limited. London had 300+ alehouses by 1304. There are some sources here - http://www.larsdatter.com/taverns.htm Abbeys and monasteries tended to be very generous with hospitality, so the demand for inns was reduced earlier on. Church-run shelters and hospices did the job of providing for travellers, and most monastic communities brewed ale. The amusing thing is researching this took me to the history of plays and theatre, and it seems most of the things that make us think of the pub was covered by earlier medieval churches. Drinking establishments seemed to be more middle class or respectable working class rather than the dirt poor peasants. They often worked with vinters (wine-merchants) rather than relying on cheap ale. In a way, the frequency of home-brewed ale was a form of quality control, because why go to the tavern if you already have ale just as good? In fact, the term tavern might have originally just meant visiting the neighbours. So imagine a house party just where you pay for drinks. Another essay I found is here, but I cannot speak with authority onto the reliability of it - http://www.elizabethi.org/uk/essays/alehouses.htm For me, the trend over time was that drinking establishments became more formalised or specialised over time, while early on it was more likely to be something run on the side rather than a specialised trade per se. You might be working in one craft and also have a few spare rooms to run an inn from. A problem with my sources, however, is that they are overwhelmingly English, and England was quite the unusual place in the medieval period. Florence had a guild of innkeepers listed in 1236, so other parts of Europe might have moved faster than England on this subject. Grand Prize Winner posted:In a pike formation, would the dudes in front also be carrying big long pikes or would they be carrying spears to more controllable stabbing? Pike formations had a mix of troops, including troops with other weapons such as halberds or two-handed swords. Those guys with other weapons were often at or near the front ranks. One of their functions was to hook or rake or otherwise disrupt the hedge of enemy pikes and open up gaps your side could exploit. I have seen woodcuts showing landsknecht officers using boar spears. Another important point is backup weapons; if the enemy gets past the first row of pikes then the front line can switch to short swords (Swiss degen, German katzbalgers etc.) EvanSchenck posted:The pikemen tended to all carry the same length of pike. The point of having such long weapons was so that the enemy could be kept as far from the square as possible, and so that the ranks behind the front could get their weapons into action as well. It isn't necessary for the front rank to have a great deal of fine control because anything that gets past their spearheads will only go a short distance before they run into the second rank's, and then the third's. So they get several bites at the apple. It could also be a huge weakness. Say you give your first rank shorter pikes and consequently you can only stab things once they get within 12' of the square, and fight an enemy who has the first rank carrying the full-length pikes so that they can stab at 17'. That's five feet where your guys are walking forward into knives and can't stab back, meaning they'll start dying first without inflicting casualties in return and probably wind up losing in the end. Finally, there is also the issue that the guys in front are somewhat likely to be killed or wounded, and will have to be replaced by men from the backranks anyway, so giving everybody different lengths of weapons would be pointless. I agree with most of this, although I *think* the Swiss tended to prefer shorter pikes than a lot of other armies, and still seemed to do very well.
