Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk XII [Archive] - Page 4

Brother Oni

2013-07-20, 09:22 AM

Dunno, that is why I am asking. Never seen the complete text of 1363 or the one about labourers later on.

Hmm, I stand corrected.

Apparently there are a couple of laws regarding compulsory archery:

1252 Assize of Arms (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hdh4Elj-3WEC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=Assize+of+Arms+1252&source=bl&ots=kCp4B8Y_vN&sig=EGKjHmwE3ALKWwXesKlUjFsWmb8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8pPqUd7bNs-S0QXT0oGADg&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Assize%20of%20Arms%201252&f=false), requiring 'burghers, free tenants, villagers and others of fifteen years of age to sixty years of age' to have various armour, weapons and mounts dependent on how much land and cattle they owned. Possession of land which generated 40-100 shillings of annual rent meant you were required to own a bow (or crossbow if you were a forester).

The (Second) Archery Law of 1363 decreed compulsory 2 hours practise on a Sunday to be monitored by the local clergyman (apparently never repealed! (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10300924)), with no other sport to be undertaken on that day.

The 1511 Archery Act clarified ownership to 'All sorts of Men under the Age of Forty Years' with some exceptions (see link in previous post). A separate act this year discouraged the use of cross bows.

The 1514 Archery Act put the 1511 Act into perpetual law (presumably the 1511 Act was written so that it was to be reviewed at a later date).

The Unlawful Games Act 1541 reinforced the practice of archery: "All Men under the Age of sixty Years "shall have Bows and Arrows for shooting. Men-Children between Seven "Years and Seventeen shall have a Bow and 2 Shafts. Men about Seventeen "Years of Age shall keep a Bow and 4 Arrows - Penalty 6s.8d".
It also set other things regarding archery including bow construction, prices, use by foreign citizens, etc (see previous post)

Apparently another Act in 1542 set a minimum target distance of '11 score yards' (220yds) for anybody over the age of 24 (can't find the name of this one).

It's not rifled, has a bore of ~2 inches (estimated from illustrations), and has a tiny hole in the breech to stick a match into, mounted on a length of wood to be held steady under one arm. It functionally seems to be a tiny cannon on a stick.

You're quite correct in this. I've found a thread where an owner of such a hand bombard gives the dimensions of a couple of his pieces: link (http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=11038).

Measurements of three mentioned in the thread:

Bronze barrel tiller (stick), late 15th century: overall length 146.8 cm, barrel 56.6 cm, caliber 13 mm

Wrought iron barrel, with remains of its original tiller stock preserved in the socket, ca. 1450-60: overall length 72.7 cm, barrel 56.1 cm, caliber at the widened muzzle 20 mm, narrowing to ca. 16 mm after about one inch.

Wrought iron haquebut barrel: overall length including the socket of 99.8 cm, barrel bore length of 79.7 cm, caliber of 26 mm, weight 15.4 kg.

I'm uncertain if the game rules for the thing are playing up the kick it's got (I suspect yes), but Pathfinder culverines knock the wielder prone if they're fired without being braced on a window/wall or a stand.

I can't find a reference to how much powder charge they used, but the pathfinder culverin uses 4 charges of black powder per shot according to the PFSRD. The game says a musket uses a single charge (a Brown Bess musket uses ~110-120 gr per charge), so that's equivalent to the kickback of 4 musket shots (~440gr).

Since depictions of the culverin show it being fired freely underarm, I would say bracing it between the ground and your foot would be a reasonable compromise, but check with your GM.

Would the simple construction and heavy iron make it reasonably effective, would it just hit something and have the cannon portion snap off the wooden handle, or would it deform the metal barrel and ruin it as a firearm?

It would be durable enough to use as an emergency club, but its weight makes it far too unwieldy (15+kg for the wrought iron example listed earlier). For comparison, a 16ft pike weighs ~9kg and a zweihander sword is ~6.6kg.

Silver Swift

2013-07-20, 05:01 PM

Haldir

2013-07-20, 05:23 PM

I am looking for some solid scientific information on the effectiveness of weapons vrs armor. Specifically, I want to know how much force is required to deal fatal or very harmful damage through chain, scale, and plate armors using a piercing weapon such as a longspear, a cleaving weapon such as an axe, or a blunt force weapon such as a mace or flail.

Does anyone know of any studies done on this, or have any leads on researchers who might have done such a study?

As a base reference, we know that the human body can withstand around 3k-4k newtons of force before a bone breaks, according to this source http://www.livescience.com/6040-brute-force-humans-punch.html

warty goblin

2013-07-20, 06:09 PM

Force isn't really an appropriate measure of how effective a weapon is. There's just too much variation in how weapons interact with tissue and armor, because many weapons don't rely on applying lots of force. A 20 lbs sledge can apply a lot of force, but isn't a particularly good weapon of war. A long single handed blade like the Celts fought with can apply far less, but is a better weapon. A Roman gladius, which is still smaller proved a far more effective blade than that.

The better measure of how effective a weapon is is how well you can use it to make somebody dead, seriously injured, or running away.

Brother Oni

2013-07-20, 06:13 PM

During the days of the muzzle loader guns (when the main limiting factor in a fire fight was how long it took to reload) were multi-barrelled guns a thing? I know there were people running around with entire belts of disposable single-shot guns and it seems that having multiple barrels would be a simpler alternative that wouldn't all that much more difficult to make.

Multi-barrel muzzle loaders did exist, but they were expensive to make and often the additional triggering mechanisms were unreliable:

They essentially came in two variants: volley guns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volley_gun) which fired all their barrels at once and pepperboxes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper-box) which fire repeatedly much like a revolver.

Then you have the just plain weird stuff:

Duckfoot pistol
http://www.christies.com/lotfinderimages/d19013/d1901326r.jpg

Force isn't really an appropriate measure of how effective a weapon is. There's just too much variation in how weapons interact with tissue and armor, because many weapons don't rely on applying lots of force.

Agreed. In addition, the location of impact has a significant effect - sure the torso can take 3-4 kN, but you only need about 1.2 kN to the throat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafon_Johnson#Barbell_accident) to cause significant injury.

That said, there have been a couple of penetration tests against armour by melee weapons, but they're generally not very rigorous due to difficulty of making them rigorous.

I know of some quite scientifically sound penetration tests of bows and crossbows, but I don't remember them generating a force value due to issues as warty said.

Haldir

2013-07-20, 06:15 PM

Blades are not at all effective against decently manufactured armor, which is why I did not include them in my question. Force is the only appropriate scientific metric for judging the effectiveness of weapons against armor. Ideally, we find a study where a machine used a piercing, cleaving and blunt weapon against a plate, scale, and chain armor X number of times at forces A, B, and C etc. etc. and averaged out the forces necessary to penetrate and/or deal lethal force.

I should not except the larger, two handed blades, which would probably fall under the purview of a "cleaving" weapon for my particular inquiry. Apologies.

Last edit, I swear- To clarify, I am not trying to gauge weapon effectiveness so much as I am trying to get an idea of armor effectiveness.

Incanur

2013-07-20, 06:38 PM

For comparison, a 16ft pike weighs ~9kg and a zweihander sword is ~6.6kg.

I don't know of any definite sources for pike weight, but I feel confident many if not most sixteenth century pikes weight much less than 9kg - more like 3.5-4.5kg or 8-10lbs. Peter Connolly's reconstruction 18ft sarissa with an ash haft weighs 4.54kg or 10.2lbs (http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/19-greek-military-history-a-archaeology/231724-weight-and-grip-of-sarissa-and-shield-in-macedonian-phalanx/page-9.html?limitstart=0). I can't imagine anyone perform the techniques described by Joachim Meyer and George Silver with 9kg pikes.

The majority of zweihanders and like weapons intended for combat weighed 2.3-3.6kg or 5-8lbs (http://www.thearma.org/essays/2HGS.html).

Brother Oni

2013-07-20, 06:42 PM

Blades are not at all effective against decently manufactured armor, which is why I did not include them in my question.

If blades aren't cleaving weapons, then what would you class them as? :smallconfused:

Force is the only appropriate scientific metric for judging the effectiveness of weapons against armor. Ideally, we find a study where a machine used a piercing, cleaving and blunt weapon against a plate, scale, and chain armor X number of times at forces A, B, and C etc. etc. and averaged out the forces necessary to penetrate and/or deal lethal force.

Except that we can't agree on the definition of 'lethal force'. Whether it penetrates or not is a much better metric in my opinion, although unfortunately rather qualitative .

However the best I've seen for melee weapons are things along the lines of these videos: Link1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFpkYN-W74); link2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXtqpbUnpwM).

About the only organisation I can think of that might do proper testing is the Royal Armouries in Leeds (http://www.royalarmouries.org/home) with plenty of references to their testing, but I can't find an actual paper or published study.

I don't know of any definite sources for pike weight, but I feel confident many if not most sixteenth century pikes weight much less than 9kg - more like 3.5-4.5kg or 8-10lbs.

The 17th century ECW replica pike I handled during the recent re-enactment day was definitely heavier than 4.5kg and both the re-enactor and the wikipedia article says 8-10kg.

I can't imagine anyone perform the techniques described by Joachim Meyer and George Silver with 9kg pikes.

Since I haven't read the techniques, I can't say whether it's possible or not (the design of the weapon I handled postdates both of them however). That said, I'm not sure there's not much you can do with a 16ft pike except poke the enemy and hold it steady to ward off cavalry - it's just too long to do much technically with it.

The majority of zweihanders and like weapons intended for combat weighed 2.3-3.6kg or 5-8lbs (http://www.thearma.org/essays/2HGS.html).

I took the higher value for a very heavy zweihander (Pier Gerlofs Donia's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pier_Gerlofs_Donia) to be precise) to reinforce the point of how unwieldy trying to use a hand culverin as club would be.

Haldir

2013-07-20, 07:57 PM

If blades aren't cleaving weapons, then what would you class them as? :smallconfused:

I would make a distinction between cleaving and slashing, but I have very strong opinions on the usefulness of swords.

Except that we can't agree on the definition of 'lethal force'. Whether it penetrates or not is a much better metric in my opinion, although unfortunately rather qualitative .

I think I can agree that penetration is most likely going to be lethal or harmful enough to qualify for my purposes. But you can certainly transfer enough force through some armor to be harmful. What I want to know is how many newtons it takes to create a fatal PSI.

So we know:

Newtons = Mass (In kG) * Meters / Time ( in seconds) ^ 2

Then, putting a pressure sensitive material behind the armor and doing the tests by gradually increasing the Meters / Time and measure how it effects your newtons and PSI on the other side of the armor. Do it enough times and average successful (fatal) results, should be quantitative, no?

Edit- Those resources are enlightening, but I think there's a lot more work to be done in this area. I thank you very much.

Mr. Mask

2013-07-20, 08:19 PM

Haldir: How precise do you need the data to be, if I may ask?

Haldir

2013-07-20, 09:14 PM

Mr. Mask

2013-07-20, 09:55 PM

Didn't The Knight and the Blast Furnace have some experiments using joules for measurement?

I recall some experiments using joules, but I can't remember what source it was from.

fusilier

2013-07-21, 12:50 AM

The 17th century ECW replica pike I handled during the recent re-enactment day was definitely heavier than 4.5kg and both the re-enactor and the wikipedia article says 8-10kg.

It will depend upon the wood, but eight pounds is the value given for a Spanish pike (16-18 feet). 8-10kg is way too heavy. The pike's length will make it somewhat unwieldy and awkward; it will apply a lot of leverage (as it's rarely held from the center), which probably makes it *feel* heavier.

In ACW I actually prefer to carry a M1842 musket over the M1861 -- it's heavier by at least a pound, but I like the balance and "feel" of the older musket more, which makes it more comfortable to carry. If you aren't accustomed to these items and their weights, they usually feel heavier than they actually are. :-)

fusilier

2013-07-21, 12:59 AM

During the days of the muzzle loader guns (when the main limiting factor in a fire fight was how long it took to reload) were multi-barrelled guns a thing? I know there were people running around with entire belts of disposable single-shot guns and it seems that having multiple barrels would be a simpler alternative that wouldn't all that much more difficult to make.

Doubled barreled shotguns.

Pepperboxes, and "cap and ball" revolvers which are also usually categorized as "muzzle loading".

Nock's volley gun (seven barrels, I think, usually fired one at a time?).

Brother Oni posted a nice picture of a "duck's foot" pistol. Which is a kind of bizarre volley gun.

There were several early forms of revolver/pepperbox. Most would have one lock, which would need to be primed between shots.

Finally, there was the old, but potentially very dangerous, superimposed loads -- one barrel, with multiple loads stacked in it. Each charge could be fired independently, either by having multiple locks, or a sliding lock. Or, it could be fired in "roman candle" style. Both pretty dangerous, if it accidentally fired out of order.

For the most part, carrying a bunch of single-shot pistols was the way to go until the advent of the percussion cap, and pepperboxes (then revolvers).

fusilier

2013-07-21, 01:14 AM

Right now I'm trying to find as much information as possible so I can see what sort of leg work is already done. I think eventually I'm going to have to run an experiment myself, so any insight is greatly appreciated.

It's not actually force, it's "pressure" (a force applied to an area). So the amount of "force" a round, large caliber musket ball takes to penetrate some armor, would be different to the amount force an narrow arrow point takes (as the contact area would be different). At one point I tracked down an article about destructive testing on a pair of iron 17th century breast plates. They tested the armor against .50 caliber rounds, and had worked out various equations. There's a bunch of complications to this (a larger bullet had more mass, but struck a larger area, the bullets deform, etc.)

I can't find that article now, but such work has been done before, so I'm sure if you dig you will start to find some results.

Silver Swift

2013-07-21, 01:37 AM

Multi-barrel muzzle loaders did exist, but they were expensive to make and often the additional triggering mechanisms were unreliable:

They essentially came in two variants: volley guns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volley_gun) which fired all their barrels at once and pepperboxes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper-box) which fire repeatedly much like a revolver.]

Thanks! :smallsmile:

Spiryt

2013-07-21, 03:37 AM

However the best I've seen for melee weapons are things along the lines of these videos: Link1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFpkYN-W74); link2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXtqpbUnpwM).

Some dude bashes butted 'mail' hanged on something take 731.

How possibly could this be this 'best' or even not horrible? :smallconfused:

As far as actual scientific experiments on larger scale - then I believe that Alan Williams tests are indeed still the best out there - he tested some authentic mail and weapon, I believe.

Brother Oni

2013-07-21, 04:17 AM

If you aren't accustomed to these items and their weights, they usually feel heavier than they actually are. :-)

Hmmm, I concede that point.

There's a bunch of complications to this (a larger bullet had more mass, but struck a larger area, the bullets deform, etc.)

Armour not constructed as a single piece would be another major complication - a number of sources report mail being pretty much impervious to cutting/slashing attacks.

Some dude bashes butted 'mail' hanged on something take 731.

How possibly could this be this 'best' or even not horrible? :smallconfused:

It's an example of the tests that are typically done, rather than it being a good test. :smalltongue:

Here's an example of what I would regard as a good test: English Longbow Testing (http://www.currentmiddleages.org/artsci/docs/Champ_Bane_Archery-Testing.pdf).
As with most bow/crossbow tests however, the lethality is calculated in the same manner as firearm/body armour tests with joules/penetration/ballistic material deformation as the main measure of success or failure.

Edit: The Knight and the Blast Furnace indicates that a halberd (edged) or lance (stabbing) requires >200J impact energy (simulated) to defeat mail made with modern steel (15th century mail performed less well at 170J and 140J respectively). In comparison, a bodkin point (simulated) needed 120J and a 'bullet' needed 400J.

While it's just about possible for a very strong man with a two handed blow to achieve 200J with an axe or sword, you only need a good archer (or a crossbow) to achieve their respective energies.

I also can't see a reference to any other considerations like how much energy is transmitted to the underlying material - sure you may need 200J to penetrate a mail coif, but you probably need considerably less energy to cause his brains to start leaking out of his ears.

The 120J for a bodkin also seems a bit high, given that the previous longbow test linked calculated a 74.1J input and only the short bodkin (but both broadheads) failed to cause probable death by NIJ standards against high quality riveted mail.

Galloglaich

2013-07-21, 12:27 PM

Haldir

2013-07-21, 12:43 PM

Thank you very much for the book lead. I will have a look at that today.

Haldir

2013-07-21, 01:59 PM

I also can't see a reference to any other considerations like how much energy is transmitted to the underlying material - sure you may need 200J to penetrate a mail coif, but you probably need considerably less energy to cause his brains to start leaking out of his ears.

This is actually more pertinent to my inquiry. While the durability is certainly a factor, the nature of armor is to keep dangerous forces from reaching the other side. It doesn't seem like there are many studies that address this.

Incanur

2013-07-21, 02:23 PM

The 17th century ECW replica pike I handled during the recent re-enactment day was definitely heavier than 4.5kg and both the re-enactor and the wikipedia article says 8-10kg.

As I said, there's nothing like consensus on the issue and it's further likely that pike weights varied. But don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.

Since I haven't read the techniques, I can't say whether it's possible or not (the design of the weapon I handled postdates both of them however). That said, I'm not sure there's not much you can do with a 16ft pike except poke the enemy and hold it steady to ward off cavalry - it's just too long to do much technically with it.

Sixteenth-century sources make it clear folks dueled with pikes. Indeed, George Silver considered the pike one of the most effective weapons for single combat. Antonio Manciolino recommended the lancia - basically a pike, though not necessarily 16-18ft - over all other weapons. Here (http://www.aemma.org/onlineResources/silver/briefSilver14_body.htm) is Silver's section on the pike. It involves using the pike in one hand. You can see a somewhat similar grip (http://grauenwolf.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/image7.png) in Joachim Meyer's manual. You'd have to be awfully strong to effectively perform such techniques with a 20lb pike.

Brother Oni

2013-07-21, 04:44 PM

You'd have to be awfully strong to effectively perform such techniques with a 20lb pike.

Agreed. I'm inclined to think it was my unfamiliarity with the weapon that gave me the impression of the pike being heavier than it actually is, although I'm surprised that weapon balance affects it to that degree - I'm certain it felt closer to 9kg in my hands than to 4kg.

Since you're more familiar with Silver than I am, would you mind answering a question?
I've found a copy of his Paradoxes of Defence (http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/paradoxes.html) and section 21 indicates that sword and dagger men have the advantage against morris pikes, but the morris pike has the advantage against the short staff and other 'perfect length' weapons.

However a later section (27), it says the short staff has the advantage against the longer weapon.

Am I mis-understanding the text, is Silver being inconsistent, or is it an actual paradox?

Incanur

2013-07-21, 05:15 PM

I'm certain it felt closer to 9kg in my hands than to 4kg.

How thick was it? Published density figures for ash range from 0.6-0.71 (http://www.technologystudent.com/rmflsh1/eash1.html) g/cc. Even using the highest numbers, 18ft at 1.5in diameter weighs 9.7lbs. You'd need over 2in diameter to achieve 9kg (20lbs). The suspected pike shafts recovered from the Mary Rose are around 1 inch in diameter. 18ft at 1in diameter comes in at 6lbs!

Since you're more familiar with Silver than I am, would you mind answering a question?
I've found a copy of his Paradoxes of Defence (http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/paradoxes.html) and section 21 indicates that sword and dagger men have the advantage against morris pikes, but the morris pike has the advantage against the short staff and other 'perfect length' weapons.

However a later section (27), it says the short staff has the advantage against the longer weapon.

Am I mis-understanding the text, is Silver being inconsistent, or is it an actual paradox?

You're misunderstanding. Section 21 says that the pike has the advantage of all weapons except for staff/spears of perfect length. It also says that two men with swords and daggers or like like weapons beat the pike. The staff of perfect length, on the other hand, defeats two men with swords and daggers.

Mr Beer

2013-07-21, 06:18 PM

:smallconfused: That's not really what I think of when I think street brawling. Sure, professional killers, some - definitely not all - gang members, and the like act approximately as the author describes. (Such people in fact tend to live in nice houses. The Iceman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kuklinski) would be an example. I wouldn't call him a street rat - I don't think that's a useful term at all.) But plenty of folks throw down without any lethal intent and with interest in displaying their skill and/or courage.

He's talking about the more problematic opponents you will encounter in dangerous situations and explaining exactly why it's a good idea to avoid violence when possible, basically because the kind of people who are willing to fight are the kind of people who are good at inflicting a great deal of damage and probably not because they want to have some kind of unarmed duel with you.

Of course there are other kinds of people who get into fights, most especially young men who have been drinking alcohol.

I don't know what kind of people you think "throw down without any lethal intent and with interest in displaying their skill and/or courage" but to me you are describing a reckless, dangerous idiot. That kind of behaviour ends up with people getting badly injured.

Brother Oni

2013-07-21, 06:27 PM

How thick was it?

It was hexagonal of ~1 inch each side, making a 16ft haft weigh ~6.3lb by my calculations if it were made out of ash (the wood was stained a dark black, so I couldn't tell its original colour, plus I'm no woodworker).
For safety reasons, this pike had a rubber head, although it had riveted iron strips near the business end of the weapon for improved durability.

You're misunderstanding. Section 21 says that the pike has the advantage of all weapons except for staff/spears of perfect length.

Derp, missed the 'excepted' clause at the very end of the sentence. I'm too used to scientific texts. :smallsigh:

Incanur

2013-07-21, 06:32 PM

Of course there are other kinds of people who get into fights, most especially young men who have been drinking alcohol.

Exactly.

I don't know what kind of people you think "throw down without any lethal intent and with interest in displaying their skill and/or courage" but to me you are describing a reckless, dangerous idiot. That kind of behaviour ends up with people getting badly injured.

:smallannoyed: Uh, see your own words above. I'll venture that the vast majority of people who throw punches do so without wanting to kill anybody. While brawling for status and/or to settle disputes can indeed cause serious injuries and death, a fair amount of the time it doesn't. I know folks who tend to fight dozens of times a year - maybe more - and rarely if ever receive anything worse than bruises, bloody noses, and black eyes. These things hurt, of course, but they're not a huge health risk.

I completely agree with the advice to avoid trouble and have never brawled myself. But it strikes me as excessive to claim that fighting necessarily leads to an experienced killer shooting you in the back of the head.

Mr Beer

2013-07-21, 08:09 PM

I know folks who tend to fight dozens of times a year - maybe more - and rarely if ever receive anything worse than bruises, bloody noses, and black eyes. These things hurt, of course, but they're not a huge health risk.

Holy crap, are you serious? Are these guys fighting in a controlled enviroment or getting drunk and brawling in the street? I'm going to go ahead and say that fighting in the streets on a weekly basis is a huge health risk even if a black eye isn't.

ExactlyBut it strikes me as excessive to claim that fighting necessarily leads to an experienced killer shooting you in the back of the head.

I'm pretty sure that claim was not made.

But if you make a habit of brawling with random strangers, sooner or later you are going to end up meeting the wrong person and there are people out there who will cheerfully kill you for threatening them with physical harm.

I suppose if you ensure you only fight drunk college students that would cut down on the danger significantly. I wouldn't recommend going out with a jovial 'it's only fists' attitude because lots of people don't feel that way about it. Bear in mind this guy is writing from the experience of rough neighbourhoods and brushing up against the criminal underclass.

From my own perspective, I wouldn't deliberately kill someone who attacked me with their fists but I can think of plenty of things I might do in the stress of the moment that could kill someone, for example shove them down a flight of concrete steps, slam their head against a brick wall, kick them when they are down etc. I'm not some crazy animal but people can get very aggressive when they are threatened and the grip of a massive adrenalin dump you don't always clearly think things through. If anything I would be more likely to do something desperate because I'm not an experienced figher.

Incanur

2013-07-21, 10:16 PM

I'm going to go ahead and say that fighting in the streets on a weekly basis is a huge health risk even if a black eye isn't.

I'm not saying it's brilliant idea, but I know people who've been doing it for a long time and aren't dead. In one case, each fight has its own context but they keep on happening. I'd say it's kind of like smoking, heavy drinking, and other such unhealthful habits.

Again, I'm not at all the brawling type. I know from firsthand experience the merits of refusing escalation. I've been threatened with weapons up close multiple times. If I had attacked instead of retreating or submitting, I might have gotten injured or killed instead of getting off free.

