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Comments
Isn't it also what ebaumsworld does, though?
Yeah but ebaumsworld is usually better at picking decent stuff.
^ Well, that's subtle.
I like how it looks as though he's shitting out a lion. And that's all I can really make of that picture. I mean, it comes from a historical fighting manual, although I can't remember which one. If it's a German manual, then the figure is likely Saint Mark, the patron saint of German swordsmen. Who is apparently known for shitting out lions and having a dick made of the sun.
were shields so hilariously small in that time or is that dude holding a helmet
What are Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff doing in the bottom left corner?
Cross: seems like a buckler,so that would be the normal size. These were small shields you carried casually in daily life, bigger ones were rather exclusively military. (BTW I just saved you from five A4 page-long essay.)
you're a fool if you think it's not being typed right now
Actually, the bigger ones were gone. Deceased. Ex-shields. Shields were mostly abandoned for military purposes after being replaced with plate armour, and two-handed weapons were the order of the day in Renaissance warfare. Bucklers like the one pictured were the only shields around; like Gacek said, they were primarily used for civilian self-defense. They were also used for military purposes by missile troops, who would typically wear lighter armour and needed additional protection when the fighting got close.
Unless you mean to say that there were larger bucklers. In which case ignore that paragraph.
Oddly enough, the Spanish deployed rapier and buckler troops during the Renaissance, which is notable as neither weapon was especially well-suited to the battlefield. Apparently these guys were used to get into pike formations and basically run amok, since being inside a pike's range is pretty much a free pass to do what you want.
Grappling. For most Europeans of the time, the default mode of unarmed combat was throws, locks and breaks. Striking was an entry technique, or used for attacks of opportunity. This makes sense in a military context because you can't easily punch someone on the battlefield, especially if they have armour and a nasty weapon. But you can throw them or break a limb, since you can apply the forces necessary for a grapple with a weapon in hand.
I meant to say bigger shields were rather exclusively military, because I don't know of any shields bigger than bucklers that were carried rather casually, on a daily basis, in civilian life. I may be wrong, though. I'm gonna agree shields were mostly gone. The easiest example of shields still in use is the existence of pavises. Milos could also point out some Balkan details, unless you consider it too removed from the Western cultural area. On rodeleros (said sword-and-buckler), I'd say that "rapier" comes from a Spanish word for a sword, so in this context I'm not gonna say it's impractical until I know they really used the exclusively piercing weapons we think of when we hear the word "rapier".
edit: Now that's a pagetopper for image thread.
I thought they were making it hapen
^^ As far as I know, everything was pretty similar within the Christian sphere of influence (which is definitely the only definition of "Western" that means anything in a medieval or Renaissance sense). Eastern Europe might have not have had, say, France's economy, but I daresay Serbian knights (as an example) and men-at-arms had similarly discarded shields in favour of two-handed weapons and plate harness.
By the time you hit the year 1400, shields are pretty much entirely gone, and they were becoming smaller and smaller for hundreds of years before that. Plenty of people are surprised to learn how small, exactly, a Crusader knight's heater shield often was (which makes the transition from spear and sword to poleaxe and longsword a lot more sensible).
As for the Spanish, I'm not sure of the details. I agree with you that it seems unlikely, but then again, it could have easily been a transition model between the regular medieval single sword and the 16th century rapier. That would probably be more sensible; a slender cut-and-thrust sword with an emphasis on the thrust.
Also, I'm legitimately unsure whether pavises count. They're more like mobile cover than a defensive weapon, but then we'd have to define what a "shield" is exactly and that's a whole new can of worms.
While we're on the topic of historical weapons and the like, I read something interesting and then entirely forgot where I found it. Anyway, it was one of the few manuals that even mentioned hand axes, maces and warhammers. It said that such weapons were used for duelling but usually left out of actual battlefield conflicts. Mind you, this is a Renaissance manual and things were already changing since the Middle Ages. Funnily enough, the only axe the author recommended was the Polish hand axe, because "it has a spiked point at the bottom which offends greatly".
Perhaps it was Meyer or one of his contemporaries? I know that Germany at the time was trending on taking ideas from its neighbours to the East, although that was arguably in vogue since Liechtenauer.
Hussars used shields, that's what I aim at, not to mention the Christian/non-Christian border gets kinda fuzzy in places. You may however argue that shields disappeared from "knightly" use, and went out of fashion in general. I know Paulus Hector Mair had info on flails and clubs, but I don't know if it's him you think of. However, Mair is a good example for rapier, as the weapon he calls "Rappier" is explicitly a bladed weapon. AFAIR the term "rapier" comes from Spanish "espada ropera", which meant a sword that is worn as part of a suit (so to say).
On-topic:
Actually, Serbia and the rest of the Balkans were under strong Byzantine influence, which meant that they adopted distinct Byzantine weaponry and combat styles. The average Serbian man-at-arms during most of the Middle Ages was clad in scale mail and carried a short sword or mace alongside a shield. Still, Western influences, especially through Venice and Hungary, got stronger over time - chainmail, for example, was introduced around the 13th century.