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Mar 25, 2013 22:04
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nothing to seehere posted:Sorry if this is a throwaway comment, but what do you mean by England being a unusual place in the medieval period? Just curious in what why they were unusual. The law and culture of medieval England is generally not something that can be generalised to the rest of Europe. For example, the property rights of women in England were restricted by something called Coverture (a ‘covered woman’), in which her husband held the property rights for both of them and exercised them on her behalf. It would be very misleading to assume that all women everywhere in the medieval world suffered the same restrictions. In France, women had more financial independence, rather than being bound to their husbands the same way. The longbow never received the same popularity outside of England. France was a lot more cautious than England about arming the general population, at least before the Hundred Years War made it necessary. It is very easy to think the medieval period was a certain way and then discover it was only a very limited place and time. Xiahou Dun posted:No? Hence the might... I was not the most confident of that part. It was something that came up in my research for the question, but I did not know for sure either way. I imagine it could depend on your interpretation of hut/shed. tonberrytoby posted:How much did those actually weigh? I had been imagining them as about as heavy as modern rifles until I thought about it right now. I expect about the same. I have never come across reliable figures for medieval firearms, I did however find this - http://www.oocities.org/yosemite/campground/8551/firearms.html - which says muskets requiring rests were around 20 lbs (roughly 9 kg). I don't know about bipods, although the Russian bardiche was an interesting take on gun-rests. Jabarto posted:I'm curous, as well. I once shot a black powder rifle that weighed around 10-15 pounds, but I and the person showing me how to use it were able to use it without a rest, so I'm wondering how much a musket would need to weigh to require one. It depends how long the barrel is. A heavy gun with a 5 foot barrel would have some of that weight further away, and the leverage means you need more effort with a longer gun. Rodrigo Diaz posted:This is why I typically loathe talking to reenactors about history. Many of them act as if they are authorities when they only know things through two sources. Either they have been told about 'how it really was' by the group guru, who has probably only read Oman (or Shelby Foote if they are ACW), or they have 'deduced' a lot of things about warfare through their LARPing. They fail to recognise they are playing a game, one with noticeable safety rules like "no killing people", rather than fighting a war. It's one of the few history things that can really make me spitting mad. Just to say, I was once part of a re-enactment troupe, and studying historical swordsmanship was actually a disadvantage in that group due to all the rules. Essentially, the safety rules meant you must not do things likely to result in injury. The medieval masters of arms taught that if your techniques did not result in injury, you are doing something wrong.
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Mar 26, 2013 02:52
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Normal service resumes this week. FINALLY got my dissertation finished. Next post I will probably be answering questions in reverse order. Thank you all for your patience.
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Apr 16, 2013 10:37
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First of all, I might have missed a few questions. Feel free to post your question again if I have not answered it.Amyclas posted:How did a warrior fight effectively with teardrop shaped shields? Teardrop shaped shields, or kite shields, were quite easy to use effectively. On foot, the idea was that the tail would cover your legs. Particularly desirable in a shield wall. On horse, it would cover your leg on the left side, and maybe even part of the horse in an exchange of missiles. From what I have done in re-enactment (take with a pinch of salt), kite shields were more passive protection. Using them actively to strike or push or hook was more difficult than others, which is one reason why shields got smaller around the 1200s (before the age of plate, I would point out – mail armour really worked). Another factor is the guige strap, often there was still a strap looping over the shoulder even when the arm was in the shield by the enarmes (arm straps), which would help support the shield although limit how aggressively you could use it. Most images I have seen of kite shields shows them held vertically rather than at a deliberate angle, although you could tilt it to an extent. It is not too different to round shields when fighting with it, but with a lot of round shields (particularly Viking round shields) they are held by a centre grip instead. I have not got any documentation like the fechtbucher on how shields were fought with, but those were my experiences. I also think the limitations of kite shields sound plausible since the heater design rose. The only sword-and-shield text from the medieval period