I'm pretty sure that claim was not made.

The gist of the piece is that internet warriors can't handle the street because people on the street will ambush and kill you. That's fair enough, but exaggerated and variable.

Additionally, and with particular relevance to historical (and contemporary) warfare, some folks just plain love fighting regardless of the risk. Many if not most of them die young, but a few are so skilled, lucky, and/or tough that they survive to a ripe old age.

But if you make a habit of brawling with random strangers, sooner or later you are going to end up meeting the wrong person and there are people out there who will cheerfully kill you for threatening them with physical harm.

Sure. Note I'm not talking about completely random aggression, but in any case the danger always remains present.

warty goblin

2013-07-21, 10:47 PM

I'm not saying it's brilliant idea, but I know people who've been doing it for a long time and aren't dead. In one case, each fight has its own context but they keep on happening. I'd say it's kind of like smoking, heavy drinking, and other such unhealthful habits.

Yeah. I know a couple of guys who get into fights with some regularity, usually in the presense of alcohol. They've never been all that worse for the wear for it. Violence definitely can, and very often is, kept to a sub-lethal level; though obviously there's a not insubstantial risk that it can escalate. However it by no means has to, particularly if the social context makes that escalation unfavorable for both parties.

Mr. Mask

2013-07-22, 10:41 AM

It's worth mentioning here though because it has some historical resonance. One of the things were are trying to figure out right now in the HEMA world is what the context of the fight books, especially the unarmored fencing (what the Germans call 'blossfechten') really is precisely. There has been a lot of analysis of criminal and medical (barbers) records from England, France, Flanders, towns in the Holy Roman Empire and Italy show that while fights and informal duels were quite common, often with weapons and not unusually with swords, yet very serious injuries were rare. One ratio I've seen (which hasn't been published yet) looks like 150 fights to 1 death in Medieval France and 200 to 1 a major Italian city (Florence) in Italy in the same period. When this changed (when mortality from dueling rose dramatically in France in the 16th Century for example) the authorities started to really crack down.

G What sort of injuries were common? With those kinds of disagreements, the goal is to humiliate and scare your opponent. Similar to social brawling, there's a conscious desire to not use lethal force.

Galloglaich

2013-07-22, 10:43 AM

Exactly.

I'll venture that the vast majority of people who throw punches do so without wanting to kill anybody. While brawling for status and/or to settle disputes can indeed cause serious injuries and death, a fair amount of the time it doesn't. I know folks who tend to fight dozens of times a year - maybe more - and rarely if ever receive anything worse than bruises, bloody noses, and black eyes. These things hurt, of course, but they're not a huge health risk.

I have to agree with Incanur ... lets just say that I have ... certain strong evidence that in the punk subculture in one big city back in the 80's it was pretty routine for young men (and sometimes women) to get in fights almost every weekend but serious injuries were rare. Nobody wanted to go to jail, the purpose of encounters between little factions or different (sub)cultural groups is usually to quickly establish dominance and disperse before the police show up (or before the bouncers kick everybody out of the show). In California in the 90's the same thing existed on a larger scale with the gang world that overlapped with the punk scene over there. Not all gangs or gang members were real 'killers', and not all gangs were or are as tough or dangerous as they usually portray on TV, (but they are a pain in the ass and bring bad drama everywhere).

Usually there are sort of venues (like zones where there are a lot of bars, big outdoor concerts, or big punk shows, or certain types of parties) where that kind of somewhat limited mayhem can take place. Part of being a good survivor is being able to tell the difference from a crowded zone (with lots of witnesses) where people are drinking and a somewhat limited brawl could jump off pretty easily* vs. a lonely street where people are likely to get mugged or killed. The latter is where all those hard core survival rules are really more applicable, the former is pretty easy to avoid if you don't want to put yourself in the mix - but are places where if you do get in a fight, escalating things can actually be more rather than less dangerous.

Not that really bad things couldn't happen, in those areas where people drink (like the French Quarter here in New Orleans or on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, just to cite two examples among many), bad things do happen, from what I've seen more often with inexperienced people who push their luck.

But if you have never lived that kind of life you would be surprised how easy it is to adapt to and learn to survive, and frankly enjoy, without getting badly hurt or in too serious of trouble with the police, though in both cases that is kind of a matter of time. Eventually that kind of life does catch up with you.

It's worth mentioning here though because it has some historical resonance. One of the things were are trying to figure out right now in the HEMA world is what the context of the fight books, especially the unarmored fencing (what the Germans call 'blossfechten') really is precisely. There has been a lot of analysis of criminal and medical (barbers) records from England, France, Flanders, towns in the Holy Roman Empire and Italy show that while fights and informal duels were quite common, often with weapons and not unusually with swords, yet very serious injuries were rare. One ratio I've seen (which hasn't been published yet) looks like 150 fights to 1 death in Medieval France and 200 to 1 a major Italian city (Florence) in Italy in the same period. When this changed (when mortality from dueling rose dramatically in France in the 16th Century for example) the authorities started to really crack down.

G

* there are also similar parties and social venues where much more truly dangerous violence can take place - but these things are usually part of a pattern which is known by a lot of people in advance. Some places and some people like to play this much more dangerous kind of game, so the stakes are raised if you are decide to take the risk of going to parties like that.

Spiryt

2013-07-22, 12:16 PM

Armour not constructed as a single piece would be another major complication - a number of sources report mail being pretty much impervious to cutting/slashing attacks.

There are period sources about mail being sliced open, quite interesting, although usually it stills does the job, so saves the wearer from harm.

Here's an example of what I would regard as a good test: English Longbow Testing (http://www.currentmiddleages.org/artsci/docs/Champ_Bane_Archery-Testing.pdf).
As with most bow/crossbow tests however, the lethality is calculated in the same manner as firearm/body armour tests with joules/penetration/ballistic material deformation as the main measure of success or failure.

This test is without doubt one of the better out there.

I just wish he would release few arrows to the target itself, or just the gambeson. It's always good to see what happens when armor is not there, and how medium behaves in general.

With so many test attempts, with different targets, it would be useful.

Minor complain would be that those calculations seem a bit bonked, bow efficiency of 0.9 is way too high in any meaning of the word.

And I seriously doubt that 110 bow would be sufficient to match point blank 75 pounder energies at 200 yards.... Arrows just slow down way to easily.

While it's just about possible for a very strong man with a two handed blow to achieve 200J with an axe or sword, you only need a good archer (or a crossbow) to achieve their respective energies.

Energies above 100J you either need some some strong bow and, in turn, skilled archer, or big crossbow.

So it's pretty hard in either case.

I also can't see a reference to any other considerations like how much energy is transmitted to the underlying material - sure you may need 200J to penetrate a mail coif, but you probably need considerably less energy to cause his brains to start leaking out of his ears.

People sometimes get 'knocked down' pretty badly in 13th century reenactment - hard glaive thrust to the liver will do the damage.

But it's something entirely survivable and can not even disable one from combat for too long, so are even the broken bones.

While liver being skewered by said glaive is entirely not survivable.

The 120J for a bodkin also seems a bit high, given that the previous longbow test linked calculated a 74.1J input and only the short bodkin (but both broadheads) failed to cause probable death by NIJ standards against high quality riveted mail.

Composition of target etc. can make absolutely all difference in the world.

It's also very, very probable that this mail wouldn't pass as 'high quality' in actual medieval, at all. It's very hard to get hands on something like that today. And the one used look Indian made.

Lastly, 18 gauge plus 8mm inside diameter is rather light mail - you can easily see it's loose, and 'empty' spaces are large and visible.

So in the end, those differences in penetration aren't weird at all, as there's so many things to explain them.

Galloglaich

2013-07-22, 12:33 PM

What sort of injuries were common? With those kinds of disagreements, the goal is to humiliate and scare your opponent. Similar to social brawling, there's a conscious desire to not use lethal force.

This is something we are trying to figure out right now, and the research is very much still being done - I'm one of the people working on it for a lecture in September and then (if I can make the deadline) a paper next year. It's still too early to really say anything definitively but right now it looks like in Germany, people are often struck with the flat of a blade in the early parts of a fight. Bruises and minor cuts result. More serious fights quickly lead to stabbings and maiming cuts.

It's confusing and hard to categorize though because the legal records include many incidents where no actual contact was actually made (people clashed swords, or somebody threw something, but nobody was hit) as well as placing almost an equivalent 'weight' to verbal insults and things like tipping off someone's hat or making a threatening gesture; while the barbers records (mostly from Italy) include a lot of marginal injuries which aren't categorized (i.e. we don't know of it was a contusion or a cut or a thrust). However some records are very detailed and have multiple witness testimony so while the aggregate is tricky to sort out, we can look at some specific cases, the hard part is to guess how representative they are.

There is a notable difference in the law which I suspect impacts how fights went. In the HRE, striking someone that had insulted you quickly with the flat of your blade could stop a further escalation of the fight and was likely to be deemed legal or a 'fair fight', whereas in England or Italy it was important to be perceived as acting in self defense. English coroners records for example are full of cases where a guy was killed in which the other guy (who killed him) claims to have been backing away when the victim 'fell on their sword'.

Once they do escalate, the 'serious' fights seem to have a very high lethality rate as I've indicated from some French and Burgundian records upthread a way. This is also corroborated by the German records I've seen. The most lethal were stabs to the abdomen. The quickest death from cuts or stabs to the neck.

G

Incanur

2013-07-22, 01:58 PM

Regardling yew longbow efficiency, managing 74 J with a 75lb bow at an arrow weight of over 13 grains per lb stands roughly consistent with high-end figures from tests of Mary Rose reproduction bows. The hypothetical 110lb bow at under 10 grains per lb most likely wouldn't perform as well as estimated, but Matthew Strickland and Robert Hardy argue convincingly that 150-160lbs was the average from the Mary Rose. The heaviest arrow tested delivered over 80 J at maximum range, which was 67% of its initial kinetic energy. That's from a 150lb bow.

Regardling injuries, as mentioned and linked to earlier, sixteenth-century English coronor's rolls include a notable number of quickly or immediately incapacitating sword cuts to the head, some of which penetrated beyond 3 inches.

Spiryt

2013-07-22, 02:43 PM

Bow launching arrow with energy in Joules being roughly equivalent to bow's draw weight in pounds is generally surprisingly accurate and convenient 'quick and dirty' approximation. :smallbiggrin:

As long as we talk about roughly 'standard' arrows, so weighing in that range of ~ 9 to 15ish grains per pound of draw. Lighter ones will obviously have lesser energy, especially from self-bows, and heavier ones will have more, at expense of velocity, accuracy and so on.

Better bows could pull off more, sluggish ones less, efficiency will lower with very heavy bows, due to sort of diminishing returns between draw weight and bow arms bulk,. but as 'quick and dirty' thing, it works.

Galloglaich

2013-07-22, 03:51 PM

Incanur

2013-07-22, 06:43 PM

Everything I've read, and been told personally is that 120 lbs is probably closer to the realistic high end for the English bows than some of those higher estimates, though you will hear aggressive assertions to the contrary by some folks.

I'll be one of those folks. :smallsmile: I take it you haven't read The Great Warbow. According to Matthew Strickland, Robert Hardy, and company, the Mary Rose bows top out at 172-180lbs and average at 150-160lbs. This roughly matches the regulation infantry bow numbers from various Chinese regional sources. See Stephen Selbey's Chinese Archery. Cavalry bow examination figures, on the other hand, tend to fall into the 80-120lb range. Reconstructions and measurements of composite bows from Turkey to China present the same picture. Given the mediocre efficiency of even the best yew longbows tested, an average of 150lbs or more strikes as necessary to explain the countless glowing accounts of English strength and prowess.

It's important to remember that draw weight varied according to the archer's strength. For instance, a seventeenth-century Chinese source says that a weak archer draws 80lbs, an average one 125-140lbs, a strong one 150-160lbs, and an exceptionally strong one over this last amount. Eighteenth-century Chinese sources indicate that significant numbers of troops could only pass examination with rather weak bows, as low as approximately 70lbs. (This wasn't considered acceptable.) English texts don't give numbers but they make it clear strength varied. Certainly some archers would have used 120lb bows, or maybe even 80lbs ones, though anything lower gets into the extreme low end. Similarly, some would have draw 180lbs or perhaps even more. Sir John Smythe wrote that there were many who could shoot flight arrows up to 440 yards.

At an average of 120lbs, English archery would have been rather lacking compared with Middle Eastern and Asian archery. It's not inconceivable, but I think the great renown English archers won stands more consistent with higher numbers. In fact, I even find merit in the argument that the Mary Rose bows likely had lower draw weights than the peak of English archery in the fifteenth century. Naval combat hardly calls for the same level of power as trying to stop an armored cavalry charge.

Matthew

2013-07-22, 06:53 PM

Everything I've read, and been told personally is that 120 lbs is probably closer to the realistic high end for the English bows than some of those higher estimates, though you will hear aggressive assertions to the contrary by some folks.

It all depends on the hypothetical data sample, I suppose. For the sake of argument, if the King of England had 1,000,000 able bodied men practising with the long bow on holidays and Sundays, how many of them are going to be drawing over 90 lbs? Very high end draw weights are going to be few and far between, but if we consider that maybe only 1% of this total are in military service as "long bowmen", then we can expect a higher average and the proportion of very high end draw weights to be higher. Narrowing the numbers down to an elite crew of c. 100 aboard a royal flagship (0.01% of the available manpower) and we can expect the numbers to be higher again. So, the average and high end average is going to depend on the total number of bows considered.

Mr. Mask

2013-07-23, 12:31 AM

G:
This is something we are trying to figure out right now, and the research is very much still being done - I'm one of the people working on it for a lecture in September and then (if I can make the deadline) a paper next year. It's still too early to really say anything definitively but right now it looks like in Germany, people are often struck with the flat of a blade in the early parts of a fight. Bruises and minor cuts result. More serious fights quickly lead to stabbings and maiming cuts.

It's confusing and hard to categorize though because the legal records include many incidents where no actual contact was actually made (people clashed swords, or somebody threw something, but nobody was hit) as well as placing almost an equivalent 'weight' to verbal insults and things like tipping off someone's hat or making a threatening gesture; while the barbers records (mostly from Italy) include a lot of marginal injuries which aren't categorized (i.e. we don't know of it was a contusion or a cut or a thrust). However some records are very detailed and have multiple witness testimony so while the aggregate is tricky to sort out, we can look at some specific cases, the hard part is to guess how representative they are.

There is a notable difference in the law which I suspect impacts how fights went. In the HRE, striking someone that had insulted you quickly with the flat of your blade could stop a further escalation of the fight and was likely to be deemed legal or a 'fair fight', whereas in England or Italy it was important to be perceived as acting in self defense. English coroners records for example are full of cases where a guy was killed in which the other guy (who killed him) claims to have been backing away when the victim 'fell on their sword'.

Once they do escalate, the 'serious' fights seem to have a very high lethality rate as I've indicated from some French and Burgundian records upthread a way. This is also corroborated by the German records I've seen. The most lethal were stabs to the abdomen. The quickest death from cuts or stabs to the neck.

G Will your lecture be on Youtube EDU at some point?

That is a right mess of information. An interesting point which differs from today, is they're using real weapons to handle these disputes. When suitably careful, it doesn't end up so bad, smacking people with the side of a blade to say, "I could have cut your head off just then" and other such pleasantries. But... you don't need to try hard to get deadly injuries. Bludgeoning each other with fists, it's fairly hard to get a fatality, unless you make use of something (brick wall, etc.), or stomp your opponent while they're on the ground (which requires the fight to last long enough for them to be grounded and stomped), there's more leeway before things get fatal.

It's interesting that it was a society which tries to resolve social issues violently, yet doesn't want to kill or maim the other party, yet uses killing tools for this purpose.

xeo

2013-07-23, 03:08 AM

Not quite armour or weapons...but does anyone know how long Crusaders kept using the war cry of "Deus Vult"? It's heavily identified with the First Crusade and the Latin Kingdoms in the Holy Land but did it die out with them? Or did later crusaders, like the Order of San Stefano, continue to use it as well as their own war cries?

Brother Oni

2013-07-24, 01:08 PM

Can anyone give me a detailed breakdown on the types of arms and tactics used during the Wat Tyler Rebellion, in 1381 in England?

Still keeping an eye out for things and I found this interestingly documentary on the 100 Year's War (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qsqd2) and it indicates the famous English defensive formation that allowed them to fare so well against the French was first seen at the Battle of Dupplin Moor 1332 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dupplin_Moor).

It consisted of a central block of infantry (or dismounted knights) flanked by two wings of archers, forming a crescent moon shape. The formation allowed enfilade fire by the archers (suitably protected from the infantry by higher ground and/or field works) on an engaged French host.

Galloglaich

2013-07-24, 03:25 PM

G: Will your lecture be on Youtube EDU at some point?

It will be on youtube, like last years, associated with the event (a fencing tournament in Boston).

...

It's interesting that it was a society which tries to resolve social issues violently, yet doesn't want to kill or maim the other party, yet uses killing tools for this purpose.

Yes, it seems strange from a modern perspective, it's also odd to think of their obsession with honor that is taken to such lengths. To be honest the more I learn about this world, the more I realize how little we really understand it.

It all depends on the hypothetical data sample, I suppose. (snip) if we consider that maybe only 1% of this total are in military service as "long bowmen", then we can expect a higher average and the proportion of very high end draw weights to be higher. Narrowing the numbers down to an elite crew of c. 100 aboard a royal flagship (0.01% of the available manpower) and we can expect the numbers to be higher again. So, the average and high end average is going to depend on the total number of bows considered

Yes, good point. I will freely admit, I don't know that much about bows* or English history. I've read strong, convincing arguments that the realistic average is closer to an 80lbs draw, and of course the Great Warbow and it's adherents, as so ably summarized by Incanur, that they were 160lbs draw. And then there are people who insist that there is no such thing as a longbow.

We know those types of bows have been around since the Neolithic, they seem to have become a really important military weapon in the British Isles in the 12th and 13th Century and certainly show a lot more in records by the 14th century on the Continent (esp. in Burgundy, Englands closest ally during most of the 100 years war.) During this period it seems like the weapon itself was refined and were becoming more powerful. This may have peaked in the 16th century when they started getting replaced by firearms.

People I trust who know more than I do about bows have convinced me that once the "English Warbow" variant of the "longbow" (both modern provisional terms which were not in use as widely in the period as they are today) appeared, the 'sweet spot', very roughly, was 120 lbs. This is at best a good guess. But they have talked me into it in between all these other things.

Still keeping an eye out for things and I found this Do we have any evidence that tactics like this or longbows were used in the Wat Tyler rebellion?

G

* I did buy one though as well as a crossbow to re-acquaint myself with archery....

Brother Oni

2013-07-24, 03:58 PM

Yes, it seems strange from a modern perspective, it's also odd to think of their obsession with honor that is taken to such lengths. To be honest the more I learn about this world, the more I realize how little we really understand it.

Given the lengths that other cultures will go to 'preserve' their honour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing), I think that it can be understood if you have a suitable frame of reference.

Do we have any evidence that tactics like this or longbows were used in the Wat Tyler rebellion?

It's unlikely that such tactics were used, since there was only really one set piece battle during the rebellion (Battle of North Walsham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_North_Walsham)), for which there are no eye witness accounts. It's got another example of a fighting cleric though: Henry le Despenser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_le_Despenser).

After dispersing at Smithfield where Wat Tyler was killed, the rebel leaders were systematically hunted down, captured and executed, so very few battlefield tactics were really needed.

That said, it was a contemporary tactic, and both the Assize of Arms 1252 (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hdh4Elj-3WEC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=assize+of+arms+1252+text&source=bl&ots=kCp4Ef_ZtN&sig=OH_9tj-V-s5otyxV9ulCyMsk9Mw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=m0DwUby1LoSX0QX0vYDgAg&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=assize%20of%20arms%201252%20text&f=false) and the Second Archery Law of 1363 (enforcing 2 hours compulsory practice on a Sunday) would reinforce the fact that quite a far few longbowmen were around.

Doing a bit of digging, it suggests that the 100 Years War was a bit quiet during 1381, since both the English and the French had problems trying to pony up money for the war effort (French problems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War_%281369%E2%80%931389%29) included a three way regency for the newly crowned 12 year old Charles VI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_VI_of_France) not to mention a revolt of their own (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harelle).).

* I did buy one though as well as a crossbow to re-acquaint myself with archery....

I know you have a fibreglass pulley crossbow - what's the bow if you don't mind my asking?

Galloglaich

2013-07-25, 08:51 AM

Oh it makes sense to me... what I meant is today we usually tend to think of honor as something associated with Asian or Middle Eastern societies. But among those rowdy lads we were talking about earlier, honor was a 'thing'. Today it only seems to exist in the lower classes in our society, and often in a pathological way. It seems there is both a good and a bad side to a strong focus on honor, there were times when it has gotten out of hand and the obsession with it led to damaging feuds and senseless killings of youths, but there are is also arguably some cultural value to maintaining personal honor, in terms of social cohesion, friendship, even certain physiological effects it seems. These days we have gone very far in the opposite direction.

One thing that strikes me in those medieval legal records is that insulting someone, even a boss insulting his employees, was considered a crime potentially as serious striking someone or even attacking them with a weapon. When I think about the way I was talked to in some of the jobs I had as a youth, I find this rather amazing, and fascinating.

It's unlikely that such tactics were used, since there was only really one set piece battle during the rebellion (Battle of North Walsham), for which there are no eye witness accounts. It's got another example of a fighting cleric though: Henry le Despenser.

This 'fighting bishop' Henry le Despenser is quite an interesting character, quite the staunch partisan of the established order. I was fascinated to learn just now reading his wiki that he led a failed 'Crusade' against Flanders which was defeated by the Flemish city of Ypres! I didn't even know about that. Yet another example of a Crusade by Christian Europeans against other Europeans. I am starting to suspect that most of the Crusades were of this type.

I bought a simple fiberglass bow (with some nice wood trim) not very powerful, technically I bought it for my wife, but also to refamiliarize myself with archery. I'm planning to get one of these though pretty soon:

http://www.grozerarchery.com/index_m.htm

G

Matthew

2013-07-25, 09:06 AM

This 'fighting bishop' Henry le Despenser is quite an interesting character, quite the staunch partisan of the established order. I was fascinated to learn just now reading his wiki that he led a failed 'Crusade' against Flanders which was defeated by the Flemish city of Ypres! I didn't even know about that. Yet another example of a Crusade by Christian Europeans against other Europeans. I am starting to suspect that most of the Crusades were of this type.

A good many were, but not on the same scale as something like Louis IX. Basically, "crusade" became a weapon in the arsenal of the Pope shortly after the second crusade, to be deployed against heretics [i.e. Christian enemies of the Pope] whenever useful. Of course, when you have multiple popes this gets quite crazy. That said, the crusade as a weapon against heretics was prefigured by the giving of Papal banners for the same purpose, as with William the Conqueror, who was authorised by the Pope to invade England and depose Harold precisely on the same basis [i.e. he was declared to be the wrong sort of Christian]. The "crusade" (and to be fair this word is largely a modern construct that encompasses a bunch of different but related ideas about Papal authorised wars) was an expression of an ongoing process by which successive Popes were able to transform religious authority into military action and political capital.

Galloglaich

2013-07-25, 09:54 AM

I think if you add up the numbers, the size of the armies, the amount of people killed, the acereage of land devastated, numbers of cities destroyed, the money spent and so on, the European vs. European Crusades may actually rival the European vs. Central Asian / Arab / North African Muslim ones.

The three big intra-European Crusades which quickly come to mind are the 100 year + Northern Crusades, against pagans in the Baltic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_crusades

...the Cathars Crusade which essentially depopulated a good part of Southern France for 20 years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

...and the catastrophically failed Hussite Crusades which devastated much of Bohemia and then in turn, a great deal of Germany when the heretics went on their reprisals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussite_Wars

On top of all these, I keep running into dozens of smaller ones like this one I'd never even heard about in Flanders, which increasingly makes me start to think the biggest victims of the Crusades were other Europeans.

G

Incanur

2013-07-25, 10:46 AM

I've read strong, convincing arguments that the realistic average is closer to an 80lbs draw, and of course the Great Warbow and it's adherents, as so ably summarized by Incanur, that they were 160lbs draw.