The biggest changes in the Serbian medieval armory happened after the Battle of Marica in 1371, in order to counter the Ottomans. A distinct type of sword was developed - the spada schiavonesca ("Slavic sword" in Italian), a hand-and-a-half bastard sword with an S-shaped pommel, although it was still commonly carried with a shield. True two-handed longswords were mostly reserved for mounted knights (which seems kinda odd at first glance; allegedly, they would swing it similarly to a scythe), and plate armor became common at the same rate as in Western Europe.
So, around the late medieval/early rennaisance period, just before the fall to the Ottoman Empire, the Serbian medieval armory looked something like this:
- knights on horseback with plate armor and a two-handed longsword
- light cavalry in scale armor, armed with spears or bows (another oddity, these were apparently borrowed from the Cumans)
- heavy infantry with plate armor, a hand-and-a-half bastard sword and shield
- light infantry clad in chainmail, armed with a shield and a broadsword or mace
- archers with scale mail and traditional bows (crossbows were very rare)
As for what you said about the economy, it's interesting to note that 15th century Serbia was one of the more developed realms in Europe, due to ore and buffalo skins exports to Western Europe. Of course, now the mines are drained and the buffalos are almost extinct.
^^ @lrdgck love the picture.
Everything else is reasonably kosher, but I'm having trouble dealing with this one. It seems so needlessly inefficient; plate armour and a shield? With a sword capable of being used in two hands? I mean, a hand-and-a-halfer is going to be less efficient as a one-handed weapon than a true single-handed sword and less efficient as a two-hander than a true longsword.
As for Byzantine-ness, unless I've gotten something horribly wrong, wasn't the Byzantine remnant Orthodox Christian, therefore falling under the purview of general Christendom (but not Catholicism, obviously)? So while there are bound to be differences East of Poland (which, if I recall, was the Easternmost Catholic realm?), I daresay most Eastern Europeans had more in common in social and military terms with the Germans, Italians and Danish than they did with, well, anyone else (except their immediate neighbours).
This is halfway between bizarre and sensible. For one thing, it makes sense to wear your longsword at your side while mounted; if you're dismounted for whatever reason, you have your sword of war on you, and an arming sword can easily be mounted towards the front of one's saddle. On the other hand, you kind of have to be an insanely good rider to do that. But hey. Serbia.
Do you have any more information on this weapon? I don't doubt you at all, mind, it's just that not-quite-longswords-but-almost were in use since about the 12th century (perhaps even the 11th), so I'm wondering what makes this one different enough to counter Ottoman troops and be its own thing. Perhaps it was an adaptation of a similar weapon in the Serbian armoury with different blade geometry, with the S-shaped pommel being more a visual indicator than anything? 1371 or thereabouts is when swords begin to get more tapered and begin to favour thrusting more often, although I'm not sure if it would be true of those particular swords. But there's no doubt that the late 14th century was a time of significant change in armouries across Europe, so I daresay there was more to the Serbian sword than a pommel change.
That would be in line with what you taught me about late medieval Serbian politics. All the same, though, Serbia wasn't in a position to command the same economic might as Central European realms. Many of the steel production refinements that boosted economies across the board found their origins in Italy and Germany, giving that region a pretty decent leg up in the 14th century and beyond. In fact, the wealth produced by such refinements would have been a significant contributing factor the Renaissance ever happening. As much as the Renaissance was an intellectual movement, it couldn't have existed without wealth.
Still, this is pretty much the same as any other man-at-arms in Europe in essential setup. Their equivalents further West carried longer swords and wore mail rather than scale armour, which I consider to be pretty minor differences. I do wonder why they'd change to mail, though, if scale armour worked for them for so long. Since I've never actually worn steel or iron armours, I can't comment on relative weight. My gut instinct tells me that mail is lighter than scale, though, so perhaps the Serbians of the time required more mobility than they had previously.
When I started seeking out games that at least pay lip service to actual medieval swordsmanship techniques.
Fug swords:DDD
what the hell
I have no idea myself; it might have to do with the versatility.
Indeed, they are similar, but draw from different military traditions. Western European armory and combat technique draws from Roman and Germanic sources, while Byzantine is an amalgam of Roman, Hellenic, Persian, Slavic and steppe nomad influences.
As far as I know, the role of heavy cavalry in Serbia was reserved only for the elite of the elite; quality over quantity, basically.
From what I've read, the pommel was made specially for the purpose of a manuever that was used to deflect Turkish scimitars. Basically, the sword looked like this while the pommel looked like this. I can't find any details about the manuever, unfortunately.
Indeed, and the fact that it was constantly besieged by the Turks during the 15th century didn't help much. Although Serbia did just enter the Renaissance by the time it fell.
Hmm. I don't know, really. Maybe mail is cheaper?
AFAIR well-made plate armour could well have been even easier in wearing than a chainmail, as it allowed for better allocation of weight. Mail only had your shoulders and belt to count on. Or something like that. There was such a claim.
Depends which period we speak of, and we have to say these immediate neighbours included folks like Turks, Tartars and Cumans. Since this is the picture thread, here's a pic of a XVII C. cavalryman:
And yeah, that's not a Turk at all.
wtf
"Me in the kitchen"
I've heard the same. Plus, customisation.
Aw man, now my imagination's running wild. So you mean to say that the crossguard also had the S-shape? Because that would have some interesting implications in terms of binding and countering, since the crossguard is usually either the "backup defense" for a technique or even a primary defense in its own right.