I know of is the I.33 with bucklers, but I think you could adapt it to a small heater quite easily. Slothful Cobra - Slavery Depends what you mean by medieval Europe. The early Saxons had slaves. The Norse had thralls. Once you get around 1000 AD the practise was dying down. Portugal took advantage of the fact the church’s position on slavery applied mostly to Christians. I have not seen many sources directly addressing slavery in Europe in any kind of detail; there were laws saying not to sell a slave outside the country, then county, etc. Eventually the restrictions on slavery made it functionally the same as serfdom. England was one of the worst places in terms of slavery, at least until the 1200s. The Life of St Wulfstan 1066 has horror stories about slaves in Bristol. There is some stuff on slaves here - http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/sbook1u.asp Unfortunately, most of what I have seen about slavery was just laws saying “don’t do this.” James the 1st - Hanseatic League I do not know too much about the Hanseatic League, other than it was a pretty good example of merchants and guilds being quite powerful at the time. Leagues were a big thing in Germany, considering the divided nature of the Holy Roman Empire, where you had lots of small principalities forming their own semi-independent alliances. Essentially, towns raised their own armies, and delegated to guilds requiring the guilds to produce levies of troops. One of the results of this is you had merchant organisations with access to their own military power, which could be quite effective if they banded together and pooled their resources. In essence, the only thing that truly stood out about the Hansa was how successful it was. They started off in North Germany, with sea access that allowed them to concentrate on markets in the Baltic. That was another reason having troops came in handy, because Scandinavia had been controlling that trade before. Although how successfully is in question. Trade routes required a lot of protection, and they were well-secured against piracy. Also, the Hansa was very loose. Meetings were irregular, lots of cities did not bother sending representatives, and often it just restricted what the Hansa did – not the cities that were part of the Hansa. Essentially it was just an agreement between merchants to help each other out and work towards shared interests rather than against each other. Tailored Sauce - Motte & Bailey Motte & Baileys were for long term use, but the idea was that it starts out as one and then gets upgraded. Windsor Castle was once a motte & bailey, in fact you can still see the motte. Think of it as a working prototype, a sort of intermediate stage between wooden forts and castles. Best way to attack a motte & bailey is fire. Most of the buildings are still fairly flammable, the hard part is just getting past the moat without getting shot. They would typically try to protect the wood with soaked skins and hides, but it was only so much that could be done. Also, if you are going to starve them out, a fire could burn their food stores. If you struggle to get close, you might need to fill in the ditch/moat. On three, sadly the answer is no. I have never read any accounts of fighting a motte & bailey. Bait and Swatch posted:OP and others, what is the prevailing opinion on the accuracy of the three volume series detailing the Crusades by Steven Runciman? I enjoyed reading it, but haven't had time to read other writings discussing the events during the Crusades to check Runciman's statements. If you don't have knowledge on the books, please disregard. I only know a little of Runciman, I read his work 8 months back for my dissertation, but did not find that much I could use. He crafts a very readable narrative, the impression I got is he wrote 3 books with a fairly balanced and neutral narration of the story and then finished it with a conclusion that completely contrasted with the events in the book, though large sections only got skimmed. But essentially in the books he covers political motives, the Greek request for help, the backstory that explains why the Crusaders went there. Then he finishes by saying it was all one long sin of intolerance. That is the big thing that puzzles me about his work. The other criticism I have heard is that Runciman was very much into the Byzantines, so he wrote from that perspective, and he kind of accepted Anna Komnene’s account too uncritically. The way she tells it, the Emperor was a saintly paragon of kindness and the Franks were just ungrateful. I think Runciman could have accounted more for her bias. For an unbiased book, I can recommend John-Riley Smith as a good author. His work is top-notch. Depending on how far back you can go (access to the library) I found Dana Munro, Kingdom of the Crusaders (written in the 1920s) to be an excellent read, which links her comments to the evidence throughout. To cover more on how often one side formed alliances with the other side. The Crusader kingdoms cooperated with Muslims almost constantly, according to James Brundage (The Crusades: A Documentary Survey) the Crusaders desperately wanted peace because it was essential to the trade on which their economy thrived; the Crusader kingdoms were much more trade-based and urbanised than Western Europe at the time. Often, the Crusader alliances