80lbs would make English archery almost laughable. That was considered (http://books.google.com/books?id=_qtgoTIAiKUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=eight+banners&hl=en&sa=X&ei=y0PxUdzUIs3MigLj1oGgCw&ved=0CEEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=240&f=false) the minimum respectable amount for a horse archer in eighteenth-century China. As mentioned, a seventeenth-century Chinese (http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=24380) text assigns an 80lb draw weight to weak archers. A survey of Ottoman bows (http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ottoman+bows--an+assessment+of+draw+weight,+performance+and+tact ical...-a0169923798) estimates average draw weight at 111lbs. Again, that's for a culture making heavy using of mounted archery. Thus you have English archers using bows that are both weaker and less efficient than Middle Eastern and Asian bows.

120lbs, maybe. But 80lbs gets downright silly.

Galloglaich

2013-07-25, 10:58 AM

80lbs would make English archery almost laughable. That was considered (http://books.google.com/books?id=_qtgoTIAiKUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=eight+banners&hl=en&sa=X&ei=y0PxUdzUIs3MigLj1oGgCw&ved=0CEEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=240&f=false) the minimum respectable amount for a horse archer in eighteenth-century China. As mentioned, a seventeenth-century Chinese (http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=24380) text assigns an 80lb draw weight to weak archers. A survey of Ottoman bows (http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ottoman+bows--an+assessment+of+draw+weight,+performance+and+tact ical...-a0169923798) estimates average draw weight at 111lbs. Again, that's for a culture making heavy using of mounted archery. Thus you have English archers using bows that are both weaker and less efficient than Middle Eastern and Asian bows.

120lbs, maybe. But 80lbs gets downright silly.

Perhaps but I'm sure you know, draw weight is only one of many factors which determine how effective a bow is. Size, draw length, the type and weight of arrows used (apparently quite different between English and Central Asian weapons) the method of release (fingers or thumb rings) and the physical properties of the bow itself all play an important role.

I know very little about the Chinese military but my understanding of the Ottomans and the Tatars, is that they a lot of the time had two bows, one for long range (often using very small dart-like flight arrows) and one for fast shooting. Both with different power. We have varying accounts of this (some people even argue that they didn't always, or ever, shoot from horseback which I find a little ridiculous).

We also know the Mughals used steel bows extensively which we really don't even understand at this point - I've yet to see a plausible explanation of how they really worked or why they were used. On paper they seem to be non-starters, but there is ample evidence that they were widely used in the 16th and 17th Century.

The bottom line is I just think despite all the admirable research efforts in longbows and recurve's in particular in the last 20 years or so we really don't know that much yet about the use of bows (and even less about crossbows) in warfare in the medieval and early modern period, let alone back into antiquity (the Parthians and Sassanids and the Cretans and so forth).

G

Incanur

2013-07-25, 05:28 PM

Size, draw length, the type and weight of arrows used (apparently quite different between English and Central Asian weapons) the method of release (fingers or thumb rings) and the physical properties of the bow itself all play an important role.

Yes, and composite bows generally perform better in any area that matters. The only thing I've heard in the longbow's favor is that it's less finicky about proper release than shorter bows. This might make it more accurate than short composite bow, except that higher arrow speed also increasing accuracy and composites shoot faster. Beyond that longbows only win in reliability.

I know very little about the Chinese military but my understanding of the Ottomans and the Tatars, is that they a lot of the time had two bows, one for long range (often using very small dart-like flight arrows) and one for fast shooting. Both with different power.

What are the sources for this? Friar John of Plano Carpin (http://www.deremilitari.org/RESOURCES/SOURCES/carpini.htm)i said Mongols were supposed to carry two bows or at least one good one. Bertrandon de la Broquière (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrandon_de_la_Broqui%C3%A8re) described Turkish archers as accurate, fast, and reasonably strong, but curiously thought European (Anglo-Burgundian?) archers shot farther and had arrows better suited for penetrating armor. Turkish composites obviously have a much longer maximum range, so I can only conclude that de la Broquière never saw the Turks practicing long-range shooting. By his description, they preferred fast and accurate shots at moderate or close range.

We have varying accounts of this (some people even argue that they didn't always, or ever, shoot from horseback which I find a little ridiculous).

That is ridiculous. :smallamused: As you see in Friar John of Plano Carpini, Mongol soldiers certainly kept on shooting when dismounted, but they primarily shoot from the saddle.

We also know the Mughals used steel bows extensively which we really don't even understand at this point - I've yet to see a plausible explanation of how they really worked or why they were used.

Steel bows aren't so mysterious. Though they performed worse than composite, they weren't as sensitive to moisture and temperature and could be kept strung indefinitely. They may also have been cheaper to produce. They seem to have been used mainly for defense of fortifications. In that case, you don't necessarily need a ton of power - particularly when you've got gravity on your side. Also, given the performance of some steel crossbows, I doubt steel bows were as inferior as people often think.

Matthew

2013-07-25, 11:47 PM

Galloglaich

2013-07-26, 10:10 AM

Yes, and composite bows generally perform better in any area that matters.... Beyond that longbows only win in reliability.

What are the sources for this? Friar John of Plano Carpin (http://www.deremilitari.org/RESOURCES/SOURCES/carpini.htm)i said Mongols were supposed to carry two bows or at least one good one.

You noted Carpini here who as you say mentions the use of two bows; the Russian Primary Chronicle, the Chronicle of Novgorod, and several of the other Chronicles from the Russian city-states (Pskov and Tver) mention this practice, Jan Dlugosz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_D%C5%82ugosz) is another major source who mentions this, so do some letters by Matthias Corvinus, there is also a first hand account of John of Bollingbroke's (later King Henry IV of England) expedition to Lithuania in the 1390's (in which he brought 300 English longbowmen with him, and encountered Tartars before and during the siege of Vilnius). The various chronicles of the Teutonic Knights including the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle get into the Mongol tactics including the two bows thing and also some detail about their signaling with arrows and some details of their dirty tricks like use of chemical and biological weapons (Dlugosz covers this quite a bit as well). There is also a 14th Century Genoese document which covers trade journeys down the Silk Road in a great deal of detail which includes some stuff about the Mongol / Tatar military tactics, but I can't remember what it was called right now (and don't have my bibliographies handy since I'm at work). Finally the Mongols records themselves, notably the Jami' al-tawarikh (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami%27_al-Tawarikh) which is a 14th Century Mongol / Persian book of history from the Mongol point of view.

, Bertrandon de la Broquière (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrandon_de_la_Broqui%C3%A8re) described Turkish archers as accurate, fast, and reasonably strong, but curiously thought European (Anglo-Burgundian?) archers shot farther and had arrows better suited for penetrating armor. Turkish composites obviously have a much longer maximum range, so I can only conclude that de la Broquière never saw the Turks practicing long-range shooting. By his description, they preferred fast and accurate shots at moderate or close range.

Well, these 'curious' discrepancies between many eyewitnesses and what we think we understand today is one of the reasons why I say we don't really know how they were used or how they worked.

But I can explain this I think, at least provisionally. For very long range shots both the Turks and the Mongols / Tatars used very light flight-arrows like little darts, which weighed as little as 20 grams or less, and in some cases were shot with runners. For closer range they used arrows which were still pretty light, around 40 grams on average. By contrast the arrows shot by an English type longbow were heavier, 60-80 grams, and arguably would be more effective at piercing shields and light armor (and say, killing horses) especially at their maximum effective range. Of course the English also used flight arrows but did not make as wide use of them, apparently.

That is ridiculous. :smallamused: As you see in Friar John of Plano Carpini, Mongol soldiers certainly kept on shooting when dismounted, but they primarily shoot from the saddle.

I agree it is ridiculous but it's a point of view which does have some acceptance in Academia right now.

Steel bows aren't so mysterious. Though they performed worse than composite, they weren't as sensitive to moisture and temperature and could be kept strung indefinitely. They may also have been cheaper to produce. They seem to have been used mainly for defense of fortifications. In that case, you don't necessarily need a ton of power - particularly when you've got gravity on your side. Also, given the performance of some steel crossbows, I doubt steel bows were as inferior as people often think.

These are all reasonable guesses or assumptions, especially the last, but the fact is we don't really have any good primary source literary, let alone physical / forensic / archeological data to really explain how these things worked or why they were used by what was arguably the pre-eminent military power in the region, and one which clearly could afford whatever weapons they wanted.

Very difficult to even begin speculating, and depends heavily on what is counted and not counted. It is worth noting that outside of the big crusade expeditions there were numerous small scale endeavours just as with inward turned crusades. That said, my point was really that very large scale crusades were almost always directed against non-Christians, or at least intended to be during planning and recruitment.

I think the three Crusades I mentioned (Abigensian, Northern / Baltic, and Hussite) were all done on a very large scale both in terms of men and time... and your comment reminded me of another really big one - the IVth Crusade against the Holy Land which ended up being diverted, through Venetian scheming, into the sacking of (Christian) Constantinople.

G

Brother Oni

2013-07-26, 01:56 PM

These are all reasonable guesses or assumptions, especially the last, but the fact is we don't really have any good primary source literary, let alone physical / forensic / archeological data to really explain how these things worked or why they were used by what was arguably the pre-eminent military power in the region, and one which clearly could afford whatever weapons they wanted.

There are modern-ish steel bows dating back from the 1950s that I mentioned before (Apollo Merlin (http://uk.ebid.net/for-sale/vintage-1950s-apollo-merlin-2pc-steel-bow-accessories-62956272.htm)).
These ones tended to be unreliable and prone to metal fatigue (archers used to wear peaked caps as protection when the top limb snapped and flew towards their head at high speed), so I'll repeat my earlier PSA of please don't shoot it if you find one.

As for their historical use, could it possible be a prestige item? Much like armour or swords, being able to afford that much quality metal for a bow was a status symbol?

Matthew

2013-07-26, 06:17 PM

I think the three Crusades I mentioned (Abigensian, Northern / Baltic, and Hussite) were all done on a very large scale both in terms of men and time... and your comment reminded me of another really big one - the IVth Crusade against the Holy Land which ended up being diverted, through Venetian scheming, into the sacking of (Christian) Constantinople.

I would have to look into it, but I am pretty certain none of those three would rival the big crusades (first, second, third, seventh) in terms of men and resources marshalled, involving multiple armies of tens of thousands as they did, and in the latter cases occupying the revenues of multiple kingdoms. Even the fourth crusade was low on resources by comparison. Depends how you measure it, but even so for a hundred years and more money and men were poured into the Holy Land, and afterwards into naval expeditions around and about.

Incanur

2013-07-26, 08:44 PM

To clarify, there's nothing curious about Bertrandon de la Broquière's assessment of European arrows as stronger. While I don't know of any hard evidence for it, Strickland and Hardy consider 100+g arrows standard for the English bow. (Surviving Manchu war arrows reach that weight.) Yew longbows shooting 100+g arrows match or exceed the efficiency of composites shooting 20-40g arrows. (However, 80lb longbows aren't likely to ever to hit harder than 111lb composites.) De la Broquière's claim of greater range for European archers, though, only makes sense if the Turks he saw didn't practice arcing shots. Note that he personally learned to shoot from saddle with a composite bow, apparently quite easily.

No doubt there's lots we don't know about historical warfare. Personally, as I've said, I find the weight of the evidence indicates that strong archers across time and space drew 150+lbs on foot and 100+lbs mounted. The English were famously strong archers - various French, Italian, and Iberian sources attribute might to the English arm - so it's completely consistent that they wielded heavy bows. Even a four-ounce arrows from a 150lb bow would only pierce thin and/or inferior plate armor at close range, so here again the numbers fit.

Yora

2013-07-27, 01:54 PM

Brother Oni

2013-07-27, 06:41 PM

I've been freshening up my memory for a history exam by reading the summaries of certain events on wikipedia, and browsing around with all the convenient links, I noticed that the western warships in Japan in the mid to late 1800s all seem to have rather low numbers of guns. Many only 4 or 6. Yet the pictures do make them seem like quite big vessels.

Were such warships actually on the lower range for that age, or was it common to carry only such small numbers of guns because of advances in accurace and range? I've seen the restored Vaasa in Sweden, and while it was rather big and heavily armed for the perioid (too heavy, because it sank right after launch), it looked exactly like the classic pirate ships with dozens of cannons or even over 100.

Japanese naval power was negligible at that time (From what I can find, it suggests they were still essentially using junks with little or no cannon) and ships with more cannon were generally more useful in opposing the naval ambitions of the other western nations rather than to intimidate the Japanese.

Taking a look at the ships at the Perry Expedition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition), you have the USS Mississippi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mississippi_%281841%29) with 10 brand new shell firing Paixhans gun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paixhans_gun), the USS Plymouth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Plymouth_%281844%29) and USS Saratoga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Saratoga_%281842%29) armed with 4 shell guns and 18 cannon, and the USS Susquehanna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Susquehanna_%281847%29) armed with a variety of cannon (15).

Meanwhile the Japanese were still effectively in their isolation of the Edo period (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakoku), so their cannon technology was over 200 years old.

The Mississippi and the Susquehnna were also both steam frigates, so there's less space on board for carrying cannon as it's taken up by the propulsion system.

Looking at the Vasa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_%28ship%29), it was built over 200 years before these ships, not to mention the cannon carried by the three ships above were all considerably bigger (32 pounders compared to the 24 pounder of the Vasa).

warty goblin

2013-07-28, 08:20 PM

So I was home for a week's vacation last week. One of my longstanding hobbies has been making wooden swords. I'd work in steel, but Dad's a woodworker not a blacksmith, and since I'm using his tools...

Anyway, as an experiment, I tried laying out a sword using the geometrical methods Peter Johnsson outlined in the video Galloglaich linked a couple pages back.

Well, mostly. I only had a 2.75"x40" from which to cut the blank that I would shape into the blade and tang, so I had to set my pattern to fit those dimensions. High quality red oak isn't the cheapest of materials, though it's by far my favorite for shaping blades. When well dried and oiled they are immensely strong and are hard enough to take a reasonable facsimile of an edge.

The pattern I decided on was built out of nine intersecting circles, each of four inches radius. This neatly partitioned my board into ten sections of four inches, and so didn't waste any length. The edge and length of the guard was defined by the first vesica, which gave me a six inch hilt and a seven inch long guard. The pommel was determined by the fifth of the series of alternating squares inscribed in the first circle, which turned out to be two inches on a side. This meant that a third of the hilt's length was pommel, with the other two thirds being grip. Since I've never liked the aesthetics of square pommels I decided to use a two inch diameter circle for the pommel. I also used the fifth inscribed square to determine the width of the blade at the guard.

Unfortunately I did not have time to finish the entire project. I got the fuller cut, the blade shaped, and the pommel built, leaving the guard and the final shaping of the grip. Even more unfortunately my humble carpentry skills proved slightly inadequate, so the blade ended up losing half an inch of length at the tip, and a sloppy cut with a tablesaw necessitated moving the guard half an inch forwards.

Overall however the process of laying out the weapon was immensely satisfying, and far more comfortable to work in than simply pulling measurements out of thin air and hoping for an attractive end result. Throughout the layout process it was very enjoyable and slightly wondrous to use just compass and straightedge, and watch the form of the sword emerge as an aesthetically unified whole. I'm looking forwards to finishing the sword, and am definitely using this method for all future blades.

Mr Beer

2013-07-28, 10:02 PM

But among those rowdy lads we were talking about earlier, honor was a 'thing'. Today it only seems to exist in the lower classes in our society, and often in a pathological way. It seems there is both a good and a bad side to a strong focus on honor, there were times when it has gotten out of hand and the obsession with it led to damaging feuds and senseless killings of youths, but there are is also arguably some cultural value to maintaining personal honor, in terms of social cohesion, friendship, even certain physiological effects it seems. These days we have gone very far in the opposite direction.

One thing that strikes me in those medieval legal records is that insulting someone, even a boss insulting his employees, was considered a crime potentially as serious striking someone or even attacking them with a weapon. When I think about the way I was talked to in some of the jobs I had as a youth, I find this rather amazing, and fascinating.

I get the impression that politeness in general and complex etiquette in particular go hand-in-hand with dangerous societies. In a place where every man carries cold steel and feels obliged to use it if slighted, I imagine two-bit punks are less keen to run their mouths all the time. Of course the flip side is you're more likely to get stabbed in the kidneys just going about your day.

Galloglaich

2013-07-28, 10:16 PM

So I was home for a week's vacation last week. One of my longstanding hobbies has been making wooden swords. I'd work in steel, but Dad's a woodworker not a blacksmith, and since I'm using his tools...

Overall however the process of laying out the weapon was immensely satisfying, and far more comfortable to work in than simply pulling measurements out of thin air and hoping for an attractive end result. Throughout the layout process it was very enjoyable and slightly wondrous to use just compass and straightedge, and watch the form of the sword emerge as an aesthetically unified whole. I'm looking forwards to finishing the sword, and am definitely using this method for all future blades.

Wow that's really neat! Got any photo's?

G

Azreal

2013-07-28, 10:45 PM

I'm just wondering if there's a realistic weapon that also acts as an instrument (barring a mace as drumsticks) like when used as a weapon also makes at least what could be considered music anyway

warty goblin

2013-07-28, 11:01 PM

Wow that's really neat! Got any photo's?

G

Not of that one unfortunately. I meant to, but ended up getting side-tracked by a couple other woodworking projects - so many tools, so little time. Also it wasn't much to look at, since it didn't have the guard even cut yet, the pommel wasn't attached properly, and only the rough sanding was done on the blade.

Here's (http://s1350.photobucket.com/user/Godivos/slideshow/Wooden%20Swords?sort=3)some photos of my older, less rigorously laid out blades. The greatsword is about 54 inches total length and by far the best of those three in terms of handling, the slender blade with the long grip is just over 41, and the short fat one is 35. I expect the new blade to be a significant improvement in aesthetics and handling.

Brother Oni

2013-07-29, 02:45 AM

I get the impression that politeness in general and complex etiquette in particular go hand-in-hand with dangerous societies.

It also goes hand in hand with high population density. In places where there's very little personal space, etiquette developed to stop people stabbing each over over petty disputes that got blown up out of all proportion.

This is quite visible in Japan, where the population is mostly clustered on the few plains. Medieval Japan is renown for elaborate screens which work as room dividers and this is not to mention the shoji doors made out of paper and bamboo/wood (how much noise reduction do you think a wall of paper gives you?).
Your point of dangerous societies also is relevant due to the samurai right of being able to kill people of lower social status freely (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiri-sute_gomen) (when they could get away with it anyway - peasant lynch mobs were feared particularly when they could develop into full rebellions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikk%C5%8D-ikki)).

I'm just wondering if there's a realistic weapon that also acts as an instrument (barring a mace as drumsticks) like when used as a weapon also makes at least what could be considered music anyway

You mean aside from bagpipes? :smalltongue:

On a more serious note, I've heard of shakuhachi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuhachi) (Japanese flute) being armoured with metal strips down the side as a hidden/emergency weapon, but nothing that actually functions as a weapon when used as an instrument.

There's also the famous battle bard picture that frequently pops up on RPG forums (http://1-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/tg/image/1354/21/1354211373216.jpg).

Arkhosia

2013-07-29, 02:50 AM

Would ebony be a reasonable substance for making armor?

@Azreal: scourge with spiked bells at the ends of it's whips

Brother Oni

2013-07-29, 03:18 AM

Would ebony be a reasonable substance for making armor?

Wood is used for shields, although ebony is a bit heavy compared to the pine/ash usually used.

There's some records of Native American cultures using wood for armour (http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/pub/boo-bro/***-aut/chapter-chapitre-01-eng.asp), but the hardwood species common to North America (http://www.millerpublishing.com/naw/hw_glossary.html) are all less dense than ebony.

Generally wood is a poor material for armour though as you need too much of it to provide similar protective qualities as metal, making it bulky and heavy.

Arkhosia

2013-07-29, 03:25 AM

Brother Oni

2013-07-29, 03:44 AM

Thanks!
Also, what would be the merits of obsidian weapons?

Obsidian makes a very sharp edge, but it's also very fragile. This can be good (obsidian arrowheads shattering on impact, having the same effect as fletchette ammunition) or bad (melee weapons).

This makes it very good against unarmoured opponents but weak against armoured. The best example of this would be the various Spanish expeditions into South America, where the conquistadors with metal armour and swords (among other things) went up against unarmoured Aztecs with obsidian weapons.

Avilan the Grey

2013-07-29, 06:27 AM

An experienced street fighter will more often have the basics -

Courage
In real life there is something like a 'morale check' experience whenever any kind of fight starts, (when the adrenaline hits). Not everybody can get through this at all, most people take some time to go through it and decide to commit to a fight. An experienced street fighter knows the drill so to speak and will adjust to this (accept the reality of the situation) much quicker.
G

Reminds me of the old ballad of the "Great streetfight in Stockholm 1912" where it turns out that all five street gangs just stood in an alleyway each yelling at each other across the square, and then going back home in the morning, nobody daring to start the fight...

Galloglaich

2013-07-29, 10:15 AM

Spiryt

2013-07-29, 11:52 AM

Also, what would be the merits of obsidian weapons?

Sharp as hell edge. Sharp as hell edges are brittle though, and since they basically glass, they're very brittle.

Size of obsidian "blade will be obviously" usually limited. Spear points at most.

Obsidian's also only 2.4 g/cm3, so with limited size of 'blade' obsidian weapons will be rather light.

Such low density's obviously not preferred as far striking/penetrating stuff goes, but against bare flesh/light clothes in doesn't matter that much anyway.

warty goblin

2013-07-29, 12:09 PM

Wood is used for shields, although ebony is a bit heavy compared to the pine/ash usually used.

There's some records of Native American cultures using wood for armour (http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/pub/boo-bro/***-aut/chapter-chapitre-01-eng.asp), but the hardwood species common to North America (http://www.millerpublishing.com/naw/hw_glossary.html) are all less dense than ebony.

Generally wood is a poor material for armour though as you need too much of it to provide similar protective qualities as metal, making it bulky and heavy.

It's not just a question of density. Any time you work with wood that could be subjected to sharp forces, you need to make very sure the impacts won't be able to separate or split apart the fibers. A good quality hardwood that's been dried and oiled properly is very strong against blunt force, but if you can either cut the fibers apart, or else split them apart wood is much less durable.

Exactly how resistant to cutting and splitting has very little to do with its density, and far more to do with the arrangement of the long fibers of the grain. Cottonwood is a fairly light wood that cuts easily, but can be pretty hard to split. Elm has about the same density, is maybe a little harder, but can be the next best thing to impossible to split apart - I've hit elm crotches with a nine pound splitting maul, and had it literally bounce off. On the odd occasion where an elm log does fall prey to a few minutes pounding, the reason for this becomes abundantly clear: the wood fibers don't run nicely in parallel with each other, but tend to twist up around each other. Walnut is both denser and harder than both cottonwood or elm, but will fall apart under a comparative lovetap. Oak is hard enough it can be quite challenging to work when its well dried, and can be polished to an edge that's nearly sharp enough to cut things with, but tends to split fairly easily.

Personally if I were to use wood for armor, I'd use wicker. Quarter inch thick red oak is both hard and flexible enough it can be woven into a loose lattice with the careful application of steam and heat. Willow is flexible enough to be woven into the gaps to provide filler, though willow on its own is nowhere near hard or rigid enough to make effective protection. Though I've not done this, I suspect the result would be fairly heavy, reasonably uncomfortable, but would work well against most lighter weapons. A large war axe or similar isn't going to really notice it all that much, but it might turn an arrow from a hunting bow or a light javelin. Against draw cuts it would provide very good protection.

But really, I'd rather have a shield made out of the same stuff.

Yora

2013-07-29, 01:37 PM

I am interested in seeing how fast people can reload revolvers without using speedloaders. Is there a special term for that, that would making an internet search a lot easier?

Galloglaich

2013-07-29, 02:17 PM

I believe wicker has been used as armor, shields definitely have been made of wicker (perhaps most famously, the Pelta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peltast)).

Bamboo fiber has also been used as armor historically (http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordsellar/359279799/), though apparently not as lamellar as people sometimes suggest, as has paper (http://www.mandarinmansion.com/articles/Chinese%20Paper%20Armour.pdf) (in China) and rataan.