with Muslims were more divide-and-rule than anything else, you did not often get the Crusaders joining together with Muslim armies for an integrated campaign. The idea was really to just stop the Muslims from uniting. Just to add that no book seems truly unbiased, Dana Munro & John Riley-Smith both disagree on very specific laws, even though I would recommend both authors. Even translations of the same text can encourage different interpretations. Beaumains posted:I used to lurk the ARMA forums. What are some other sites that are good resources for info and forum discussions? Wiktenauer is an awesome resource. It literally includes translations of the original fightbooks. http://www.wiktenauer.com/ MyArmoury website is also good, with a lot of articles. http://www.myarmoury.com/features.html SwordForum is another, but I don’t see them much. I have seen quite a few people ragging on ARMA. Personally I find them a useful resource, and I would say much of their work online introduces people to medieval combat very well. It is accessible, but eventually you graduate beyond them. kongurous posted:I apologize if this question is too far afield from the specialties of those answering questions here, but what were the methods of personal grooming at the time, and in general, what did people find attractive at the time? I don't imagine manscaping was in vogue in the Middle Ages (or armpit/leg shaving for women, for that matter), but I also imagine that most people didn't just let their hair or bears grow endlessly. Did people clip their nails then? How were these sorts of things accomplished before disposable razors and shaving lotions? I cannot really comment here in detail about grooming methods, but I can say that shaving without lotion is fine. Water works well under most circumstances, it’s a little less comfortable, but not prohibitively so. Lots of different hair and beard styles were known through the ages. Post 1500, long beards and short hair were the thing. Earlier on longer hair and shorter beards were manly. NEED TOILET PAPER posted:I imagine this isn't a common topic for extensive study, but what was medieval footwear like? I know pointed shoes were a Thing, but apart from that I'm totally in the dark. I'm especially interested in the shoes worn by armored knights and such, since I imagine their feet would have to be well-protected while still being light enough that they won't hamper movement on the battlefield. For medieval footwear the turnshoe was pretty popular. I have never really looked at them in depth, but I found this about their construction - http://www.threeriver.org/marshal/shoes_1.shtml Turnshoes are just very simple, straightforward, typically soft leather that I have heard likened to tennis shoes. They would not be unreasonable for a knight to wear. I first heard the term ‘turnshoe’ from a swordsmanship book. Anyway, for armoured knights they would also have mail stockings (chausses) or later on plate armoured coverings called sabatons. Occasionally you might just tie a mail sabaton over the shoe instead. I have heard some suggestions that mail stockings had the soles of the feet mailed but I am sceptical of that. Adeptus7 posted:Why did the Byzantine Theme system break down? Theme system, from how I understand it, was very decentralised. It was very good at raising troops, it gave military commanders the authority to organise local resources to support troops. Farmer-soldiers on leased estates is arguably similar to a scaled-down version of a knight’s fee. I see the Theme system as feudalism-lite. What you get is an army supported at limited cost to the state, but with looser ties to the state as well. Essentially the commander of the Theme has his own army. Private armies just invite civil war. Another problem is mobility, the soldiers were tied to the land and fairly reluctant to leave their territory. Essentially each soldier held some land in exchange for reduced pay, but if he is not there to work his land he does not make the difference from his reduced pay. So it is more difficult to get your army where you need it. A knock-on effect of this is the more secure regions near the centre of the empire see less fighting, so the troops have less incentive to keep themselves battle-ready. Mercenaries were important for being technically apolitical. In the case of the Varangians, Emperor Basil II was scared that Greek guards would have divided loyalties in the empire, so he wanted foreigners with no local loyalties other than him. Interestingly the Varangians obeyed the office of Emperor, not the man. So when Nikephoros II was killed by John Tzimiskes, they rushed to his aid, but since they were too late, Tzimiskies was apparently next in line to be Emperor – so they just knelt to him and started serving him. Not that the Varangian guard never participated in coups, but that is the idea. Another thing is after the 10th century is when the Theme system broke down, so they needed an alternative source of quality troops. Grand Prize Winner posted:What did Europeans write about the habits of Saracens during this period? Also, is 'saracen' an offensive term or just a label for the groups that ruled the Middle East and north Africa at the time? Saracen was not an insult. It gets used in contexts like marrying a Saracen, or being defeated by a Saracen, or working with Saracens who had converted to Christianity. The impression I get is the term was fairly neutral, just because it gets used so dispassionately for so many different things. Normally North Africans were called Moors rather than Saracen. Overall, though, Saracen as a term was rarely any kind of hostility. I have not come across much written by Europeans about the habits of the Saracens. Occasionally you hear small things mentioned about one culture or another in the area - Chaldeans & Armenians get called unwarlike by William of Tyre, I think somewhere in Munro's book (Kingdom of the Crusaders) she mentions Syrians were viewed as timid. A few knights praised Muslims or Saracens "no one could find more powerful or braver or more skillful warriors than they." I have come across very little by Europeans about the habits of Saracens, but I will say that the overwhelming majority of times I saw Saracens mentioned by Europeans when researching my dissertation, the Crusaders had nothing but respect for them. It is actually a notable gap in the sources I have looked through. Edit: That applies more to the Crusaders, in the west, people were less positive towards the Saracens. A few clergymen denounced the Saracens as a “people odious to Divinity”. However, this sort of attitude was people with a vested interest in encouraging war against the Saracens and people with no experience of them. Those who do seem to know the Saracens rarely tell us anything about them. I am going to use an example dealing more with a Moor than a Saracen, but I think it illustrates my frustration. Jorg von Ehingen, fighting an armoured Moorish champion: When the infidels saw I had conquered they drew off their forces. But the Portuguese and Christians approached and cut off the infidel's head, and took his spear, and placed the head upon it, and removed his armour. It was a costly suit, made in the heathen fashion, very strong and richly ornamented. What is the heathen fashion?! I have tried to follow this up, but never found anything solid about North African armour. We get the same problem with Crusader sources, they might mention adopting Saracen customs but often neglect to mention what those customs are. Railtus fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Apr 17, 2013 |
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Apr 17, 2013 05:54
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Cool! But who were they? Is the term 'Saracen' equivalent to the modern "Arab" in scope? Yes. Saracen was a very broad and general term that did not distinguish between Seljuk Turk or Fatamid Egyptian or anything in-between. One thing I noticed is sources tend to refer to their own group by their religion and the other group by the broad ethnic term. So, for example, Crusader sources would refer to themselves as either Christians or Latins and refer to the Muslim population as Saracens, while the Muslim sources referred to themselves as Muslims and to the westerners as Franks. Namarrgon posted:So I was playing through Assassin's Creed and it got me wondering; was there a culture of recreative fitness for staying in shape and not being a fat monstrosity? We've already discussed knights and their athletic feats but how about the rest? My base assumptions would be that peasants were too poor and hungry to ever become really fat but the rest of society I'm not sure about. Short answer: yes. We know because there were Popes who recommended working out in order to get sexy (Aneneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius II). Apparently Johannes de Mirfeld wrote something on this subject in the 1300s including some basic exercises, although I am not familiar with his work. Leon Battista Alberti (1400s) suggested combat training, "for the sake of health rather than sport or pleasure." Which means people did it for health, but also means we know pleasure was one of the reasons for working out and training. In 1283, King Alfonso X of Castile wrote about sports for fun, "in which men use their limbs and therefore relax and take joy". In 1315, a physician in Valencia advised indoor exercises for staying healthy; running up and down the stairs 3 or 4 times and then practising a stick like a sword with one hand until “almost winded.” So yes, an exercising sub-culture was certainly there, and much stronger than I expected. Whether fat was condemned, I can say the ideal body type for a medieval man was an athletic, well-proportioned build. However, that is mostly the case for the fighting classes. I cannot say for sure about other portions of society with as much certainty. Generally wealthy merchants liked to emulate the nobility as much as they could get away with, which would result in similar attitudes towards physique. But that is speculation. PittTheElder posted:Well, not Henry VIII in his prime, certainly. But I've read Henry VIII near the end was horrifyingly gross. If I remember correctly, Henry VIII’s last suit of armour was designed for a 58-60 inch waist. I also think he might have been diabetic, and comfort-ate because his leg hurt like an absolute swine all the time. The ulcer was probably downright disgusting as well. I also think he never psychologically adjusted to the shift from being a previously athletic man to being functionally crippled. I actually feel really sorry for Henry VIII, as much as he was a jerk.