The main problem with solid wood armor is that in thicknesses and densities enough to provide protection is it's too heavy to wear. This is also, incidentally, somewhat true for solid wood shields; real wood shields are shockingly thin compared to what you see in a re-enactment context, and are made with special laminate construction to strengthen the thin planks.

Solid wooden weapons however have proven more successful, historically, (with and without obsidian and other sharp components)

G

fusilier

2013-07-29, 02:43 PM

I am interested in seeing how fast people can reload revolvers without using speedloaders. Is there a special term for that, that would making an internet search a lot easier?

Depends upon the revolver. First you have to eject the spent brass -- many break-open revolvers will do this automatically, with a spring loaded system that ejects them all at once. Swing-open revolvers usually have to be pointed skyward and shaken to have the cases fall out. If the revolver is neither break open nor swing-open, then the cases have to be shaken or punched out one at a time through the loading gate. Then the revolver is ready for reloading. The bullets are loaded one at a time. If it's not a break/swing open, then they have to be loaded through the loading gate, and the cylinder rotated -- although that probably doesn't increase loading time very much. GURPS high-tech has rules for how long this all normally takes (I have the third edition, but I'm sure the fourth edition book has the same info).

Yora

2013-07-29, 03:01 PM

Yeah, but I'd like to see it done in action by people who are really good at it. Everyone who is bragging on youtube seems to use speedloaders. :smallbiggrin:

fusilier

2013-07-29, 08:16 PM

Obsidian makes a very sharp edge, but it's also very fragile. This can be good (obsidian arrowheads shattering on impact, having the same effect as fletchette ammunition) or bad (melee weapons).

This makes it very good against unarmoured opponents but weak against armoured. The best example of this would be the various Spanish expeditions into South America, where the conquistadors with metal armour and swords (among other things) went up against unarmoured Aztecs with obsidian weapons.

Ahem . . . the Aztecs were in North America. Mexico isn't even considered part of Central America (although sometimes it's southern most provinces are). Meso-america is the term I usually use, it's appropriate for historical situations. [I don't mean to pick on you, but it's something of a pet-peeve of mine, and I've been seeing this mistake more and more lately.]

fusilier

2013-07-29, 08:42 PM

Yeah, but I'd like to see it done in action by people who are really good at it. Everyone who is bragging on youtube seems to use speedloaders. :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, it does seem difficult to find anybody reloading a revolver without speedloaders. :-/ You might want to try adding "loose rounds" or "loose cartridges" to your search, but even that didn't seem to bring up much.

Berenger

2013-07-29, 09:40 PM

I'm just wondering if there's a realistic weapon that also acts as an instrument (barring a mace as drumsticks) like when used as a weapon also makes at least what could be considered music anyway

I'm not sure why anybody in his right mind would encumber his weapon or diminish the effort of fighting for his life by such unnecessary multitasking. I understand that music can help to bolster morale, give signals and facilitate a steady advance in large formations during battle, but the people providing it are not supposed to be personally fighting whilst they do so.

On the other hand - stranger things happened. If nothing else, it might startle or distract less skilled opponents. I know there are those asian swords (?) with nine rings in them. I'm sure some of the gentlemen in this thread can explain what their intended purpose is and what would happen of you replace them with little bells.

http://abload.de/img/sword-ringyjbtt.jpg

Also, there are Kabura-ya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabura-ya_%28Japanese_signal_arrow%29) (whistling arrows), but I think you'd need a company or so of archers to combine the individual sounds in a melody and they are not really designed to kill people.

warty goblin

2013-07-29, 09:48 PM

The main problem with solid wood armor is that in thicknesses and densities enough to provide protection is it's too heavy to wear. This is also, incidentally, somewhat true for solid wood shields; real wood shields are shockingly thin compared to what you see in a re-enactment context, and are made with special laminate construction to strengthen the thin planks.

G

Also a person can actively use a shield. Armor is rather more passive, it's there to keep a person alive if their active defense are bypassed. Which means a shield doesn't need to be as strong to be useful, since its user can prevent it from taking hard hits directly.

And if your shield breaks under a hit, you are in trouble. If your armor breaks under a hit, odds are good you are dead or wounded.

Arkhosia

2013-07-29, 09:50 PM

I'm not sure why anybody in his right mind would encumber his weapon or diminish the effort of fighting for his life by such unnecessary multitasking. I understand that music can help to bolster morale, give signals and facilitate a steady advance in large formations during battle, but the people providing it are not supposed to be personally fighting whilst they do so.

On the other hand - stranger things happened. If nothing else, it might startle or distract less skilled opponents. I know there are those asian swords (?) with nine rings in them. I'm sure some of the gentlemen in this thread can explain what their intended purpose is and what would happen of you replace them with little bells.

http://abload.de/img/sword-ringyjbtt.jpg

Also, there are Kabura-ya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabura-ya_%28Japanese_signal_arrow%29) (whistling arrows), but I think you'd need a company or so of archers to combine the individual sounds in a melody and they are not really designed to kill people.

the rings have several purposes the most obvious is it is loud and distracting.
They also protected the blade from being damaged and did so to the opponent's blade.
Bells could work therefore, but you would probably need new ones often.

warty goblin

2013-07-29, 10:40 PM

I'm not sure why anybody in his right mind would encumber his weapon or diminish the effort of fighting for his life by such unnecessary multitasking. I understand that music can help to bolster morale, give signals and facilitate a steady advance in large formations during battle, but the people providing it are not supposed to be personally fighting whilst they do so.

There are three things to keep in mind about humanity:

1) For any object, if it is remotely possible to do so, somebody has tried to eat it. If not, somebody wished they could.

2) For any object, if it is remotely possible to do so, somebody has tried to have sex with it. If not, somebody wished they could.

3) For any object, if it is remotely possible to do so, somebody has tried to kill somebody with it. If not, somebody wished they could.

Pretty much everything else follows from these three principles.

Arkhosia

2013-07-29, 11:00 PM

Gavinfoxx

2013-07-29, 11:14 PM

Maybe he's a bard who wants to cast spells in the thick of the fight?

Psstt. You are in the REAL WORLD weapons and armour thread, not one of the other threads...

Arkhosia

2013-07-29, 11:26 PM

Psstt. You are in the REAL WORLD weapons and armour thread, not one of the other threads...

Well technically the thread is for asking questions about real world weapons and armor: I was merely speculating why he had asked.
but then again, technically it was the owlbear that ate you. :belkar:

Brother Oni

2013-07-30, 03:02 AM

I think a lot of medieval confrontations were very much like that- you read about a lot of 'epic battles' in which only a handful of people were killed. Having the armor on meant that men could sometimes engage for substantial periods of time, striking each other, shooting and so on, without major casualties.

This is not including the chivalry laws which encouraged the taking of noble prisoners so you could ransom them back afterwards.
Common men at arms were out of luck though.

Ahem . . . the Aztecs were in North America.

My apologies. My knowledge of New World history/geography is a bit flaky at times.

I'm sure some of the gentlemen in this thread can explain what their intended purpose is and what would happen of you replace them with little bells.

http://abload.de/img/sword-ringyjbtt.jpg

It's a single edged sabre (dao) and the rings were supposedly to add weight to the weapon to increase its killing potential and to help blocking (movie depiction of this particular function (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=SHgXcIfCyR0&t=145) - it's a blink and you miss it moment).

The rings and tassels also supposedly add a distracting element which is reported by people who have sparred against such weapons.

In my opinion, it's a kung fu or demonstration weapon rather than a battlefield one, with all the rings and tassels to give a better street demonstration. Compare: 9 ring dao demonstration (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QagulPfbJaY) to dao demonstration (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLT1J1Y4UWU).
When the blade is moving at full speed (example (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez1DAiY5wB0)), it tends to blur or disappear, so your eye is naturally drawn to the flashy parts.

I agree that last video is not very good quality, but they're not moving as fast as I've seen a sabre (they got tired as they were filming for 8 hours according to the comments and they changed to lighter demonstration sabres instead of combat ones).

The number 9 also has some significance in Chinese culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_in_Chinese_culture#Nine).

As for replacing them with bells, it would diminish the blocking capability, not to mention make the weapon very hard to stealth. The only historical person I know who wore bells into combat (and not as a signalling aid) was the 3rd century raider (and later general) Gan Ning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gan_Ning).

Galloglaich

2013-07-30, 08:59 AM

This is not including the chivalry laws which encouraged the taking of noble prisoners so you could ransom them back afterwards.
Common men at arms were out of luck though.

Well, that was the theory of 'chivalry' laws, but this didn't hold sway across Europe. It was practiced by the French aristocracy for the most part, but even among the French, it was not always practiced. In the 100 Years War it was apparently common for soldiers of both sides, down to the lowest ranks, to ransom one another. One guy claimed to have been ransomed 17 times.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21168437

As I mentioned before, among the Latinized people (i.e. Catholics) it was also common to parole (i.e., release, after a vow not to fight any more) common soldiers who had been captured. After the battle of Grunwald / Tannenberg for example the King of Poland 'paroled' 14,000 German and Czech prisoners.

Interestingly, this was actually still the practice as late as the early years of the American Civil War. The (nightmarish) POW camps were not created until each side started forcing paroled soldiers to go back into combat.

On the Orthodox side of the Slavic part of Europe, it was much more common for captives to be enslaved or made into serfs. Catholics enslaved Orthodox and vice versa, and the Tartars killed enslaved everyone they caught (generally killed men and enslaved women and children).

In Italy, fellow Italian soldiers were usually either ransomed or paroled while Spanish and French soldiers, who often killed captives unless they could afford a big ransom, were themselves killed if they were captured.

The Swiss as a strict policy took no prisoners in battle, noble or common, and killed everyone they caught right up to the Duke of Burgundy.

It's a single edged sabre (dao) and the rings were supposedly to add weight to the weapon to increase its killing potential and to help blocking (movie depiction of this particular function (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=SHgXcIfCyR0&t=145) - it's a blink and you miss it moment).

The rings and tassels also supposedly add a distracting element which is reported by people who have sparred against such weapons.

In my opinion, it's a kung fu or demonstration weapon rather than a battlefield one, with all the rings and tassels to give a better street

Agree, that's a flashy show weapon, (you can tell by the enormous blade) but the tassel was a real thing and there were some large broad bladed dao.

There is also an interesting battlefield analogue on some dao, the so-called 'rolling pearls', little silver beads which would roll back and forth inside of a channel in the spine of some liu ye dao (willow leaf saber)

http://thomaschen.freewebspace.com/images/m2.jpg

G

Galloglaich

2013-07-30, 10:01 AM

I would have to look into it, but I am pretty certain none of those three would rival the big crusades (first, second, third, seventh) in terms of men and resources marshalled, involving multiple armies of tens of thousands as they did, and in the latter cases occupying the revenues of multiple kingdoms. Even the fourth crusade was low on resources by comparison. Depends how you measure it, but even so for a hundred years and more money and men were poured into the Holy Land, and afterwards into naval expeditions around and about.

Yeah I think though that is the conventional wisdom, we simply have this impression due to the emphasis of the historical 'coverage' of the Crusades we get in high school, undergraduate University classes and in the popular media and genre fiction.

The reality is that the Christian vs. Christian Crusades and the European vs. European Crusades seem to at the very least rival the invasion of the 'Holy Land' in terms of numbers

For example, in the the Battle of Aussig, the Czechs are estimated to have had between 15,000 and 24,000 fighters, while the Crusader army is estimated at between 20,000 and 70,0000 (Wikipedia quotes the higher number)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aussig

This is on the same scale, or a little larger than, the Battle of Hattin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_hattin

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Matthew

2013-07-30, 11:15 AM

Yeah I think though that is the conventional wisdom, we simply have this impression due to the emphasis of the historical 'coverage' of the Crusades we get in high school, undergraduate University classes and in the popular media and genre fiction.

The reality is that the Christian vs. Christian Crusades and the European vs. European Crusades seem to at the very least rival the invasion of the 'Holy Land' in terms of numbers

For example, in the the Battle of Aussig, the Czechs are estimated to have had between 15,000 and 24,000 fighters, while the Crusader army is estimated at between 20,000 and 70,0000 (Wikipedia quotes the higher number)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aussig

This is on the same scale, or a little larger than, the Battle of Hattin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_hattin

All cards on the table, I studied the crusades as a postgraduate in considerable detail, so I am pretty familiar with the costs. The Battle of Hattin was big, but not actually a crusade. The response to the Battle of Hattin was a crusade, and it was utterly enormous, involving three separate armies under three separate monarchs, one of whom was the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa marching from the far side of Europe to the Middle East. I cannot think of any European crusade that could possibly have rivalled it in terms of ambition and size (or failure). The money Philip Augustus and Richard the Lionheart poured into the endeavour was similarly huge, the former practically building a new port to launch his fleet.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that European crusades were small affairs, but it is misleading to compare the the size of the battles and draw conclusions about the resources involved. Mind, that is not to marginalise the significance of crusades in the west. It is hard to measure these sorts of things without laying down some pretty arbitrary definitions, though. Certainly, the ongoing "crusades" in Iberia and Northern Europe must have commanded huge resources over time, but there is a big difference between the "reconquista" in the general sense and, for example, the First Crusade as a limited event proclaimed by the Pope.

In my opinion, that is what informs the conventional wisdom, which is to say enormous expenditure of resources in relatively short periods of time.

warty goblin

2013-07-30, 11:52 AM

If anybody's interested in a lot more detail on Peter Johnsson's theory of geometrical sword layout, he's got a bunch of examples (http://www.peterjohnsson.com/category/notebook/) on his website. Very fun reading. Wish I'd have thought to check that before I did my layout, I just went from what he showed in the lecture.

Galloglaich

2013-07-30, 01:07 PM

wow... epic post eaten by the browser.

Yikes.

I hate the internet.

G

AgentPaper

2013-07-30, 02:41 PM

wow... epic post eaten by the browser.

Yikes.

I hate the internet.

G

Whenever you do a big post, just hit ctrl-A and ctrl-C before you hit "submit". This has saved me so much headache (when I remember to do it, anyways).

I've started doing it even for small posts (like this one) just to try and make it a habit.

fusilier

2013-07-30, 04:17 PM

Interestingly, this was actually still the practice as late as the early years of the American Civil War. The (nightmarish) POW camps were not created until each side started forcing paroled soldiers to go back into combat.

More likely you would have "prisoner exchanges", although parole was used on occasion during the Civil War. There were prisoner exchanges in the very opening days of World War One as well (possibly limited to officers). Prisoners who were ill or wounded were sometimes exchanged throughout WW1, and even into WW2.

In Italy, fellow Italian soldiers were usually either ransomed or paroled while Spanish and French soldiers, who often killed captives unless they could afford a big ransom, were themselves killed if they were captured.

Yup. In Italy standard procedure was to strip the men of their horses and equipment and then let them go. Officers and nobles were to be ransomed. Sometimes the rank and file were not released immediately, typically at the state's insistence. On occasion prisoners were killed on the battlefield (this happened with handgunners in the early 15th century), and foreigners who killed prisoners were usually treated in kind.

Mr. Mask

2013-07-30, 07:56 PM

I'd like to ask about how difficult it is to wield axes effectively, compared to swords.

The problem with this question.... is there is a TON of variation. The length of the haft, the weight of the head, and whether you can use one or two hands will make a lot of difference. Swords have a lot of variation too, from the heavy gladius to the light rapier.

What I was figuring, was that many war axes would be well balanced, not too long or heavy--so that they wouldn't be more challenging to wield than swords of the same size. But, I can definitely imagine their being exceptions to that idea.

Does anyone have experience with what "typical" axes are like?

Matthew

2013-07-31, 12:34 AM

Whenever you do a big post, just hit ctrl-A and ctrl-C before you hit "submit". This has saved me so much headache (when I remember to do it, anyways).

I've started doing it even for small posts (like this one) just to try and make it a habit.

It used to happen to me a lot with Internet Explorer, but almost never now with Firefox (for at least five year).

For anybody interested in academic research on the costs of crusading, off the top of my head, I recommend:

Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213-1221 (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0812213238)
"Costing the crusade: budgeting for crusader activity in the fourteenth century" (http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=pW8IBBvUxIwC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false)

I am sure there is more and better recent research, but it has been a while since I was really interested.

Brother Oni

2013-07-31, 01:18 AM

I'd like to ask about how difficult it is to wield axes effectively, compared to swords.

Unfortunately the Normans never went in for axes much, so I never got the chance to use one.

According to our drill instructor, he says that axe enthusiasts claim it's God's own weapon as you can strike around shields, thrust, hook the enemy's weapon, etc.

For reference, this is the sort of axe I mean:

http://www.medieval-weaponry.co.uk/acatalog/XH2042N-1000.jpg

It's a one handed axe, normally used with a shield - I would imagine that two handed axes aren't used that much differently, although probably combined with some staff/polearm techniques.

Incanur

2013-07-31, 10:48 AM

Based on George Silver's system, my own limited experience, and my reading of warfare across the ages, I'd say the single-handed axe compares poorly to the single-handed sword for use on foot. Single-handed axes tend to be both shorter and more top heavy than swords. Furthermore, they don't thrust well or at all. This doesn't mean they're hard to wield or not dangerous, but I'd never want to face a single-handed sword with one, especially in an unarmored duel. Few if any infantry troops opted for single-handed axes (or maces or any other such weapon) with swords available.

Short cavalry axes, hammers, and maces, on the other hand, saw widespread use. However, one Iberian manual regarded the axe as the cavalry weapon of last resort behind the lance, estoc, and arming sword.

Two-handed axes are another matter entirely. While probably inferior to good halberds or bills, the Irish employed two-handed axes as primary infantry weapons well into sixteenth century and possibly beyond.

Matthew

2013-07-31, 11:13 AM

To add to what Galloglaich says about axes in Britain, there is also an interesting tradition around Richard Coeur de Lion that associates him with an axe. In the continuation of William of Tyre (c. 1200) he is reported wielding a pole-axe at the relief of Jaffa, and in the Middle English Coeur de Lyon he fights with a fantastically heavy axe from the saddle. However, I do not recall Ambroise reporting anything like that, nor the Itinerarium Peregrinorum, which would have been better placed to know. Still, interesting.

Galloglaich

2013-07-31, 11:15 AM

Axes actually used in combat, like most other weapons including war hammers and maces, tended to be a lot lighter and better balanced than you would expect, in the same weight range as swords, if not quite as carefully made as a good sword.

The principle difference from a real to a fantasy axe is usually a much smaller axe-blade. The blades also tend to be much thinner than the blade on a working axe (i.e. an axe for felling trees and so on). One of the nice things about the Vikings series on the history channel is that they portray those small axe-blades.

War-axes remained popular weapons in Europe, Central and South Asia, as well as in the Middle East well into the Early-Modern era. The principle disadvantage is that because it has a haft, it can be more easily grabbed in close combat than a sharp blade. Axes however also have an additional advantage of being able to hook things, like shield rims, other weapons, ankles and so on. Axes made from the late medieval period onward also frequently had a back-spike, or a spike on the point, which could be used to pierce armor, like this Sudanese axe:

http://www.oriental-arms.com/photos/items/35/000735/ph-0.jpg

Two handed axes sometimes did have very broad (or long) blades though, the very large -bladed 'bardiche' type axe was in wide use throughout the pre-industrial period. The Russians had a particular fondness for them and the secret police of Ivan the Terrible used them as a combination gunrest / execution tool / hand weapon. Two handed axes often had a point to thrust with, either integral to the blade itself or as a top spike like you see on halberds and other pole-arms.

http://www.xenophon-mil.org/rushistory/medievalarmor/strelt3.jpg

In the earlier medieval period two handed axes were also in wide use in the British Isles, where they were associated with the Huskarl (they were gradually replaced in popularity by the Bill, though some version of the Bill were essentially just large axes) in Scandinavia, and in the German-speaking parts of Central Europe. In the late Medieval period the Halberd and later the Poll Axe became acceptable as knightly weapons. There is actually a Burgundian fencing manual dedicated to the use of the poll axe called 'Jeu de la Hache (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_jeu_de_la_hache)' (game of the axe). I believe it is the earliest French language fight-book.

http://www.thehaca.com/spotlight/LeJeuArt.JPG
(knights fighting in a judicial combat with poll axes)

G

Matthew

2013-07-31, 11:16 AM

Time line mess! :smallbiggrin:

Galloglaich

2013-07-31, 11:17 AM

Matthew

2013-07-31, 11:21 AM

Quite right. Axes are mentioned frequently in the Middle English romances now I think about it some more. Here is the text I was thinking of above:

Kyng Rychard, as I vnderstonde,
Or he wente out of Englonde,
Let hym make an axe, for the nones,
To breke therwith the Sarasyns bones.
The heed was wrought ryght wele,
Therin was twenty pounde of stele;
And whan he came into Cyprys-londe,
The axe he toke in his honde,
All that he hytte he all tofrapped;
The Gryffons awaye faste rapped;
Neuertheles many one he cleued,
And theyr vnthonkes ther byleued.
And the pryson whan he came to,
With his axe he smote ryght tho,
Dores, barres, and jren chaynes,
And delyuered his men out of paynes.

There is much, much more. He is fighting with his axe throughout the poem, and late on refers to it as a pollaxe.

Galloglaich

2013-07-31, 06:36 PM

hey speaking of our earlier conversation with the boar hunting & the spears, check this one out at 03:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iYwEQiAciQ

different type of spears (something like a pilum or an angon, interestingly) and very different results, seemingly.

EDIT: And again at 7:40 and 7:44, this spear seems to penetrate a whole lot better even though this guy doesn't seem like hes exactly an expert in it's use.

G

awa

2013-07-31, 09:29 PM

I'm working on a vaguely Arabian nights style game and i was wondering were their any polearms in use by the various Muslim nations during any part of the crusades. Other then spears of course.

Galloglaich

2013-07-31, 10:38 PM

It's a good question, but I've never heard of any in the Arab or North African zone other than various types of spears. Complex two-handed polearms seem to be something popular mainly in Asia and Europe.

There are quite a few interesting ones in South Asia and Persia though, mainly variations on pole -axes and pole-cleavers, such as the Bhuj

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhuj_%28weapon%29

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3651/bhuj1fl1.jpg

...from India and a lot of bill-like weapons as well

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/743/polearm1.jpg

You see crows-beak type poleaxes from Persia, like this one

http://images.cloud.worthpoint.com/wpimages/images/images1/1/1106/19/1_365eb743b9194e7bef1531f790c72a32.jpg

This spetum like weapon is allegedly Persian

http://www.thunting.com/ebay/e5.1.jpg

and I think the Ottomans had some glaive like weapons plus probably some of the Indian and Persian type kit.

In much earlier times of course you had the spears with mace-like butts such as these in the famous archers frieze, often associated (wrongly or not) with the 'Immortals'.

http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/worldhis/figure17.jpg

Mostly the emphasis in the Muslim countries though was on single handed weapons such as knives, swords, sabers, axes, maces and hammers of which they had a rather dazzling variety of different types (if not quite as exotic as in India or Europe)

G

Mr. Mask

2013-08-01, 03:02 AM

Pursuing the same line of inquiry, I'd like to ask your opinions of using an 8-pound sledgehammer as a martial weapon. Using it as in Jeu de la Hatche, I imagine it would become a lot more wieldy... but still, it seems you'd easily be outmatched by other weapons in the hands of equally skilled opponents. When unarmoured especially, it seems that heavy-headed weapons are at a fair disadvantage.

Galloglaich

2013-08-01, 07:50 AM

The thing about any poorly balanced, exceptionally heavy weapon (and an 8 lb sledge hammer is really heavy, and top-heavy to swing around, have you ever held one?) is that while they may be able to make one relatively fast 'swing' if you are really strong, the followup strike, or the parry, is going to be exceptionally slow. I'm a long way from being a great fencer, but would have no fear of someone wielding an 8 lb maul if I had a longsword or a spear. They would be dead meat. The only way that could be a threat I think is with a lucky throw.

Weapons made for combat are very fast - combat under even the semi serious conditions you see in a HEMA tournament tends to be extremely quick, you might see two or three strikes in a second. A tool like a maul just can't keep up with that pace.