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Apr 17, 2013 07:01
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cheerfullydrab posted:What exactly has caused the modern-day phenomenon of people thinking katanas were the greatest and best sword ever ever ever? This is sort of a combat question and sort of a history question, because I'm sure the roots go back at least two if not three decades. How does an idea like this get started? World War II propaganda. Showa-era Japan was ultranationalist and glorified the samurai as a symbol of something specifically Japanese, something without western influences. During the American Occupation of Japan, US soldiers were in a country that had been essentially inundated with propaganda about how Japan did everything best. Another part was katana were used by Japanese officers in WW2. These were shin gunto, introduced because of ultranationalism. Previously, they used kyu gunto which resembled sabres more than anything else. What is true is that the American soldiers did used to shoot the guys with katana first during World War 2 – because they knew the guy with a katana was an officer. However, I have heard people seriously try to suggest that they were shooting the katana guy because they were scared of the swords. To be fair, katana were effective swords, and can be quite impressive. What people in the 1940s did not know was any good-quality sword could accomplish the same things. However, people saw a legitimately decent sword (something new to them) and heard the propaganda of it being the best in the world, and took it for granted. It also makes a better story to take home when you bring home a katana as a souvenir. The shin gunto was also probably more effective than the kyu gunto, further reinforcing the myth. Something Hank Reinhardt has to say about cutting machine gun barrels: “This stunt must have happened several times, because when I tried to track the source, it seems to have occurred on Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, and several other islands. I have to believe Japanese soldiers have some sort of pathological hatred for machine gun barrels. I have also wondered why they never tried to cut down the gunner.” Frostwerks posted:Well for one thing they were so sharp they literally cut through shields, rendering them obsolete on the Home Islands. Shields disappeared in Japan long before katana made an appearance. Also, when cutting, the cut created by the edge will not be wide enough for the thicker spine of the sword to fit through – you would still need enough force to push the iron bar of the sword through the wood of the shield, regardless of how sharp the edge is. I have never found any evidence to support the idea of katana slicing through shields. If you know of any though, I would love to see it. Also, a metal rim around the edge of the shield and a metal boss on the hand would also be really easy counters to shield-cutting blades. Railtus fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Apr 17, 2013 |
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Apr 17, 2013 13:31
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Hogge Wild posted:Do you have sources about armor penetration, where they have counted how many joules you need to get through and how many joules you get out of different weapons. I have The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period, are there others? I'd be especially interested in pre-medieval armors. I do not have other significant sources like that. There is an article on padded armour, which cites Dr Williams, so it may just be the same tests as from the book. http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_spot_quilted.php
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Apr 17, 2013 14:07
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Genpei Turtle posted:I'm not sure if it necessarily indicates that they could cut through a shield, but Japanese swords could cleave an (unarmored) person in two without too much difficulty. One pastime of the warrior class in Japan was to pile up the corpses of executed criminals and see how many you could cleave through with one stroke. I've read old texts where warriors claim their sword could cut through as many as four or five bodies at once. Of course those sources are notorious for exaggeration (an army of a couple of thousand becomes a multitude of tens or even hundreds of thousands of soldiers) so take that with a grain of salt. I know, but thanks for the information all the same. What I would say is most cutting-oriented swords could cleave an unarmoured man in two without too much difficulty. Yes, pavise-style or mantlet-style shields were in Japan much later, but were not conventional hand-held shields of the kind used at sword range still in decline much earlier (rare by 1100 or so)?
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Apr 17, 2013 20:26
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Solomonic posted:So I realize some of this might overlap with minstrel talk earlier in the thread, but tell me about jesters. How did one become a jester? It seems like a position that would be sort of difficult to apply for (and to judge the credentials of applicants on). Did they really wear the cap with bells on it, or is that just visual shorthand from art and now we always associate it with them (like Vikings and horned helmets)? Jesters are actually something I have never come across since I made a serious study of medieval history. The earliest jester I know of directly is a guy called Stanczyk born in 1480, I actually wonder if it was more of Renaissance/Early Modern institution rather than a medieval one. There are hints of it earlier, Philllippe VI’s jester (1340) is said to have made a crack about an unsuccessful naval battle, “The English don’t even have the guts to jump into the water like our brave French.” Henry VII had a “luter play the fool” which essentially means he had a minstrel telling jokes, but again I suspect that was not the same thing as the enshrined position of court jester. Some sources from the 1400s suggest there was considerable overlap with minstrels. There is an Irish story, the Death of Fergus Mac Leide, dating back to 1100, in which a court poet contradicts the flattery of some courtiers… and gets arrested for it. Overall there seems to have been fools, it seems to have been known about, but the idea of fools as a special class with a license to offend the king seems to be sporadic and inconsistent. Scotland passed a law in 1449 forbidding someone from trying to pass oneself off as a fool in court. Henry VIII had a fool named Will Sommers, who was presented to the king by a merchant who attracted his attention, and Henry just offered Sommers the job on a whim. However, he did not seem to have full tell-it-as-it-is privileges either, as Henry VIII threatened his life on occasion, and one of his main skills was using humour as a way to draw the king’s attention to serious matters without being offensive. Essentially you had to be diplomatic as a jester. PiratePing posted:Do you happen to know anything about medieval festivals? I'm particularly interested in the ones that fit the theme of "opposite-day" in which social roles were reversed. Next to nothing, sadly. There were a huge amount of religious festivals, I think the main thing of note about them was that they were essentially bank holidays, so people spent the day in rest or amusement. Some google-foo isn’t giving me anything concrete or that I trust, either. Imapanda posted:What were widely used Beer was one. More beer was another. Ale and spirits were some more. A Cunning Woman could do some interesting things with herbs, although recreational drugs tend not to get mentioned that much. On the other hand, this could be mostly due to the imbalance of the evidence. A list of drugs available at the time is listed here - http://cunnan.sca.org.au/wiki/Medieval_Narcotics (source chosen more for its accessibility than its reliability). I hesitate to call any drugs widely used, however. Around, yes, but they do not appear to be normal. Buried alive posted:Related question: What's the low-down on viking berserkers? I've heard that nordic/viking war paint was made out of some sort of plant with hallucinogenic properties, so these guys would get high as balls and then just charge the front lines of whatever it was they were facing off against. Any truth to that? The war paint with hallucinogenic properties was called woad, although those properties are very much in question. Mike Loades in Swords & Swordsmen suggests some other more interesting properties of woad; it is antiseptic, reducing the risk of infection, and it apparently helps to stop bleeding. The context he mentions this in is a Celt tribe that fought naked (I don’t have the book with me). Woad was definitely known to the Vikings, they visited parts of England that used it as a dye, but I think they did not make that much use of it as body paint. Mushrooms have been suggested (fly amanita), although again, there is no solid evidence for it. It is all just speculation. A version of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is also suggested as a cause. Another possibility was just getting drunk off your skull. It is all speculation, I think more than one cause is very likely. This is a long way to just say we don't have any clear answers on the subject. The sagas portray berserkers as going into frenzies all of a sudden, in situations that imply it was something that happened by itself rather than induced – which might dent the drugs theory. Skallagrim nearly kills his own son during a ball game. On the other hand, the sagas just as often portray berserkers as werewolves/bears or sorcerers as enraged warriors, so take that with a pinch of salt. Slight tangent: Viking Answer Lady has some interesting comments on berserkers, and one is the possibility that Grendel from Beowulf was supposed to be a berserker rather than a troll or similar monster.
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Apr 20, 2013 06:11
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drugs