Now if that same 8 lbs is distributed reasonably well along the weight of a 9 foot long polearm, the reach and leverage can compensate for the weight somewhat. But generally even polearms were made as light as they could possibly be while still being strong enough to withstand the stress of combat.

G

JustSomeGuy

2013-08-01, 08:23 AM

Guys; i heard an explanation for something unrelated, but it may have some impact on long weapons, and i'd like your opinions please.

In weightlifting, a longer bar is steadier because the mass is further from the centre/balance point - the example/analogy used was those long poles acrobats use to wealk tightropes - the result being the bar tends to stay level unless a 'sizeable' force were to make it unbalanced (in effect, because it is of sufficient length it will stay level without much, if any, conscious effort to do so, unless of course the lifter is doing something massively wrong). That made enough sense to me that it didn't need any further reading or checking out.

My question is, how would that apply to long weapons like polearms? I don't know much about them, but would i be correct in saying that there were two main varieties (based upon this), the thrusting, spear sort which mainly go forward and back, not much deviation from the 'point of aim' and the main advantage is reach, and the other type - hammers, axes etc. which use the lever arm to increase speed and force of impact, but are somewhat unweidly and not very suitable for close combat... would that be a vaguely accurate assumption? And were there many exceptions to this, which perhaps 'straddled the physics' (so to speak, even though they obviously comply in reality) such as those whippy kung-fu film spears which seem very fast and very suitable for close combat and swinging hits as well as thrusts, although i'd guess thsi is because of a very reduced mass and particular type of shaft wood.

AgentPaper

2013-08-01, 11:16 AM

A longer bar won't actually balance any better than a short one. What it will do, however, is move much much slower, so that the person holding that bar has a lot more time to react to it becoming imbalanced and compensate for it before it becomes significant.

For polearms, which are held on one side instead of the middle, all this means is that it takes longer for the user to move the end of the pole to where he wants, compared to an equally heavy, but much shorter, weapon.

Polearms that are meant to be swung around quickly, such as a quarterstaff, are always much lighter and shorter. The "whippy" spears you mention are also fairly light, but more importantly take advantage of the flexibility of the wood to amplify the small, repetitive motions of their hands into the more dramatic movement of the head of the spear.

Incanur

2013-08-01, 11:41 AM

8lbs isn't that heavy for a weapon. Some polearms - halberds, bills, bardiches, etc. - reached this weight. I don't know of an good sources for the weight of fightning mauls, but they also may have weighed 8lbs or more at times. If reasonably balanced and wielded by someone strong, the evidence suggests 8-10lbs as the high end of functional weapon weight.

warty goblin

2013-08-01, 11:54 AM

A longer bar won't actually balance any better than a short one. What it will do, however, is move much much slower, so that the person holding that bar has a lot more time to react to it becoming imbalanced and compensate for it before it becomes significant.

A longer bar with uniform mass distribution won't, no. But weapons aren't balanced, they're swung, which mostly consists of rotation. This means that the moment of inertia comes into a play, and something with the mass distribution of a dumbbell is a lot harder to rotate than then something with the same total mass, but close to the center of gravity.

I suspect, for a swung polearm, the moments of inertia are actually more important than the center of mass, which for reasons of leverage you want pretty close to the head anyway.

Knaight

2013-08-01, 12:03 PM

A longer bar with uniform mass distribution won't, no. But weapons aren't balanced, they're swung, which mostly consists of rotation. This means that the moment of inertia comes into a play, and something with the mass distribution of a dumbbell is a lot harder to rotate than then something with the same total mass, but close to the center of gravity.

There's also the matter of torque and leverage. When your hands are several feet apart, moving the back hand applies a lot more torque to the point at the front hand than it does when they are right next to each other, and with the leverage provided by the distance of the head a fairly small movement of the hand gets a pretty large movement of the head. For something like a sledgehammer you are going to have terrible, terrible torque, which is not helpful given the moments of inertia involved.

warty goblin

2013-08-01, 12:07 PM

There's also the matter of torque and leverage. When your hands are several feet apart, moving the back hand applies a lot more torque to the point at the front hand than it does when they are right next to each other, and with the leverage provided by the distance of the head a fairly small movement of the hand gets a pretty large movement of the head. For something like a sledgehammer you are going to have terrible, terrible torque, which is not helpful given the moments of inertia involved.

Which is why a sledge is so nice for beating things until they fall apart. Hitting things with one produces very little torque on the user. The price you pay is that the thing's pretty much impossible to maneuver with any subtlety.

(I should say I'm actually terrible at the physics of rotation. One of the reasons I went into statistics is so I never had to look at a cosine again.)

Galloglaich

2013-08-01, 01:53 PM

Most pole weapons, including most spears (any spear with a blade for a 'point') and all staves, are used both for thrusting and for striking or cutting. They are all made to be flung around pretty quickly. In fact in some systems for pole-arm fighting you lead with the queue (the butt) first and then switch around to the 'business end' as opportunity presents itself.

I know 8 lbs is within the range of a polearm, I thought I specified that. But there is a huge difference between a 9 foot weapon that weighs 8 lbs and is fairly well balanced, and a 3 foot weapon which weighs 8 lbs almost all on one end. The former is a useful weapon, the latter is basically useless.

G

Incanur

2013-08-01, 03:18 PM

They are all made to be flung around pretty quickly.

Yes and no. Regarding staff weapons, Joachim Meyer specifically advised prudence regarding motion and commitment. The longer and/or heavier a weapon is, the harder it is to recovery quickly.

But there is a huge difference between a 9 foot weapon that weighs 8 lbs and is fairly well balanced, and a 3 foot weapon which weighs 8 lbs almost all on one end.

Definitely, though note that heavy polearms weren't generally 9ft. Many English warriors in the sixteenth century, for example, preferred bills and halberds around 6ft. The Weapons of Warre reconstruction (http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=265886&highlight=#265886) based on Mary Rose bill hafts and period art weighs around 10lbs with the head alone at over 6lbs. I consider that excessive based on surviving polearms, but 6-7lbs at a length of around 6ft is common enough for pollaxes and company. Swiss and German halberds appear to have been 7-8ft most of the time based on art. (Not necessarily a reliable source.) But one Italian observer specifically described English bills as short, so the weight of the evidence places other halberds/bills as longer.

Galloglaich

2013-08-01, 03:49 PM

I've seen several antique glaives at the Higgins armoury which were at least 9 feet, as well as a wide assortment of weapons in the Hotel Des Invalides in France definitely a lot taller than me (and I'm 5' 10"), and seen antique halberds in Grandson castle between 7 and 10 feet long (my guess). I think you are totally wrong that six feet is a common length for most continental European medieval or early-modern polearms, George Silvers theories notwithstanding. The only exception I can think of being poll-axes and poll-hammers which tended to be pretty short in at least some cases.

http://talhoffer.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/l-oberhut.jpg

As for Meyer, his halberd is quite dynamic. So is his staff, and so are all the pollaxe, bill, partisan and staff systems I've seen in any of the fight-books. Have you ever done any serious training with staff weapons?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmNTKy8LJiY

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Galloglaich

2013-08-01, 03:51 PM

Here is a photo of some of the huge glaives at the Higgins from my visit there last year after a fencing tournament. Note the full sized plate armor harness in the case to the right, for scale.

http://www.codexmartialis.com/download/file.php?id=60

By the way, this is a photo of their original Joachim Meyer manuscript

http://www.codexmartialis.com/download/file.php?id=42

G

Brother Oni

2013-08-01, 04:53 PM

I'm with Galloglaich on this - a 6ft staff sounds long but feels really short when in use, particularly against sword users.
9ft is about the upper end of manageable for dynamic fighting as shown in the video (they look about 8-9ft total length) plus gives you a very noticeable reach advantage over swords and other one handed weapons.

Perhaps there's a bit of confusion on weapon length in that one of you is measuring by haft alone while the other is measuring total weapon length? I know for spears, the head is usually pretty negligible compared to the haft length, so they tend to be measured by haft alone.

Knaight

2013-08-01, 05:12 PM

Which is why a sledge is so nice for beating things until they fall apart. Hitting things with one produces very little torque on the user. The price you pay is that the thing's pretty much impossible to maneuver with any subtlety.

(I should say I'm actually terrible at the physics of rotation. One of the reasons I went into statistics is so I never had to look at a cosine again.)

With the upside being that the sort of tasks sledges are actually intended for and the sort of tasks for which subtlety are relevant are entirely different tasks.

Also, circular functions are wonderful.

warty goblin

2013-08-01, 05:38 PM

With the upside being that the sort of tasks sledges are actually intended for and the sort of tasks for which subtlety are relevant are entirely different tasks.

Absolutely. There's nothing quite like the joy of taking a whacking great hammer to a structure that needs to not exist anymore. Which really is about as subtle as it gets; either it's in splintery little pieces, or you need to hit it again.

Also, circular functions are wonderful.
That's what they said about complex analysis as well. I reached a different conclusion, which I expressed by propping my analysis notes on the burn pile and shooting them.

Mr Beer

2013-08-01, 05:46 PM

Mr. Mask

2013-08-01, 05:58 PM

Well, they could try using a ballista as a bow, and replace that powerful drawing mechanism.

warty goblin

2013-08-01, 06:32 PM

Anyway, what would be a suitable missile weapon for such a combatant? Is it feasible to make a bow with a say 2,000lbs pull? Can they even scale like that? Or would it be simpler to just use an oversize crossbow? Or just peg 20lb iron spheres, like kettlebells?

Use a sling, albeit made out of some more durable materials. Although the sling would have the issue of what happens when you let go of one end and it goes flying around like a thirty pound weedwacker from hell. Even if the user is immune to such a thrashing, their compatriots may well feel differently.

So just get rid of the other end, use a chain with a sort of cannonball on one end, and chuck the whole assembly.

Beyond that, I'd be very surprised if you could get a wooden bow to scale that high and survive repeated shooting. At some point you're either going to permanently alter the shape of the bow, or else the whole thing bursts violently apart. My money being on the later; there's only so much torsion you can put on wood before the fibers tear apart. Most ballista I believe used quite rigid arms to compress rope or sinew coils, from whence they derived their power.

Beleriphon

2013-08-01, 06:52 PM

Most ballista I believe used quite rigid arms to compress rope or sinew coils, from whence they derived their power.

I know for a fact that Roman ballista used rope as torsion device. I'm fairly certain you can still find instructions to build one if you can read Latin.

Knaight

2013-08-01, 06:56 PM

Use a sling, albeit made out of some more durable materials. Although the sling would have the issue of what happens when you let go of one end and it goes flying around like a thirty pound weedwacker from hell. Even if the user is immune to such a thrashing, their compatriots may well feel differently.

There's an area where the release cord might be swinging around, and then there's the area where you shouldn't be standing near a slinger to begin with. They overlap, by which I mean the first is a subset of the second.

As for materials: You could get away with the standard stuff just fine. A finger loop won't work, but if you use a thick wrist loop, a nice thick retention cord, a pouch a few times longer and thicker than normal, (probably a solid pouch and not a split one, as the option to use standard sling ammunition as scatter shot is just too good to pass up) and a thicker release cord you should be fine. After all, the business end of a trebuchet is basically just a big sling, and fabric works just fine for that.

With that said, there is one concern with a sling, and it relates to weight: Your being really, really strong doesn't make you heavy. Even normal slings can have a bit of pull when slinging, particularly immediately prior to releasing the release cord - you don't really notice this consciously most of the time, because compensating for it is easy, but if you replace the sling stone with some super heavy thing that can only be used by a superhuman that pull is going to be a problem. I'd also put in a minor side concern regarding air resistance of the cords and how that leads to the pouch following the hypothetical straight line emanating from the sling hand, with this drag altering aim. Again, it's not a big deal with a normal sling, though it is part of the reason that readjusting to new slings can take a while, but with a huge pouch it might be.

AgentPaper

2013-08-01, 07:05 PM

Swords, bows, and all the other types of weapons were, essentially, designed to be used by humans against roughly equal opponents. If you're 20 times as strong as a normal person, then you already have a significant advantage over anyone you fight, thus much of the combat techniques are less useful. This does mean you can get away with fighting using simple weapons like thrown rocks or wood/metal rods, but that isn't to say that those weapons are better suited to high-strength combat.

I don't see any reason that you couldn't scale up "normal" weapons to these strength scales. If you are 20 times as strong, then you can wield a sword that is 20 times heavier just as effectively. So for example if a normal person uses a 2 lb spear, then you could use a 40 lb spear. Due to how scaling works, of course that wouldn't actually be a 20 times larger spear, but instead a bit over three times as large. So if it was a spear 6 feet long and 1 inch diameter, then you would use a spear 18 feet long and 3 inch diameter. It may need to be a bit shorter and thicker than that to withstand the forces you put on it, but the general idea should work, I would think.

The same general idea should apply equally well to swords, axes, hammers, or whatever weapon type you want to use. Bows and crossbow are trickier since they rely on tension instead of just mass and momentum, but if you've got the technology (or magic) to make a person 20 times as strong, then making a bow that can withstand 2000 lbs of force is trivial by comparison.

warty goblin

2013-08-01, 08:24 PM

I don't see any reason that you couldn't scale up "normal" weapons to these strength scales. If you are 20 times as strong, then you can wield a sword that is 20 times heavier just as effectively. So for example if a normal person uses a 2 lb spear, then you could use a 40 lb spear. Due to how scaling works, of course that wouldn't actually be a 20 times larger spear, but instead a bit over three times as large. So if it was a spear 6 feet long and 1 inch diameter, then you would use a spear 18 feet long and 3 inch diameter. It may need to be a bit shorter and thicker than that to withstand the forces you put on it, but the general idea should work, I would think.

Not unless you're (at least) twenty times as heavy. For a normal human, most weapons are a pretty small portion of our bodyweight. I'm about 185, so a 2 lbs sword is just slightly over a percent of my weight. A sword twenty times as massive is edging towards 10%. Regardless of my strength, swinging that sort of weight around is going to be a lot harder to control. Basically when a person swings something, you'll tend to rotate around the common center of mass. The only thing that stops this is the friction of your feet on the ground.

Now for me swinging a sword, the center of mass is going to be pretty much inside my body. This means that there's a pretty short lever (in the horizontal) between my feet and the center of mass of me+sword. Ergo it doesn't take much friction to keep me from slipping.

But make that sword twenty times as massive, and the center of mass is going to move farther and farther away from your's truly. Particularly if you make the sword longer. My feet have to get a lot more friction now to keep me from spinning around or doing something else embarrassing. And I've done enough sparring to know that on terrain you actually fight on, friction with the ground even using standard weight weapons is a serious consideration. If the grass is wet, or the ground soft and uneven and so liable to crumble, it's easy to overswing and end up on your ass. Not because you weren't strong enough to control the weapon, but because your feet couldn't get a good enough grip on the ground, which has nothing to do with strength.

This is neglecting some other points, like swinging the blade faster will require even better traction to stay rightside up. The one thing you don't do on bad footing is swing as hard as you can. There's also material difficulties with actually getting a twenty-times upscaled sword to have anything like the same mass distribution. In order to keep the blade rigid enough to use you're going to have to add more and more thickness near the hilt, which forces it wider and wider to maintain a swordlike blade geometry. That of course requires more and more mass in the hilt and pommel to offset it, but since your hand isn't giant-sized, the actual grip itself can't get any thicker. So basically you've got a whacking big blade and an enormous pommel, all held together by a tang of around usual size. Guess where that's going to shatter? And have fun trying to swing the thing with a dumbbell sized pommel digging into your wrist.

(It's interesting to note that in Beowulf it's specifically called out that he can't fight with swords all that effectively, because he just snaps them like twigs. Somebody thought of this problem about thirteen hundred years ago.)

The other point that's come up before is that there's really no need to upscale a sword in the first place. Edges are basically ways to do lots of damage to tissue using as little force as possible. But if you're uber-strong, lots of extra force is exactly what you're bringing to the table. Hitting harder just means you're going to tend to destroy your edges all the faster. Hence the argument to get rid of them, and just use a reasonably sized iron bar. The distinction between cutting somebody's head off, and shattering their spine is pretty much nil.

Gavinfoxx

2013-08-01, 08:44 PM

So assuming someone DOES have some kind of superhero strength, but not a lot of extra durability (some, just not a great amount)... what is the best option for some sort of melee weapon for them to take advantage of that strength?

Galloglaich

2013-08-01, 09:06 PM

Best thing probably? Throw relatively small steel ball bearings very hard.

But I think far more valuable than being 20 times stronger than another person, would be to be 20 times faster. Flash (or The Matrix) instead of The Hulk. The only reason The Hulk is plausible even on the comic book level, is because he's not only super strong, but totally invulnerable. Being that strong but still as squishy as a regular person, not so great.

20 times faster, then you are really dangerous. I think.

G

awa

2013-08-01, 09:38 PM

20 times faster you would still run into a lot of the same problems you might have the potential for that speed but without good traction you can't make that much use of it. Also you would need to think and see faster or you would not be able to get the full use out of this ability. Without super durability you would also have to be very careful attacking, punching someone at 20 times faster will destroy your arm even if the other guy is dead.

Not saying super strong is better than super speed just that it has a lot of problems to

Incanur

2013-08-01, 09:38 PM

:smallamused:

Let's review what I wrote:

Definitely, though note that heavy polearms weren't generally 9ft.

Many English warriors in the sixteenth century, for example, preferred bills and halberds around 6ft.

Emphasis added. While a few reached 8lbs or more, as a rule I don't include glaives, partisans, lances, spears, and staves in the category "heavy polearms." Silver influences my categorization in this respect. Also:

Swiss and German halberds appear to have been 7-8ft most of the time based on art.

So what are y'all arguing with me about? :smallconfused: Regarding the English preference for heavy polearms near 6ft in length, there's evidence beyond Silver and Sir John Smythe - which is quite a bit of evidence to begin with! As mentioned, an sixteenth-Italian source describes English bills as both heavy and short. An English military manual from the middle of the sixteenth specified a 5ft lead maul with a 6inch spike for archers. Some artwork also portrays weapons of this length. It wasn't universal in England - even Smythe recommended 7.5ft halberds for skirmishing - but it was an English military mode in the sixteenth century.

Based on the images - which is dubious, as at one point Meyer noted that the the longer staves got shortened to fit - Meyer's halberd is around 7ft. It's certainly not 9ft. I have played around with staves of various lengths and weights - including a little sparring - and I suspect a 9ft cutting halberd would be a bit awkward. (I believe later thrusting halberds did get to 9ft.) 9ft is a fine length for spear, partisan, etc. - but again I wasn't talking about such weapons. Putting a heavy head a long haft makes recovery difficult.

Of course polearm fighting is dynamic and all that. I'm just saying that as your weapon gets longer and heavier, recovery becomes more and more of an issue. It's much easier to get a dagger back online than a halberd.

Regarding superhuman strength, a robust polearm suitable for both the cut and thrust strikes me as a good choice. A large two-handed sword would be another classic choice.

Regarding speed, remember that speed and strength go together. In humans, speed is a form of strength. Olympic lifters can typically sprint quite well. Etc. Being twenty times stronger should normally make one faster as well.

Mr Beer

2013-08-01, 10:11 PM

Yay for answers! Thanks to all that responded.

Well, they could try using a ballista as a bow, and replace that powerful drawing mechanism.

This seems like the obvious choice, since these devices are known to have worked effectively and there’s no reason that I can think of that a super strong person couldn’t use one.

Use a sling, albeit made out of some more durable materials. Although the sling would have the issue of what happens when you let go of one end and it goes flying around like a thirty pound weedwacker from hell. Even if the user is immune to such a thrashing, their compatriots may well feel differently.
So just get rid of the other end, use a chain with a sort of cannonball on one end, and chuck the whole assembly.

My only concern with this is the problem of swinging around such large weights as Knaight and you mentioned below.

Beyond that, I'd be very surprised if you could get a wooden bow to scale that high and survive repeated shooting. At some point you're either going to permanently alter the shape of the bow, or else the whole thing bursts violently apart. My money being on the later; there's only so much torsion you can put on wood before the fibers tear apart. Most ballista I believe used quite rigid arms to compress rope or sinew coils, from whence they derived their power.

Do you think modern materials could scale up a bow? Maybe not wood but say alloys or carbon fibre?

So assuming someone DOES have some kind of superhero strength, but not a lot of extra durability (some, just not a great amount)... what is the best option for some sort of melee weapon for them to take advantage of that strength?

“Iron bar” was the answer I found most convincing. Not sure of the weight though, maybe 20lbs to 30lbs? Heavy enough to leverage your strength but not so heavy as to pull you off your feet every time you swung it.

rrgg

2013-08-01, 10:31 PM

For polearms, which are held on one side instead of the middle, all this means is that it takes longer for the user to move the end of the pole to where he wants, compared to an equally heavy, but much shorter, weapon.

Well, it depends on the weight. Beneath a certain weight, you should be able to move the tip of a longer weapon and much higher speeds than the tip of a shorter weapon of similar mass simply because you are always going to be limited by the mass of your hand/arm when swinging (or to put it another way, attacking with a weapon of length zero and mass zero does not mean you can attack at infinite speeds.)

rrgg

2013-08-01, 10:45 PM

Gentlemen, I'd like to abuse your real world weapon knowledge for an unreal scenario again, if I may.

A while back I posed the question of a suitable melee weapon for a human size combatant with superhuman strength, in the roughly 20x human normal range (which I estimate to be 4x or 5x human maximum) and got some interesting answers ("grab and twist" and "just use a big iron bar" seemed popular). My thoughts along the lines of oversized swords and axes were revealed to be touchingly naive.

Anyway, what would be a suitable missile weapon for such a combatant? Is it feasible to make a bow with a say 2,000lbs pull? Can they even scale like that? Or would it be simpler to just use an oversize crossbow? Or just peg 20lb iron spheres, like kettlebells?

Is your superhuman 20 times as massive as a normal human? If not then it might just be easier to throw things. If he is able to throw a 3 pound spear with 20 times the normal energy then that's probably going to give you plenty of range and would be way more efficient then trying to figure out how to make a massive bow or crossbow capable of shooting similarly heavy projectiles.

Bows are generally weapons designed for long range, not the most efficient use of energy. So your character would probably only really need to bother with them if they needed, say, a range of of 1000+ yards.

Mr Beer

2013-08-01, 10:53 PM

Is your superhuman 20 times as massive as a normal human? If not then it might just be easier to throw things. If he is able to throw a 3 pound spear with 20 times the normal energy then that's probably going to give you plenty of range and would be way more efficient then trying to figure out how to make a massive bow or crossbow capable of shooting similarly heavy projectiles.

Bows are generally weapons designed for long range, not the most efficient use of energy. So your character would probably only really need to bother with them if they needed, say, a range of of 1000+ yards.

He's normal human weight, so yeah maybe throwing would be the thing.

Incanur

2013-08-01, 11:03 PM

I don't know what the limit on a composite bow is, but it's definitely above the 180-200lb max seen on the historical battlefield. Crossbows reached 1000lbs and more, so I bet you could at least manage that much with horn and sinew. Then steel perhaps increases that. A skilled archer shooting a 800-1000lb composite as if it were a 35lb trick bow would extremely effective. It'd pierce any historical armor at that draw weight.

Straybow

2013-08-02, 12:37 AM

Definitely, though note that heavy polearms weren't generally 9ft. Many English warriors in the sixteenth century, for example, preferred bills and halberds around 6ft. The Weapons of Warre reconstruction (http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=265886&highlight=#265886) based on Mary Rose bill hafts and period art weighs around 10lbs with the head alone at over 6lbs. I consider that excessive based on surviving polearms, but 6-7lbs at a length of around 6ft is common enough for pollaxes and company. Swiss and German halberds appear to have been 7-8ft most of the time based on art. (Not necessarily a reliable source.) But one Italian observer specifically described English bills as short, so the weight of the evidence places other halberds/bills as longer.
I can't comment on the Mary Rose hafts, but Silver considered the bill to be heavy and generally shorter than perfect length (generally 8-9 feet depending on user height). Only the "forest bill" head was light enough to be useful on a perfect length weapon, and he considered the perfect length forest bill to have "the vantage" over all other weapons.

A staff must be quick to be effective. A bill doesn't have to be as quick. I've done some experimentation with heavy staffs and I just can't make use of the advantage of length at that weight, but I'm small.

AgentPaper

2013-08-02, 01:05 AM

Being 20 times stronger necessitates being 20 time tougher than a normal human being. If you aren't 20 times tougher, then you aren't actually 20 times stronger.

If you want to talk about pure strength, all humans have the capability of exerting strength far above the "norm". Most humans are, technically speaking "strong" enough to lift a car like you see heavyweight lifters do. However, if you told anyone but a lifter to lift that car, they wouldn't be able to, not because it's physically impossible, but because humans have evolved to automatically restrict their strength to prevent massive damage to themselves. In seriously dire straights, some people can overcome this to display truly superhuman feats of strength, but always at a equally dire cost to themselves. Our muscles and bones simply aren't built to handle that kind of strain.

Therefore, if you were to make someone 20 times "stronger" without also making them 20 times tougher, then they would still only be able to lift the same amount of weight as a normal person, because they would still automatically restrain themselves from using their full strength. Even if they were to overcome that natural limitation, they would still do massive damage to themselves, and if using 20 times the full theoretical strength of a human being, they would probably snap all of their limbs in half and die from internal bleeding before they could do anything worthwhile.

Being "20 times stronger" means not only being able to exert 20 times the force, but also being 20 times as tough, and I would argue, also being 20 times more massive (aka; 20 times harder to move), though for sanity's sake, you would probably not want them to actually weigh 20 times as much, simply because then you'd run into issues of breaking floors. (Though that could be a intentional drawback of the ability)

If you weren't 20 times as massive, then yes, you might run into issues of large weapons tossing you about as you swing them. Though, I would argue, you could probably compensate for this as long as you're not wielding 20 times larger Claymore or something. You'd probably have to stick to lighter weapons like shortswords and small axes, but it's not like normal weapons are anywhere near heavy enough to throw you around due to their momentum, so you should be able to get a fair bit larger before you start running into serious problems.

Straybow

2013-08-02, 01:44 AM

Gentlemen, I'd like to abuse your real world weapon knowledge for an unreal scenario again, if I may.

A while back I posed the question of a suitable melee weapon for a human size combatant with superhuman strength, in the roughly 20x human normal range (which I estimate to be 4x or 5x human maximum) and got some interesting answers ("grab and twist" and "just use a big iron bar" seemed popular). My thoughts along the lines of oversized swords and axes were revealed to be touchingly naive.

Anyway, what would be a suitable missile weapon for such a combatant? Is it feasible to make a bow with a say 2,000lbs pull? Can they even scale like that? Or would it be simpler to just use an oversize crossbow? Or just peg 20lb iron spheres, like kettlebells?
Well, being able to throw a spear with great force may be enough of an advantage. He's going to be limited by his mass and leverage, so let's say that is four times the energy of the average spear thrower (a soldier who is stronger than the population average). That's double the velocity, which might be comparable to the weakest portable ballista.

Velocity is better than momentum when it comes to hitting the target. If he throws a heavy rock but the target can see it coming and easily duck or sidestep out of its path he doesn't hit as often. A smaller projectile hurled like a pitcher's fast ball will be more effective.

For massed enemies he could hurl lengths of chain, so he'd at least have a chance to take down more than one with a single throw.

Mr. Mask

2013-08-02, 03:18 AM

If it's any help to the large weapons and super strength discussion... the sword Arnold Schwarzenegger uses is that old Conan movie was made of metal, and weighed 16 pounds. How well did he manage to swing that thing in the film (I'm surprised he didn't kill anyone by accident)?

AgentPaper

2013-08-02, 03:33 AM

Honestly, when you're throwing around 20 times the force of a normal person, basically anything you do will be lethal. It doesn't matter if you're throwing rocks or hitting people with chains or tossing claymores around like kunai or pimp-slapping peoples' heads off, if you apply that much force you're going to kill someone. So just pick something suitably cool and go nuts.

Mr. Mask

2013-08-02, 03:38 AM

AgentPaper

2013-08-02, 03:41 AM

If someone has that kind of power, you don't want to just go nuts--you want to work out the most efficient way to make them a force which can crush hundreds of men! Unless they're Samson... then you're too scared to really say much as to what they should or shouldn't do (which, as you know, ended up a waste of talent).

Well if you wanna make them an unstoppable juggernaut, then you'd best put him in some heavy armor. That'll be more useful than any weapon, since you're plenty deadly with just your fists, and guns can probably still kill you pretty good. Put some spikes on your gauntlets for style, and THEN go nuts.

Spiryt

2013-08-02, 03:49 AM

Is your superhuman 20 times as massive as a normal human? If not then it might just be easier to throw things. If he is able to throw a 3 pound spear with 20 times the normal energy then that's probably going to give you plenty of range and would be way more efficient then trying to figure out how to make a massive bow or crossbow capable of shooting similarly heavy projectiles.

Bows are generally weapons designed for long range, not the most efficient use of energy. So your character would probably only really need to bother with them if they needed, say, a range of of 1000+ yards.

Throwing 3 pound spear with '20 times energy' would requires superhuman quickness of movement, not only strength.

It would require ability to move at least the very end of your arm more than 4 times quicker, and pretty much no human can do that.

He could throw very massive spears at similar distances like 3 pound ones, instead, I guess...

Mr. Mask

2013-08-02, 04:03 AM

Well if you wanna make them an unstoppable juggernaut, then you'd best put him in some heavy armor. That'll be more useful than any weapon, since you're plenty deadly with just your fists, and guns can probably still kill you pretty good. Put some spikes on your gauntlets for style, and THEN go nuts. The armour will also add to their weight, which might help in allowing them to wield heavier weapons? I'm not sure on that, since armour can also make it somewhat trickier to keep your balance (or maybe I'm just thinking of the gear marines carry which lacks distribution?).

Given a huge enough level of strength, you only limit to the thickness of your armour would be having enough flexibility to move your limbs and body. With that, you could probably have immunity or good resistance to man-carried guns. Cannon would still blast you to bits, of course, so staying agile is important.

xeo

2013-08-02, 04:33 AM

https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/524fba1a626a0939fc1b17c382a184b3/tumblr_mpiwzpAnmQ1qigaa4o1_1280.jpg

I found this on the J. Paul Getty Museum's website. It's labelled as "A Man Wearing Armor for a Tournament Contest" and dates from 1560-70. The club looks rather like the ones I've seen in pictures of judicial combats but I've never seen a chain handle linking the club to the armour like that. Does anyone know more?

http://search.getty.edu/museum/records/musobject?objectid=5855

Mr. Mask

2013-08-02, 04:49 AM

Sorry, just an update on that use of a Ballista as a man-carried bow. I wasn't sure about it, so I looked into it... the recoil of the bow would turn the wielder into a projectile, even if they had the strength to use it.

Dienekes

2013-08-02, 06:39 AM

I found this on the J. Paul Getty Museum's website. It's labelled as "A Man Wearing Armor for a Tournament Contest" and dates from 1560-70. The club looks rather like the ones I've seen in pictures of judicial combats but I've never seen a chain handle linking the club to the armour like that. Does anyone know more?

http://search.getty.edu/museum/records/musobject?objectid=5855

I've seen a couple of pictures of this. As far as I can tell it just keeps the weapon in question attached to your person so it's harder to lose in the heat of the battle.

Though I do have my own question. Does anyone know a good source for actual codes of chivalry? I know one of the pope's gave a list of what made a good knight but my googlefu is failing at finding it. Also any books on the subject would interest me greatly.

Incanur

2013-08-02, 09:02 AM

Throwing 3 pound spear with '20 times energy' would requires superhuman quickness of movement, not only strength.

It would require ability to move at least the very end of your arm more than 4 times quicker, and pretty much no human can do that.

Moving faster is one of the things strength is and does in the human context. Olympic javelin throwlers, for example, hurl their projectiles much faster than I can. Why not assume superhuman strength means the same? The exact physics of course would depend on the details of the mechanisms involved. For fantasy purposes, though, I like just scaling up based on human dynamics. That means somebody twenty times stronger is also much faster - and tougher too, to prevent self-injury.

Galloglaich

2013-08-02, 10:59 AM

So what are y'all arguing with me about? Regarding the English preference for heavy polearms

What is a heavy polearm?

An English military manual from the middle of the sixteenth specified a 5ft lead maul with a 6inch spike for archers.

There is a lot of confusion about this- lead lined mallets were used to hammer in tent stakes and sometimes, stakes used for pickets. These in turn were occasionally used for subduing disarmed French knights so they could be captured for ransom (instead of killing them with a misericorde). I've never heard of a six foot one, my understanding is that they were actually 2 or 3 feet. The actual sidearm usually carried by archers was usually a sword and buckler.

I suspect a 9ft cutting halberd would be a bit awkward.
Did you watch the video I linked?

This is what the period art, and records, tell us halberds and all other polearms looked like in real life:

http://www.lwl.ch/science/gruenenberg/images/1375_gugler_fraubrunnen.jpg

(I believe later thrusting halberds did get to 9ft.) 9ft is a fine length for spear, partisan, etc. - but again I wasn't talking about such weapons. Putting a heavy head a long haft makes recovery difficult.

This is the way, more or less, halberd is presented in Meyer.

Quite a few halberds and other polearms were even longer than 9 feet, on the battlefield it paid to hit the other guy first.

What the heck is a 'cutting halberd' vs a 'thrusting halberd'? What do you mean by a 'heavy head'? Did you see the size of the actual antique glaive blades in that photo? By definition, halberds are both cutting and thrusting weapons. So are bills, volgues, partisans, and glaives. So, incidentally, are a lot of spears. They aren't hugely heavy, (the blades are much thinner than the tools like wood axes you are familiar with) but they aren't light either, they are as light as they can be while remaining functional. They were all used 'dynamically'.

G

Incanur

2013-08-02, 12:41 PM

What is a heavy polearm?

As mentioned, I'm guided by Silver (http://www.aemma.org/onlineResources/silver/silver5_body.htm) here: "The battle axe, halberd, or black bill, or such like weapons of weight, appertaining unto guard or battle."

There is a lot of confusion about this- lead lined mallets were used to hammer in tent stakes and sometimes, stakes used for pickets. These in turn were occasionally used for subduing disarmed French knights so they could be captured for ransom (instead of killing them with a misericorde). I've never heard of a six foot one, my understanding is that they were actually 2 or 3 feet.

Can you site any period sources to support this interpretation? The French description (http://books.google.com/books?id=H3V2Qv6E5cEC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=agincourt+%2B+senseless+to+the+ground+%2B+lead&source=bl&ots=BMcRZOw9pn&sig=Sa1OMhjkT2uZKj6ydMAs0spH-n8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Iuf7Uf-TNYSwyQHw74HwCg&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=agincourt%20%2B%20senseless%20to%20the%20ground% 20%2B%20lead&f=false) of English mallets/mauls/hammers at Agincourt: "[M]any of them had adopted a type of weapon until then unknown - great lead-covered mallets from which one single blow on the head could kill a man or knock him senseless to the ground." That doesn't sound like an improvised weapon used to subdue disarmed foes to me. The lead maul/mallet was a common English weapon. Various accounts (http://willscommonplacebook.blogspot.com/2010/01/archers-mauls.html) and armory records from the War of the Roses listed this weapon. Writing in the second half of the sixteenth century, Henry Barrett wanted archers to have "a maule of leade with a pyke of five inches longe, well stieled, sett in a staff of fyve foote of lengthe." The weight the evidence leads to me interpret archers' mauls as a budget pollaxe and stands fully consistent with English (and other) use of short polearms.

What the heck is a 'cutting halberd' vs a 'thrusting halberd'?

By the late sixteenth century if not before, many halberds had a very long top spikes designed and small, sometimes unsharpened cutting blades. Sixteenth-century English sources address this specifically. Sir John Smythe disdained longer thrusting halberds while Humphrey Barwick considered them serviceable in the right hands. He wrote they were designed to successful fight against large two-handed swords.

As far halberd lengths go, a review of period artwork - especially Albrecht Dürer's - actually suggests that some (many) German-region halberds were close to 6ft. For example, consider this piece (http://wolfgangcapito.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/dame-with-landsknecht-durer2.jpg). It's a bit under 7ft, depending on how tall the man is. The halberd in this one (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Duerer_tod_und_landsknecht.jpg) looks right around 6ft. Another (http://www.zeno.org/Kunstwerke/B/D%C3%BCrer,+Albrecht%3A+Landsknecht,+R%C3%BCckenfi gur) looks right at 7ft. These (http://www.aisenbrey-auenwald.de/references_e.html) also look like around 7ft. Etc. This antique Swiss halberd circa 1500 (http://www.bolk-antiques.nl/index.cfm?page=collection&cat=1211&catname=Antique%20Arms%20and%20Armour) is a little over 7ft.

They were all used 'dynamically'.

They were also used carefully against like weapons, at least by folks who wanted to live. Again, it's harder to reset polearms, particularly front-weighted ones. This further encourage caution. It's often (not always) a good idea to stick to your guard and avoid moving your weapon to much.

Galloglaich

2013-08-02, 01:36 PM

Incanur

2013-08-02, 01:53 PM

I think you are putting very undue weight on Silver as a source for analysis of the realities of warfare in his day. Though respected as a fight-book author, Silver is well known to be opinionated and pretty extremist in a lot of his opinions (Swetnam even more so), and he's post-Medieval anyway.

I find considerable insight in the works of sixteenth-century English military writers. At the least they're clear and address relevant matters in detail.

But you are misrepresenting the size of the 'typical' polearm if you are claiming that six feet was average.

What's a typical polearm? I've been specifically talking about heavy polearms focused on delivering powerful blows: halberds, bills, pollaxes, etc. Furthermore, I've noted the distinct cultural and regional contexts in question.

If you think it's safe, let alone safer, to remain static in a particular guard when fighting with weapons, you need to spar a little more. It's also contradicted by all the manuals we know of which deal with polearms.

No it isn't. Meyer, despite all his acrobatic tricks, advised prudence with staff weapons because of the danger of getting offline and becoming vulnerable to attack. I can't quote because I sold my copy of the recent English translation, but I recommend it. Joseph Swetnam favored his low guard and instructed readers to studiously avoid excessive movement in defense.

Galloglaich

2013-08-02, 02:42 PM

What's a typical polearm? I've been specifically talking about heavy polearms focused on delivering powerful blows: halberds, bills, pollaxes, etc. Furthermore, I've noted the distinct cultural and regional contexts in question.

I still don't know what you mean by 'heavy' polearms, halberds, bills and pollaxes were in the same weight range as spears, some heavier some lighter, but none anywhere near the sledge-hammer level of weight at the business end. All were used for cutting, striking (with back-spike/pick or hammer heads) and thrusting, as well as hooking and striking with the queue or the butt. This is what is in the manuals and what is in the artwork and what is in the records.

The only thing I could think of which might fit into a "heavy" polearm category are impact weapons like the godendag or the Morgenstern (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goedendag), which we haven't even been discussing(and even those two have spear-points), or the two-handed flail of the Czech style which is a totally different animal (and also tended to be much longer than 7 feet).

No it isn't. Meyer, despite all his acrobatic tricks, advised prudence with staff weapons because of the danger of getting offline and becoming vulnerable to attack.

The 'acrobatic tricks' you are referring to in Meyer are common in all polearm techniques shown in every fight-book treatise I know, where do you see a sharp distinction? Jumping from 'prudence' to staying in the same guard is quite a leap, do you have any support for that idea?

I can't quote because I sold my copy of the recent English translation, but I recommend it.

Meyer's polearm material is online, here (albeit, in German)

http://www.hauppauge.de/~freifechter/meyer_stange_16r-23v.html

If you had a copy of the Forgeng translation (the only English translation I know of) I hope you got a good price, it's out of print due to the Chivalry Bookshelf fiasco and selling for over $300 right now (http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Combat-Martial-Treatise/dp/1403970920)

I have a copy though, let me know if you want me to look something up for you.

Joseph Swetnam favored his low guard and instructed readers to studiously avoid excessive movement in defense.

Favoring a guard and staying in a guard are two very different things. But none of this is necessary for you or I to speculate about, people all over the world have been doing polearm techniques from the fight books, Meyer to Talhoffer to Marozzo to the Jeu de la hache, for twelve years now. It's hardly a new thing.

G

Incanur

2013-08-02, 03:13 PM

I still don't know what you mean by 'heavy' polearms, halberds, bills and pollaxes were in the same weight range as spears, some heavier some lighter, but none anywhere near the sledge-hammer level of weight at the business end.

See the Silver quotation above. Halberds and company have notably heavier heads than most spears. They're designed to deal out blows of great force on the battlefield.

The 'acrobatic tricks' you are referring to in Meyer are common in all polearm techniques shown in every fight-book treatise I know, where do you see a sharp distinction?

Swetnam, for example, doesn't include anything of the sort. Meyer is uniquely famously for flashy his flashy routines. While they all strike me as useful in the right circumstances, it's difficult not to think that they're in part for showing off during nonlethal sparring.

If you had a copy of the Forgeng translation (the only English translation I know of) I hope you got a good price, it's out of print due to the Chivalry Bookshelf fiasco and selling for over $300 right now (http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Combat-Martial-Treatise/dp/1403970920)

I sold it for around $120 a few years ago.

I have a copy though, let me know if you want me to look something up for you.

Just read the part of the polearm section I mention. Meyer counsels being careful to avoid being drawn out of position of advantage. It's very similar in its essence to Swetnam's advice.

Favoring a guard and staying in a guard are two very different things.

Are you talking about just standing there? I'm talking about cautious double-time defense, which is a critical dynamic of polearm combat. Manuevering for advantage is crucial. Meyer, Swetnam, and others described this in detail.

But none of this is necessary for you or I to speculate about, people all over the world have been doing polearm techniques from the fight books, Meyer to Talhoffer to Marozzo to the Jeu de la hache, for twelve years now. It's hardly a new thing.

I'm thoroughly familar.

Galloglaich

2013-08-02, 10:24 PM

Spiryt

2013-08-03, 04:26 AM

Moving faster is one of the things strength is and does in the human context. Olympic javelin throwlers, for example, hurl their projectiles much faster than I can. Why not assume superhuman strength means the same? The exact physics of course would depend on the details of the mechanisms involved. For fantasy purposes, though, I like just scaling up based on human dynamics. That means somebody twenty times stronger is also much faster - and tougher too, to prevent self-injury.

Yeah, quickness can, and often will be related with strength.

However, it can be mostly unrelated as well, badminton, fencing, or table tennis require ridiculous quickness, and theoretically little to no strength.

Of course, a lot of muscle power and strength is required for rapid change of direction, jumps, pushes etc. but this is strength purely for quickness purposes, not for working against any significant loads.

Some players will relay on it more, some less.

In the end, one can go like that for a long time, meeting more problems, which is why discussions about 'realistic' '20 times human strength' are mostly huge headache. :smallwink:

Incanur

2013-08-03, 08:48 AM

Yeah, quickness can, and often will be related with strength.

However, it can be mostly unrelated as well, badminton, fencing, or table tennis require ridiculous quickness, and theoretically little to no strength.

Of course, a lot of muscle power and strength is required for rapid change of direction, jumps, pushes etc. but this is strength purely for quickness purposes, not for working against any significant loads.

In D&D terms, that sounds like the difference between Str and Dex. Being strong certainly doesn't automatically grant quick reflexes or good coordination. But even just moving one's body requires muscle power. The more power, the faster it moves. I've never practiced Olympic fencing myself, but I know lunges and such take a lot of effort. I'd be better at that sort of thing if I were stronger.

Mike_G

2013-08-03, 04:43 PM

In D&D terms, that sounds like the difference between Str and Dex. Being strong certainly doesn't automatically grant quick reflexes or good coordination. But even just moving one's body requires muscle power. The more power, the faster it moves. I've never practiced Olympic fencing myself, but I know lunges and such take a lot of effort. I'd be better at that sort of thing if I were stronger.

Only to a point.

Healthy, athletic fencers are really fast. If a power lifter tried a lunge, he wouldn't be nearly as fast as a technically weaker gymnast or dancer or sprinter would be.

A fencing foil or sabre weighs close to nothing and the weight is centered very close to the hand, so it takes little strength to move it fast. And football linebackers may be the strongest players on the filed, but they don't move their bodies quicker a smaller, more agile player.

So Strength does not equal Speed.

warty goblin

2013-08-03, 05:34 PM

If y'all haven't seen this, pretty interesting. Buckler like shields from South America circa 8th Century AD, with dyed textiles on them

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/02/ancient-shield-peru-feathered-artifact-moche-temple_n_3696420.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

G

I love how the immediate reaction of one of the researchers is that shields of those dimensions have to be for some sort of ritualistic combat. Archaeologists have a weird tendency to do that.

rrgg

2013-08-03, 06:12 PM

Only to a point.

Healthy, athletic fencers are really fast. If a power lifter tried a lunge, he wouldn't be nearly as fast as a technically weaker gymnast or dancer or sprinter would be.

A fencing foil or sabre weighs close to nothing and the weight is centered very close to the hand, so it takes little strength to move it fast. And football linebackers may be the strongest players on the filed, but they don't move their bodies quicker a smaller, more agile player.

So Strength does not equal Speed.

That's why I prefaced my answer by asking whether the super human was also 20 times as massive. To increase the speed of an object (say, your arm) you would eithe need to be able to apply more force (more strength) or decrease the mass of the object. (For the record I'm sort of a lightweight, but when I did fencing I generally had trouble matching the speed and precision of more fit opponents. Also more tall opponents.)

That said though, biology, isn't really my forte so it would be interesting to know whether there was some other major factor limiting how quickly humans can move.

Telok

2013-08-03, 08:12 PM

Ok I was a lightweight when I fenced, probably weighed less than a hundred pounds when I was 16 years old. Modern sport fencing is not predicated on upper body strength or overall power. Upper body strength will only come into play with beats and binds as a tertiary effect after skill and speed, while your lunges will be very slightly faster if you have strong legs.

I regularly lost to an 11 year old in my salle, mostly because he'd been fencing for four years and I'd only been fencing for two.

Strength or speed alone is not very useful, overall fitness (definitely including endurance and conditioning) and training is much more important.

warty goblin

2013-08-03, 09:36 PM

That's why I prefaced my answer by asking whether the super human was also 20 times as massive. To increase the speed of an object (say, your arm) you would eithe need to be able to apply more force (more strength) or decrease the mass of the object. (For the record I'm sort of a lightweight, but when I did fencing I generally had trouble matching the speed and precision of more fit opponents. Also more tall opponents.)

Whenever I've sparred with fencers, I've noticed they tend to be faster than I am. On the other hand they're even worse at fighting from a bind. Therein lies my one and only advantage.

That said though, biology, isn't really my forte so it would be interesting to know whether there was some other major factor limiting how quickly humans can move.
I suspect the amount of fast twitch muscle a person has makes a difference.

Trekkin

2013-08-04, 12:27 AM

Yaktan

2013-08-04, 12:39 AM

The big reason is probably because you need that to get the bullet out of the gun in the first place. If you had a football shape, it would be hard to get a good seal against the gun, and without a good seal you lose too much gas.

It is not just that the back of a bullet is flat. I know with minee balls, which were what allowed rifles in the Civil War to match musket fire rates, operated by having the back slightly hollow, so when the gun fires the back actually spreads out to form a good seal as the bullet goes down the rifling. I would imagine that modern bullets involve similar mechanics, which would not work if the back end was pointy, because then the force would go around the bullet instead of pushing at the middle of the back.

Incanur

2013-08-04, 01:00 AM

Healthy, athletic fencers are really fast. If a power lifter tried a lunge, he wouldn't be nearly as fast as a technically weaker gymnast or dancer or sprinter would be.

That depends on the folks in question. Elite gymnasts and sprinters are very strong - I'm not sure about dancers.

A fencing foil or sabre weighs close to nothing and the weight is centered very close to the hand, so it takes little strength to move it fast.

But the human body still weighs quite a bit.

So Strength does not equal Speed.

Explosive strength - the kind that matters for Olympic lifting and fighting - is speed. In crude terms, it's a matter of power-to-weight ratio. The really big guy might be slower than the smaller person because conditioned smaller people tend to be stronger for their size than hulking brutes.

Whenever I've sparred with fencers, I've noticed they tend to be faster than I am. On the other hand they're even worse at fighting from a bind. Therein lies my one and only advantage.

The only fencer I've ever sparred - using Lance's RSWs - didn't seem any faster than I am and didn't have much a clue how to deal with George Silver's style. (Note: I don't claim this says anything about modern fencers in general.)

AMX

2013-08-04, 01:52 AM

I have a bit of an odd maths question about bullets.

I've always understood that really fast bullets are designed to minimize wave drag, which is why the noses follow Haack's equations for pointy, low-drag shapes.

What I don't get, then, is the flattish tail. Why do bullets have a flat or slightly narrowed tail, rather than just being a Sears-Haack body? Is it a manufacturing concern, or am I missing something fundamental about internal ballistics?

Just off the top of my head...
You need a cylindrical shank, both to ensure the bullet remains straight while travelling through the barrel, and to properly seat it in the case.
Anything behind the shank will take up space inside the case, which is supposed to be used for propellant.

A very long, fine tail would result in a very long bullet, which would require a faster twist to remain stable in flight - excessively long projectiles can not be spin-stabilised at all.

BayardSPSR

2013-08-04, 02:53 AM

That depends on the folks in question. Elite gymnasts and sprinters are very strong - I'm not sure about dancers.

Dancers are strong - especially male dancers, who traditionally hold people above the ground on a regular basis.

fusilier

2013-08-04, 04:05 AM

Just off the top of my head...
You need a cylindrical shank, both to ensure the bullet remains straight while travelling through the barrel, and to properly seat it in the case.
Anything behind the shank will take up space inside the case, which is supposed to be used for propellant.

A very long, fine tail would result in a very long bullet, which would require a faster twist to remain stable in flight - excessively long projectiles can not be spin-stabilised at all.

A boat-tail bullet design (which is pretty common), has a slight taper toward the back -- it still has a flat back, but it's slightly narrower than the widest point. Most (if not all) that I've seen have a cylindrical section, but that section could be quite short (see the original boat-tailed spitzer round, the French "Balle D").

I think a flat base is a more efficient surface for the propellent to act against when the gun is fired (less surface area means greater pressure?). A boat-tail design, therefore trades a decrease in propellant efficiency, for a decrease in drag. Probably a slight amount for each, but you can compensate for the propellant probably without too much stress on the barrel.

Like AMX mentioned, there are also issues of stability in addition to aerodynamic considerations. In fact, spitzer bullets are known for being tail-heavy and easily deflected -- this effect could be used (or even enhanced, by further lightening the nose) to make wounds worse, by hoping that the bullet would tumble when it hit flesh. On the other hand, I've heard it claimed that if firing through light brush, what you want is a heavy round nose bullet with fast spin.

Yora

2013-08-04, 05:53 AM

Also manufacturing. With modern machines, that probably becomes negible, but I think making bullets with a long tail is more difficult than with a flat base.

Silver Swift

2013-08-04, 07:31 AM

hamishspence

2013-08-04, 08:48 AM

1) Somewhat related to the above question about bullet geometry, what kept a bullet inside a gun once it was loaded? I think during those times they still used round bullets loaded from the front of the gun, right? So what is there to prevent a bullet from rolling right back out once the gun is lowered, or did they just not point their guns down after loading them?

They put paper wadding in after the powder- and rammed the ball into the wadding.

warty goblin

2013-08-04, 10:10 AM

The only fencer I've ever sparred - using Lance's RSWs - didn't seem any faster than I am and didn't have much a clue how to deal with George Silver's style. (Note: I don't claim this says anything about modern fencers in general.)

I'm not a particularly quick person, never have been, so being a faster sword than me is pretty easy. I think my only advantage over people with some minor training in sport fencing is that the only real rule we adhered to growing up was 'no serious injuries*' which means I don't expect only a particular sort of attack.

*A rule I'm pleased to say we held to admirably. Although our knuckles didn't escape unscathed much of the time.

Galloglaich

2013-08-04, 10:54 AM

I love how the immediate reaction of one of the researchers is that shields of those dimensions have to be for some sort of ritualistic combat. Archaeologists have a weird tendency to do that.

yes, it really underscores the important role that historical fencers are now playing in academia, and the generally sad state of research that is overspecialized as it so often is today. These people can't begin to grasp the context of what they found.

G

warty goblin

2013-08-04, 11:34 AM

yes, it really underscores the important role that historical fencers are now playing in academia, and the generally sad state of research that is overspecialized as it so often is today. These people can't begin to grasp the context of what they found.

G

My favorite remains that magical period when pretty much every single bronze age weapon or armor found was 'for parade or display.' Reading between the lines of artifact descriptions written circa 1970, one got the distinct impression that nobody actually had wars in the bronze age, they just dressed up and had parades where they wore pauldrons on their heads.

Berenger

2013-08-04, 02:09 PM

Hawkfrost000

2013-08-04, 03:37 PM

That depends on the folks in question. Elite gymnasts and sprinters are very strong - I'm not sure about dancers.

Speaking as a dancer of nine years; Dancers are extremely strong. They have a huge amount of endurance as well. Practices and rehearsals go on for a very long time. Its kind of like the long hours that actors put in but you are also running and jumping all the time.

Its actually quite hard, dancers need to be very strong but they also need to be very flexible and quite thin. It's especially hard for the girls, who are often expected to be supermodel thin and still have massive strength and endurance.

DM

fusilier

2013-08-04, 04:45 PM

I have a few questions about (naval) combat in the colonial era.

1) Somewhat related to the above question about bullet geometry, what kept a bullet inside a gun once it was loaded? I think during those times they still used round bullets loaded from the front of the gun, right? So what is there to prevent a bullet from rolling right back out once the gun is lowered, or did they just not point their guns down after loading them?

Wadding of some sort was usually used, it could be paper, cotton, cloth, whatever was handy (I've heard of soldiers using grass). The wadding was usually put in after the ball, but there were exceptions.

Sometimes with cannons, wadding was placed in between the powder and ball, and then maybe some more wadding to hold the ball in place.

If the ball is tight fitting (on a rifle or musket), then wadding can be dispensed with.

A "patch" (typically of some sort of cloth), might be used, usually with a rifle. That would be pounded down with the ball, making a tight fit.

If using paper cartridges, the paper was left tied around the ball when loaded, serving both as a crude, and very poor, patch and wadding to hold the ball in place.

With the introduction of the minie-ball, patches or wadding to hold the bullet in place were found to be unnecessary by experiment (the tolerance was very tight, and the bullet would not work itself loose).

2) Was it common for ships to be captured, and if so, how did they move the captured ship back to port? Did all ships have sufficient crew to man multiple ships? It seems unlikely that you can just tow large battleships like that with another ship (at least the image that this conjures in my mind looks patently stupid).

I think ships could be towed, and that was done if they were battered so much that they couldn't be sailed themselves.

Most sailing ships, even a pretty large one, can be manned by a surprisingly small "skeleton crew". You couldn't fight with such a crew, but you could sail the ship.

3) What was the command structure on a typical ship during those days, Was it Captain > bunch of officers > bunch of crew members or did they have more elaborate chains of command?

You need to a bit more specific about the "Colonial" period you are referring to -- as that could range from the early 1500s for the Spanish, to almost 1800. Things changed quite a bit, and there were also differences among the nations.

Traditionally, the "Master" was in charge of the ship, and the "Captain" commanded only the soldiers put aboard the ship. This was when warships were basically civilian ships that were commandeered for war. The title of the movie "Master and Commander" makes a reference to this ancient practice. Although by the time of that movie's setting the Captain was in complete control (thus the "and"). I think the Spanish carried on this practice in many of their sailing ships (i.e. Galleons) for longer, but I would have to double check.

This strange combination of different leaders could lead to complicated hierarchies. Also, there were many officers (and warrant officers -- another holdover) who were specialists.

4) Were larger ships always faster/slower than smaller ships or were there ships build specifically for speed and ships build specifically for firepower?

Yes, sort of. Big ships could be relatively fast and maneuverable, or slow and cumbersome, depending upon whether they were built for war or trade (and big merchant ships like East Indiamen could be very well armed). A smaller ship will probably be more maneuverable; a bigger ship can put out more sail, and if the conditions are right might actually be faster. Some ships might be faster sailing into the wind than others, and vice versa. Ships also evolved, so a heavy war galleon might be reasonably maneuverable and fast for its day, might appear slow and cumbersome in Nelson's navy (and definitely under armed).

For an overview you might want to look at the old GURPS Swashbucklers book (which I think is good for circa 1700), or the GURPS Age of Napoleon if you are interested in the later period.

Raum

2013-08-04, 06:25 PM

2) Was it common for ships to be captured, and if so, how did they move the captured ship back to port? Did all ships have sufficient crew to man multiple ships? It seems unlikely that you can just tow large battleships like that with another ship (at least the image that this conjures in my mind looks patently stupid).Capturing ships wasn't uncommon - short of fire, ships were amazingly resilient. Prior to explosive shells holed ships could be patched at sea without too much trouble.

As for captured ships, they'd be sailed by members of the victor's crew. In 1797, the USS Constitution had 450 crew members (including 55 marines and 30 boys). For comparison, a large merchant ship might have 150 crew including traders and clerks. Minimal sailing crew was probably less than a third of that.

Towing ships was usually done by one or more "boats" and not something you'd do for any distance unless desperate.

3) What was the command structure on a typical ship during those days, Was it Captain > bunch of officers > bunch of crew members or did they have more elaborate chains of command?Military ranks were very structured but even merchants had set command structures. You have the Captain followed by some number of Lieutenants (or Mates if civilian) depending on the size of the ship. Then you have your midshipmen - young officers in training. Warships will have gun crews as well as able seaman and ordinary seaman ranks. You'll also have specialists such as carpenters, sailmakers, surgeon, and even cooks.

4) Were larger ships always faster/slower than smaller ships or were there ships build specifically for speed and ships build specifically for firepower?There's a lot of variation but, in general, larger warships were slower than smaller warships. Of course age, maintenance, ship type, crew skill, and the sail pattern / design are going to affect speed.

Edit: I highly recommend reading Six Frigates (http://www.amazon.com/Six-Frigates-Epic-History-Founding/dp/039333032X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375655793&sr=8-1&keywords=six+frigates) if you're interested in that era of sailing ships.

Mr Beer

2013-08-04, 06:58 PM

Speaking as a dancer of nine years; Dancers are extremely strong. They have a huge amount of endurance as well. Practices and rehearsals go on for a very long time. Its kind of like the long hours that actors put in but you are also running and jumping all the time.

Its actually quite hard, dancers need to be very strong but they also need to be very flexible and quite thin. It's especially hard for the girls, who are often expected to be supermodel thin and still have massive strength and endurance.

DM

I've heard anecdotal stories of (good) soccer players taking dancing classes and being distressed by the cardio fitness required, let alone the strength.

Mike_G

2013-08-04, 09:25 PM

That depends on the folks in question. Elite gymnasts and sprinters are very strong - I'm not sure about dancers.

Never said they weren't. I said a power lifter is stronger. Dancers and gymnasts have good co-ordination and are fit. But they don't lit 500 pounds. Being co-ordinated and fit will help you fence, lifting 500 pounds, not so much.

But the human body still weighs quite a bit.

And a muscle weighs a lot, so if you are much much stronger, you will be likely to be much heavier.

Explosive strength - the kind that matters for Olympic lifting and fighting - is speed. In crude terms, it's a matter of power-to-weight ratio. The really big guy might be slower than the smaller person because conditioned smaller people tend to be stronger for their size than hulking brutes.

An elephant is way stronger than a squirrel. Which one moves quicker of the line?

Quick and accurate is more important in fencing than brute strength. People who train for precision and speed will do better than the "I pick things up and put them down" guy. So being "20 times stronger" means pretty much nothing. I'm sure the big, hulking, Olympic power lifters can lift a boatload more than I can. I'm also sure I can make a quicker lunge with a foil.

The only fencer I've ever sparred - using Lance's RSWs - didn't seem any faster than I am and didn't have much a clue how to deal with George Silver's style. (Note: I don't claim this says anything about modern fencers in general.)

I did a lot of fencing, and did a bit of SCA sparring, and my observed experience was that fast little people were likely to be better fencers than big, strong people. Maybe not better fighters, but more likely to win he 'tag with swords" game that is fencing.

I did get as USFA rating in sabre, before I was old and arthritic, so I do know a little bit about sport fencing.

fusilier

2013-08-05, 01:58 AM

Silver Swift

2013-08-05, 06:08 AM

Thanks for the answers everyone! :smallsmile:

Galloglaich

2013-08-05, 09:26 AM

Tracked down some information in my (old) copy of GURPS Swashbucklers:

Dealing with the 1650-1725 period, a small sloop could be manned by as few as three sailors! Although 6-10 was a more common minimum. A large warship required 30 sailors, and merchants were usually 15-20. Even a small sloop could pack in as many as 40 men (and pirates would do this), and a large warship of that time could have more than 400 men aboard! So there were plenty of men available, if the concern was just sailing the ship to a friendly port.

Keep in mind those numbers are the bare minimum to sail the ship (and probably not sailing it too efficiently). Fighting is practically out of the question with a skeleton crew.

Merchant vessels rarely carried more than 50 men, as they just cost extra and took up more cargo space.

To add to this, a large medieval carrack (such as the Peter von Danzig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_von_Danzig_(ship))) or an armed cog from the 15th century had a sailing crew of about 50 men and additional 150-300 fighting men, of whom about 1/3 were handgunners and the rest infantry or 'marines' (though the term wasn't used then) meant for boarding other ships.

The Peter von Danzig carried 18 guns, of mostly small caliber pieces (3-5 pounders), so it relied heavily on handgunners and crossbowmen and on boarding actions.

The mighty 16th century Adler von Lubeck* (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adler_von_L%C3%BCbeck), by contrast, had over 1,000 crew and was armed with an astonishing 138 cannon, including 8 × bronze 48 pounders, 6 × bronze 24 pounders, 26 × bronze 10 pounders, 4 × bronze 5 pounders, 8 × bronze 3 pounders, 10 × iron 6 pounders, 40 × iron 1½ pounders, and 36 small caliber iron guns.

The crew consisted of 350 crew and 650 marines.

G

* created during a moment of paranoia by the Hanseatic League to fight off English and Danish fleets from the Baltic.

warty goblin

2013-08-05, 09:54 AM

So here's a question that's been batting around my brain for a while. The traditional view I've seen espoused in many a history book is that the Roman gladius was superior to the Gallic 'longsword' (call it that for wont of a better term) because it could more easily be used in a close press. Which seems reasonable at first glance.

But if the press is really close, if the shields are in fact locked together, it seems unlikely that a person could deliver a thrust to the abdomen, supposedly the preferred attack with a gladius. The shields would be in the way. Moreover, the classical curved scutum seems like it would block a legionary from making attacks around its left rim. Any strike from the legionary's right would be to an enemy's left, and shielded, side. In that situation wouldn't the longer Gallic blade in fact offer an advantage, since it could more easily cut over or under the shields?

Matthew

2013-08-05, 12:15 PM

Generally speaking, "short" swords are about getting in close and turning a reach advantage into a disadvantage (the big shield being for warding off blows just prior to that point). We do not really know exactly how ancient and medieval battles were actually fought, but it seems unlikely that there were long periods of "shield to shield" fighting. Here is a good contemporary quote from the early empire, though:

... Holding their sword straight out, they would strike their opponents in the groin, pierce their sides, and drive their blows through their breasts into their vitals. And if they saw any of them keeping these parts of the body protected, they would cut the tendons of their knees or ankles and topple them to the ground roaring and biting their shields and uttering cries resembling the howling of wild beasts ... [Dionysus of Halicarnassus]

It is a pretty savage image, but I think it makes the point well.

Spiryt

2013-08-05, 01:08 PM

But if we somehow have shield pressed together in almost '2 pm railway crowd', then options of actually dealing effective cuts are even more limited.

So many people doubt that such situations were in fact that common. A bit looser order could be preferred and tried to maintain...

In that tight order, wrestling, fists, pulls, pushes teeth and all other attempts at controlling the enemy would inevitably enter anyway.

Also, the question is on how much exactly Gallic swords would be actually longer than Roman?

In late, waning La Tene period, difference could be substantial, but it was not actually period were continental Celts were fighting Romans a lot.

While in earlier period difference could be really not that significant. A lot swords from rough 'Italy, Spain, France' regions would in fact be quite similar - stabby, but broad and bold blades around 50 - 70 cm long...

Galloglaich

2013-08-05, 01:26 PM

That, and the Romans themselves seem to have widely adopted the longer, more cutting-oriented spatha type sword by the 1st Century AD (apparently in reaction to their use by mostly Germanic tribes they were starting to deal with more and more by that time)

G

Matthew

2013-08-05, 01:49 PM

The Romans went through a period of using very short swords in the late republic and early empire (as in 18" blades and the like), but prior to and after that they were using a longer blade (24-30"). Quite why the change occurred remains elusive, but it is probably about tactical doctrine (maybe encouraging soldiers to get very close). For example, we have an analogue with the Spartans who apparently also used a very short sword by comparison with their fellow Hellenes. Polybius tells us that the frontage required for each individual Roman soldier in c. 300 was 6' in order that they have room to strike with their swords, and contrasts this with the 3' frontage that the Greek Pike phalanxes were using. The latter is also the space that Vegetius tells us that Roman soldiers had for whatever period his source might have been, which again suggests some sort of tactical change. He seems unconcerned about the length of the blade, even though famously recommending the thrust over the cut with what was by then the spatha (he also refers to a semi-spatha, but not as an alternative side arm).

Of course, the spatha was associated with the cavalry and by the time Vegetius was writing horsemen were the "real" spine of the Roman army (as he makes clear himself) so there is also the contention that increased use of cavalry caused the change, but that does not explain why longer swords were used earlier, since the Roman army was chiefly infantry at that time. Polybius paints a picture of an army that refused to fight on open ground, effectively operating as a sort of "medium" infantry. It is interesting to compare this to medieval armies and you could tentatively draw the following conclusions:

1) Soldiers that expect to fight sometimes as foot and sometimes as horse are inclined to favour longer swords.
2) Soldiers that expect to fight sometimes in open order and sometimes in close order are inclined to favour longer swords.
3) Soldiers that expect to fight almost exclusively in close order are inclined to favour shorter swords.

The first two would describe Britons, Gauls and Germans as well as early Roman, late Roman and early medieval fighters.

Galloglaich

2013-08-05, 02:12 PM

The Romans are also kind of unique in pre-industrial military history in that from late Republican times onward, the primary weapon of their infantry was the javelin. I'm also not sure precisely when cavalry began to become more important than infantry for the Romans but I think it was centuries after they had mostly adopted the spatha in the 1st C AD.

Most armies historically used some kind of thrusting spear or combined thrusting / cutting or striking weapon (halberd, godendag, falx, etc.) as their primary weapon. The romans too used the hasta type spear (among others) as their primary weapon during the Early Republic, but by the time of the Marian Reform, if not earlier, they had shifted to using javelins (pila (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilum)) or darts (plumbata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumbata)) as their main weapon so their only hand-to-hand weapon was the sword. So this makes their choice of what sword to use particularly interesting.

Roman soldiers also carried a dagger, the pugio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugio), which tended to be pretty big. So the choice to carry an 18" sword along with a 10" or 12" dagger is pretty interesting. Gladius that I was aware of were in the range of 26"-33", which gets pretty close to the length of the Spatha, at around 35-40" very roughly speaking.

The Celtic (La Tene) spatha type swords I've seen were surprisingly small and delicate looking, and the gladius surprisingly big (fat... just a big fat sword) to me.

It's worth noting that double-edged daggers not too unlike the pugio became very popular in the medieval world as a secondary sidearm (after the sword or axe) in the 11th century or thereabouts, becoming almost universal in one form or another among the better equipped fighting classes into the 17th Century. Before that the barbarians were carrying seaxes and similar single-edged blades.

After that with the rise of the professional soldier the bayonet came into favor.

G

Yora

2013-08-05, 02:14 PM

Is there anything known about the weight a Roman legionaire would have to carry around when on the march? Including weapons and armor.

Matthew

2013-08-05, 02:30 PM

One thing to bear in mind is that the Roman army was almost always composite, by which I mean at least half comprised of auxiliaries who fought with a completely different set of weapons. Sometimes people contend that by the late principate that most of the line fighting was left up to the auxiliaries and the legionaries acted as a reserve (or sometimes as a sort of engineers core for siege works). Certainly at the time of Caesar and Pompey the legions made extensive use of field fortifications on the battlefield. The big exception to all this is when the reforms first kicked in c. 200 BC when the legions were first termed (or not) Marius' Mules.

I do not think the spatha was generally adopted by infantry in the first century, as far as I was aware it was sometime in the second. Either way, though, there may be some confusion about blade and overall length above (including the hilt an imperial gladius would be somewhere between 25-30", but the mid-republican gladius was more like 34" with a blade of 26-27"). Here is a handy link from Mike Bishop: http://romanmilitaryequipment.co.uk/figures.htm

and another: http://www.romancoins.info/MilitaryEquipment-Attack.html

also this: http://www.larp.com/legioxx/gladius.html

Spiryt

2013-08-05, 02:31 PM

Brother Oni

2013-08-05, 04:16 PM

Is there anything known about the weight a Roman legionaire would have to carry around when on the march? Including weapons and armor.

I've seen values of ~30kgs (~66lbs) which is semi supported by some re-enactors I've spoken to, although they don't typically march with all the non-combat gear a legionary would carries.

For reference, modern infantrymen typically carry about 80lbs worth of gear and this figure of around 60-80lbs worth of equipment has pretty much remained consistent throughout the ages - the optimal weight that a fit adult human can carry without significantly affecting their combat ability was found fairly on in military history.

AgentPaper

2013-08-05, 04:39 PM

I've seen values of ~30kgs (~66lbs) which is semi supported by some re-enactors I've spoken to, although they don't typically march with all the non-combat gear a legionary would carries.

For reference, modern infantrymen typically carry about 80lbs worth of gear and this figure of around 60-80lbs worth of equipment has pretty much remained consistent throughout the ages - the optimal weight that a fit adult human can carry without significantly affecting their combat ability was found fairly on in military history.

Heck, I'd expect it was well known even before civilization. Hunter-Gatherers would need to often walk a long ways to get food, and on the trip back they would need to carry as much meat as they could from their kill without being too encumbered to fight off wolves or other predators if need be.

Galloglaich

2013-08-05, 06:49 PM

I'm not sure if that really that unique.

We don't have that much sources about other, especially illiterate people, but javelins and some throw-able spears were extremely popular all around among 'barbarian' societies.

I think what is unique about it, is (from the sources we do have, literary and archeological) that all the 'barbarian' societies used some kind of thrusting spears as well as throwing spears and javelins. They even used the pilum but as a combination thrusting / throwing weapon (as the angon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angon)) which arguably evolved into the thrusting-only ahelespiess (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awl_pike)

As far as spatha goes, we should clarify that it's wide adoption among infantry was much later story than 1st century.

In fact at the beginning of 2nd century, widely used 'Pompeii' gladii were probably shortest ever

You are right it looks like the shift from gladius to spatha was more in the 2nd Century, my bad.

G

rrgg

2013-08-05, 08:14 PM

It definitely seems like the Romans were going against the grain for the most part. Especially when their swords actually decreased in length.

http://foaienationala.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/falx_03.jpg
One interesting (albeit quick and dirty) experiment I found is to take a yardstick and press your left shoulder up against a wall to try and simulate the absolute worst case "up close and personal" scenario. Then see how far back you can hold the yardstick and still comfortably stab.

For reference, 18" is about the length of a Pompeii gladius blade, 24" was the upper end of early gladius blades, and 30-36" should be enough for a longsword.

warty goblin

2013-08-05, 08:23 PM

One interesting (albeit quick and dirty) experiment I found is to take a yardstick and press your left shoulder up against a wall to try and simulate the absolute worst case "up close and personal" scenario. Then see how far back you can hold the yardstick and still comfortably stab.

For reference, 18" is about the length of a Pompeii gladius blade, 24" was the upper end of early gladius blades, and 30-36" should be enough for a longsword.

Interesting. Checking that with the wasters I've got to hand, the 28 inch blade Viking age number is no trouble, while the 33 inch blade longsword is significantly more of a reach. I don't think I'd be much good if anybody was slammed up tight behind me. The greatsword is right out of the question, can't hardly even get the point on line.

fusilier

2013-08-06, 02:28 AM

. . .
3) Soldiers that expect to fight almost exclusively in close order are inclined to favour shorter swords.
. . .

Last time I floated the following theory on this board people reacted like I was a crazy person from the far side of the moon. I don't want to rehash all that again, but it was a pretty good theory for explaining why the Roman army failed to deal with barbarians, when they had been so successful before.

When I was in college, the fact that the Roman infantry switched to a longer sword was seen as evidence that they were no longer expected to fight with swords in formation, this was then extrapolated to a decline in discipline. Also the increased use of cavalry was considered evidence that discipline in the army was declining (less disciplined infantry being unwilling to conduct rapid marches).

My understanding was that this occurred during or shortly after the Military Anarchy (aka Imperial Crisis), of the 3rd century. But Galloglaich and Matthew are saying that it occurred before then? (For the infantry?) That would cast doubt on some of the evidence for the claim that Military Anarchy messed up the army's traditions and discipline. (It wouldn't disprove the theory, but it would remove some of the supporting evidence)

Another thought that I had had was based on the observation that formation tactics require a certain threshold of men to be effective and a certain amount of preparation time. If the Roman Legions were no longer keeping the border secure, and relatively small escorts were being ambushed on the frontier, then switching to a long sword may have been a practical decision.

fusilier

2013-08-06, 02:50 AM

To add to this, a large medieval carrack (such as the Peter von Danzig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_von_Danzig_(ship))) or an armed cog from the 15th century had a sailing crew of about 50 men and additional 150-300 fighting men, of whom about 1/3 were handgunners and the rest infantry or 'marines' (though the term wasn't used then) meant for boarding other ships.

The Peter von Danzig carried 18 guns, of mostly small caliber pieces (3-5 pounders), so it relied heavily on handgunners and crossbowmen and on boarding actions.

The mighty 16th century Adler von Lubeck* (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adler_von_L%C3%BCbeck), by contrast, had over 1,000 crew and was armed with an astonishing 138 cannon, including 8 × bronze 48 pounders, 6 × bronze 24 pounders, 26 × bronze 10 pounders, 4 × bronze 5 pounders, 8 × bronze 3 pounders, 10 × iron 6 pounders, 40 × iron 1½ pounders, and 36 small caliber iron guns.

The crew consisted of 350 crew and 650 marines.

G

* created during a moment of paranoia by the Hanseatic League to fight off English and Danish fleets from the Baltic.

For ships of the 15th century, artillery was primarily defensive in nature to help out in a boarding action, or maybe to prevent being boarded in the first place. Typically light cannons were used (there were exceptions). Galleys were the first to mount heavy cannons that might be able to take out other ships. When carracks started to mount heavy cannons they were usually at the back, both for reasons of stability, and to ward off any pursuing galley! At Zonchio in 1499 the main Ottoman carrack had a pair of heavy cannon in the waist. Over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries broadside tactics developed, and the broadside eventually became powerful enough to sink other ships.

The Adler from Lubeck was something of an anomaly during the 16th century, it was a big ship with an unusual amount of artillery. It apparently never saw combat. It's design would not have worked well as a warship for the tactics of the time -- similarly gunned ships built in the first half of the 17th century were criticized for being too cumbersome -- it took the development of line astern tactics in the second half of the 17th century to make such ships effective warships. Many of the ships that had been criticized earlier, and survived to see combat in that later period, did quite well!

Nevertheless the Adler would have been a very strong ship on the defensive, and trying to attack such a ship would be dangerous. As it was intended for convoy protection it's cumbersome nature may not have been a detriment.

Galloglaich

2013-08-06, 10:00 AM

Well, you have to keep in mind that naval combat in the 15th and the 16th Centuries were totally different in the Mediterranean from the North and Baltic Sea and from the open Atlantic and beyond.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Venetian_galley_at_Curzola-engraving.jpg

In the Med it was dominated by galleys, naval combat seemed to really be almost all galleys, and that was definitely a combination of boarding actions (including some ramming like in the old Classical days) with shooting bows and light firearms more than anything else, with cannon only gradually beginning to play an important role by the second half of the 16th century.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2469/4089583649_5919b82e11.jpg
The principle tactical consideration was the same as it had been in the time of Athens and Sparta; to be able to out-run the other guy so that you could gang up on him when you had the numbers, and could prevent being ganged up on when you didn't. A lot like cavalry tactics on the steppe, except with ships. This is where the Venetians had a really big advantage during that period because they used paid sailors who rowed faster and had better endurance (and could fight during boarding actions) while everyone else pretty much used convicts or slaves. The Venetians literally ran rings around the Ottomans in several engagements - notably during the siege of Malta for example where it cost the Ottomans dearly. But the galleys were generally too small and sleek to accommodate a lot of heavy guns, those they did have were on the stern and usually not that big or accurate.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/One_of_the_Venetian_Galleasses_at_Lepanto_-_Pg_74.jpg

http://well-of-souls.com/civ/images/great_galleass2.jpg

The Venetians also solved this problem when they pioneered the larger galleass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galleass) type "galley battleships" which were less maneuverable in the Med since they relied more on sails, but could pack a major punch with large cannons during pitched battles, such as at Lepanto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lepanto_(1571)).

http://www.learningpracticalturkish.com/galley-warship-painterly.jpg
For the Ottomans and other Muslim forces, Barbary pirates, Mamlukes and so on, archery continued to play a really important role in naval combat in the Med, having the advantage of shooting in arcs over the walls of the side of a ship was a big thing. Some military historians date the decline of Ottoman naval power from Lepanto and cite the number of trained archers that they lost as the principle reason.

http://www.treasurelore.com/florida/galleon2.jpg
In the Med, Galleons, Cogs, and Carracks were offensively insignificant, since they usually couldn't choose when to engage or disengage (unless there was a good wind up) but their freeboards were so high that they were effective defensively. This is because they were difficult to board from a galley and had a major height advantage in the exchange of missiles: crossbow, gun, bow, firepot and javelin shots. A good example of this was during the (successful) Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Constantinople#Byzantine_dispositions_a nd_strategies), the Genoese were able to run their naval blockade several times with large sailing vessels, which were able to fight off whole fleets of Ottoman galleys, until the Ottomans finally set up their big shore guns to close off the Bosporus.

http://buch-rasmussen.dk/images/seastallion.jpg

In the North, the dynamic was a bit different and is far less well understood or closely analyzed by modern military historians. In the early Medieval period it was still all about rowed ships like in the Med, in this case derivations of the old Viking ship, the drakkar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drekar) and busse type, (except that they had added a proper rudder instead of a steer board). They were used by Estonian and Curonian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curonians#History) Vikings who devastated the coastlines of Denmark and Sweden in the 11th and 12th Century (triggering the Northern Crusades as a response), and continued to be used by Scandinavian navies as well. These could get around under oar power quickly and go into estuaries and rivers as a means of escaping larger fleets which made them very useful for piracy.

http://www.tallship-fan.de/koggentreffen07/roland_von_bremen_g.jpg

http://www.stradbrokeislandgalleon.com/ship_cog.jpg
The Bremen Cog

But they had the same problem that galleys did when facing ships with high freeboard such as the Bremen Cog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cog_(ship)) invented by the Hanseatic league, or the Hulk used by the Dutch. This was used for advantage by pirates in the 14th Century when the Victual Brothers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victual_Brothers) attacked Bergen, Norway for example, the Norwegian naval levy couldn't deal with the heavily armed cogs they were using.

In contrast to the Mediterranean, where the galley in one form or another remained dominant until the 17th century, by the end of the 14th Century naval combat in the North and Baltic Sea was dominated by sailing vessels, though the Mediterranean powers like France, Spain and the Italian maritime republics still brought galleys up north sometimes, but they proved to be no-match for the larger sailing ships in the Northern seas.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Vroom_Hendrick_Cornelisz_Dutch_Ships_Ramming_Spani sh_Galleys_off_the_Flemish_Coast_in_October_1602.j pg/771px-Vroom_Hendrick_Cornelisz_Dutch_Ships_Ramming_Spani sh_Galleys_off_the_Flemish_Coast_in_October_1602.j pg

http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher/Genealogy/Documents/Asia/Ships/carrack.jpg

By the 15th Century the Hanse and other naval powers such as England and Holland had begun to adapt the Atlantic Carracks*, which were much more maneuverable than Cogs, and could carry quite heavy guns. Ships like the Peter Von Danzig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_von_Danzig_(ship)) proved to be extremely formidable and successful against cogs and Mediterranean galleys alike, both in defensive (i.e. convoy escort) duties and as a predatory privateer intercepting enemy convoys and merchant vessels. The style of warfare in the 15th Century and early 16th once again seems to have not only been about boarding actions (which were important) but also relied heavily on bows, crossbows, and handguns as well as various thrown weapons, such as we see in the heavy contingent of archers on the Mary Rose (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_rose). You also see lots of sort of heavily constructed (almost 'armored') crows nests on the masts of 15th and 16th century ships which were fighting platforms for gunners and marksmen (I think the Adler von Lubeck had 7 heavily built crows nests). I have a Medieval image I'll post later when I get home which illustrates this pretty well.

Early examples in the later generation of gun-armed vessels were simply ahead of their time, like Hussite howitzers and war wagons. Dismissing the Adler Von Lübeck as a dud is foolish, IMO. It didn't get in any major engagements but that didn't mean it never saw action (it sailed as a warship for 5 years and as a merchantman for 20), and contrary to the opinion of the wiki, I suspect it did indeed serve it's actual purpose, which was to make sure that nobody messed with Hanse convoys or challenged the military hegemony of the Hanseatic League at that time. I don't think line abreast tactics were necessary - some of the famous failures of giant warships which came later and proved not to be seaworthy and sank on their maiden voyage, such as the Vasa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_Ship), were simply built by institutions which weren't able to follow wise naval practices as well as the old salts at Lübeck.

G

* initially developed, I believe, by the Portuguese for their exploration down the African coast

fusilier

2013-08-06, 04:15 PM

Well, we've gotten a bit off topic here, but I'll respond to a few things.

First of all, in the 15th and 16th century there was crossover in warfare between the Mediterranean and North Atlantic. Mediterranean style galleys were being operated in the English channel, and Carracks were being operated everywhere (they were actually the result of Mediterranean and northern european ship designs coming together). See the Battle of Brest in 1513 for an example of galleys fighting successfully in Northern waters.

Heavy cannons -- Early carracks, galleons, etc., couldn't carry a really big gun, like a galley could. When heavy ordnance first went to sea, it was as the centerline gun on a galley. This was mounted at the front (not the stern), and was used offensively, by pointing the galley at the target. The sizes of these guns varied, generally getting bigger over time (although the earliest ones look pretty big). By Lepanto (1571) they were typically a 50+ pounder. Lighter guns were added to the sides (12-15lbers, and 6 lbers, and maybe a smattering of swivel guns). However, in a galley the front was really the only feasible place to mount heavy guns. Swivel guns were used elsewhere. The heavy ordnance on a galley was, for a time, the only ordnance capable of sinking another ship. (In fact there's a good chance the Mary Rose was sunk by a well placed shot from a Genoese galley).

See this link for and explanation (and pic that I can't post here) on the development of Galley firepower: http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/guilmartin.com/Appendix6.html

EDIT-- Here's the pic -- EDIT
http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/guilmartin.com/images/Fig19.jpg

The high-freeboard of carracks and earlier sailing vessels had made them difficult for galleys to attack, but with the introduction of artillery the galley regained prominence as an offensive weapon. It was not terribly well suited to the environmental conditions outside of the Mediterranean, so they rarely made much of a big impact in Northern waters. But within the Mediterranean they continued to dominate naval warfare. Also, the kind of warfare that galleys were well suited for is often over looked -- small raiding actions were a big part of naval warfare during this time period, but it's easier to look at big sea battles. The Spanish even sent a fleet of galleys in the late 16th century to Flanders, where they successfully dealt with the Dutch freebooters that had been raiding the coast. But galleys are expensive to maintain, and within a decade the flotilla was derelict -- they needed a proper support network. Similar events happened with the galleys that Spain sent to the Caribbean for anti-piracy duty, despite glowing reports of their success, they were out of action within a few years.

As I stated earlier, 15th century carracks didn't have a proper place to mount a heavy gun. When they started to experiment with heavier guns, it was at low in the stern facing backwards (what would be called "the gun room"), for reasons of stability. This position was necessarily defensive. Portuguese caravels around 1500 are believed to have carried one or two heavy guns at the waist. Even then there's evidence that they were stored below decks and only brought up when fighting was expected (again for purposes of stability). Over the course of the 1500s, sailing ships could carry bigger and more guns in the waist, although the biggest guns on a sailing warship were still usually at the stern. Not until the late 1500s were sailing ships considered to have sufficient firepower to knockout another ship. Even then, if you look at the Spanish Armada, the effort was usually prodigious. Not until the battle of Cadiz (in 1596), could galleons take on galleys under conditions that were considered ideal for galleys. That started the slow decline of the galley, although it wouldn't disappear completely until the introduction of the steamship.

As for rowing styles -- in the 15th century all navies are believed to have used free, paid oarsmen. Over the course of the 16th century (with massive wage increases) did galley slaves (often convicts) start to be used on galleys. The Spanish went over to almost completely slave crews by around 1540. The Venetians resisted it for much longer, although they were experimenting with it by the mid 16th century (nevertheless I think only six Venetian ships at Lepanto were rowed by slaves). The Ottomans used a mixed system of professional oarsmen, slaves, and conscripts. The North Africans should be considered separate from the Ottomans, and it's less clear exactly how their ships were crewed. They certainly took a lot of slaves (they were very heavily engaged in slave raiding) -- but they tended to operate smaller galliots and fustas, which couldn't carry as many soldiers and may have given them cause to use free oarsmen who could also fight. I suspect it varied depending upon what they were expecting to fight.

The reason the Venetians could out run the Ottomans, wasn't simply because they continued to use professional oarsmen, but it was also an emphasis on ship design. Venetian ships were usually lighter and faster under oars -- they also had some of the best cannons, meaning their cannons were lighter for the weight of shot. (A Venetian 50 pounder could weigh less than a Spanish 30 pounder!). Spanish ships on the other hand were usually heavier and better than Venetian ships under sail! Ottoman ships were something in between, but the Ottomans tended to field a lot of large galliots which could be faster.

Generally speaking, during the 16th century, the Venetians focused on speed under oars. The Spanish on a heavy battery, and the Ottomans were somewhere in between. That's painting the picture with a very broad brush though.

Naval combat still focused on boarding, and all sorts of archers, crossbowmen, and handgunners, etc., were used -- changing depending upon time period, and nationality. Those soldiers should be considered to be part of the "boarding fight" even though they used missile weapons, and rarely went over to the enemies' ships -- the ranges were short (certainly compared to mid 16th century naval cannon), and typically they were most engaged when the ships were stuck together.

The Galleas was an interesting ship. It was typically heavily armed, although like a galley they still stuck most of the armament up front, it could support a broadside battery. They were very slow under oars, however in a large fleet engagement this wasn't a detriment, as in order to maintain a line abreast formation a galley fleet could only move at about 2 knots. At Lepanto they were put in front of the Christian fleet, and helped break up the Ottoman battle line.

Dismissing the Adler Von Lübeck as a dud is foolish, IMO.
I did not dismiss the Adler Von Lubeck as a dud -- I said at the time it would not have been considered a good warship, because the tactics in use. It would be very effective defensively, and as it appears to have been created for convoy escort it probably would have been a powerful ship in it's intended role. More importantly, I wanted to note that the size of the Adler was exceptional, and should not be considered standard.

fusilier

2013-08-06, 04:23 PM

* initially developed, I believe, by the Portuguese for their exploration down the African coast

You are thinking of Caravels. Carracks were a development of various Northern European and Mediterranean naval traditions coming together (probably from the Hulk in the north, and not the Cog, as Cogs have flat bottoms, but these terms are poorly specified). Caravels appear to have been a development from Atlantic fishing boats, and like the carrack it was also a mix of Atlantic and Mediterranean designs. While it's not clear if the Portuguese "invented" the design, they actively developed it into a vessel of exploration in the early 15th century.

Galloglaich

2013-08-06, 05:46 PM

Not until the late 1500s were sailing ships considered to have sufficient firepower to knockout another ship.

I think as usual you have good information on the Mediterranean region.

The vessels, all carracks I believe, Great Michael (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Michael) (launched in 1512), Margaret (launched in 1506) and Henri Grace a Dieu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Gr%C3%A2ce_%C3%A0_Dieu) (launched 1516), and Peter Pomegranate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pomegranate) (1510) and the Mary Rose (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose) herself (1511... then rebuilt larger in 1536) were all heavily armed, sufficient to sink another ship. Three of the five had crew compliments equivalent to the Adler von Lubeck (in the 700 - 1000 crew range).

Great Michael had a broadside of 24 guns (later 36 'main guns'), plus 3 5" basilisk. Henri Grace a Dieu had 43 cannon plus 141 swivel guns. Peter Pomegranate had 36 cannon. Mary Rose had 70 guns and used gunports.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Bronze_Demi_Cannon_Culverins_Pmoth.png/450px-Bronze_Demi_Cannon_Culverins_Pmoth.png
Some of the guns from the Mary Rose

The Hanseatic armed Orlogschiffe and Friedenskoggen which escorted the Hanse merchant convoys were not always as big as these Royal ships*, but they were big enough that they were able to cope with the English navy sufficient to win the Anglo Hanseatic War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Hanseatic_War) against England in the late 15th Century and they sunk numerous pirate ships (like when the vessel Bunte Kuh which captured the famous pirate Stortebecker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_St%C3%B6rtebeker) in the late 14th Century) and ships they were preying upon as pirates (privateers) themselves, such as when Paul Benecke (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Beneke), a city councilman of Danzig, captured Hans Memlings "Last Judgement" triptych from an Italian galley in 1470 with the Peter Von Danzig.

There were several incidents where pirates were sunk and galleys as well, as far back as the 14th Century. But most of this information is in German, Danish, Swedish, Polish or Dutch so not as well known in English-language circles.

Naval combat still focused on boarding, and all sorts of archers, crossbowmen, and handgunners, etc., were used -- changing depending upon time period, and nationality. Those soldiers should be considered to be part of the "boarding fight" even though they used missile weapons, and rarely went over to the enemies' ships -- the ranges were short (certainly compared to mid 16th century naval cannon), and typically they were most engaged when the ships were stuck together.

Actually a lot of 'boarding actions' never reached the boarding stage, as ships often had similar speeds and were slow to begin with, and in the case of the carracks and cogs and so on, still hard to board, so the pursuit could take a long time well within the range of guns, crossbows and bows, and ended up being where most of the 'action' took place. Hence the value of the stern or bow gun, and the main use of the archers, crossbowmen and gunners in many actions. And the cannon too since, while it was possible to sink another ship with cannon that fired solid shot, it wasn't ever easy. Far more often (even well into the Age of Sail) either a pursuing ship would be damaged and break off, or a pursued ship would be damaged and get captured, since the goal was the take prizes more often than not.

G

* with a few exceptions, like Peter Von Danzig which was in the same ballpark

fusilier

2013-08-06, 06:48 PM

I think as usual you have good information on the Mediterranean region, but less so for the Northern half of Europe.

The vessels, all carracks I believe, Great Michael (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Michael) (launched in 1512), Margaret (launched in 1506) and Henri Grace a Dieu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Gr%C3%A2ce_%C3%A0_Dieu) (launched 1516), and Peter Pomegranate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pomegranate) (1510) and the Mary Rose (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose) herself (1511... then rebuilt larger in 1536) were all heavily armed, sufficient to sink another ship. Three of the five had crew compliments equivalent to the Adler von Lubeck (in the 700 - 1000 crew range).

Great Michael had a broadside of 24 guns (later 36 'main guns'), plus 3 5" basilisk. Henri Grace a Dieu had 43 cannon plus 141 swivel guns. Peter Pomegranate had 36 cannon. Mary Rose had 70 guns and used gunports.

Sigh . . . Yes, they did mount a lot of guns, but none of those guns were as heavy as the centerline gun on a galley of the time. Also, those ships are all from the 16th century, not the 15th. Like I said, that's when they started to mount more and more guns. Finally, how many enemy ships did they sink in combat with those guns? Sinking a ship with cannon fire was a rare event, even for a well armed galley -- it also usually went against the purpose of the combat. The point is, regardless of the fact that these ships had lots of guns, those cannon were still mostly defensive in naval conflict. They still expected to close with and board each other. Most likely the biggest guns (the only ones that could begin to compete with a galley's centerline gun) were still being mounted in the rear in the gunroom. These guns could be used offensively, if the conditions were right, for example the King of Scotland used a fleet of carracks to destroy an island fortress in 1504.

But despite all these guns, the main tactical virtues of the carrack in the 1500s remained it's size and height. They didn't go around blasting each other out of the water with their cannons. To be clear, I'm not claiming that galleys went around sinking ships with their cannons as a matter of habit either. Cannons were used either defensively to keep another ship from boarding, or offensively to clear the deck before boarding. I'm claiming that it's more likely that a galley would sink an enemy ship with a cannon. Because its cannon were mounted in an offensive manner.

There were several incidents where pirates were sunk and galleys as well, as far back as the 14th Century. But most of this information is in German, Danish, Swedish, Polish or Dutch so not as well known in English-language circles.

You are not claiming that ships were sunk with shipboard cannons during the 14th century are you? That's a pretty serious claim, seeing as outside of limited actions in the War of Chioggia, there wasn't any serious use of ship board gunpowder weapons until the 15th century (earlier gunpowder was too hygroscopic) -- land based artillery is believable, and land based artillery could be very dangerous to ships.

Were the ships that were sunk being sunk with artillery fire? Ships can sink for lots of reasons, and burning and sinking was not an uncommon fate of ships that got tangled up during boarding. A la Zonchio 1499, where the two Venetian and one Ottoman carracks couldn't disentangle themselves and all three caught fire and sank. Ships crashing into each other can cause them to sink too (and still does).

captured Hans Memlings "Last Judgement" triptych from an Italian galley in 1470 with the Peter Von Danzig.

And then there was the Ottoman galleon carrying the daughter of the Sultan that was captured by some galleys of the Knights of St. John.

While a single instance does not define a trend, the dates should be noted. In the 15th century, when the cannon on all ships was very light, the carrack's high sides made it an effective warship that could deal with galleys. In the 16th century, there are numerous instances of galleys capturing galleons and carracks. Why? Artillery! The galley could stand off and bombard a sailing ship into submission, whereas all the guns of the sailing ship couldn't respond in kind. Only by the end of the century had that changed.

Actually a lot of 'boarding actions' never reached the boarding stage, as ships often had similar speeds and were slow to begin with, and in the case of the carracks and cogs and so on, still hard to board, so the pursuit could take a long time well within the range of guns, crossbows and bows, and ended up being where most of the 'action' took place. Hence the value of the stern or bow gun, and the main use of the archers, crossbowmen and gunners in many actions. And the cannon too since, while it was possible to sink another ship with cannon that fired solid shot, it wasn't ever easy. Far more often (even well into the Age of Sail) either a pursuing ship would be damaged and break off, or a pursued ship would be damaged and get captured, since the goal was the take prizes more often than not.

G

Agreed. Holding the enemy off was a big part of the missile fire from a ship, but the missile fire can still be seen as preliminary to, and a part of, the boarding action -- especially if you consider the instances where both sides are seeking to engage each other. As would be the case in most naval "battles" -- in most of the naval "combat" that took place, the opposite was probably true! :-) Artillery on all ships during the time was mainly used in the same way -- to prepare an enemy ship to be boarded, or to keep an enemy ship away. A galley's big centerline gun would have more range, and is perfectly positioned for an attack. Meaning they might be able to damage a ship that's attempting to flee from them.

----------------------------------------------------------
Galloglaich, what you are describing is the old version of naval history, that's dominated by a Northern perspective, and simply not paying attention to details, it goes something like this:

Galleys were low sleek ships which were used for warfare especially in the mediterranean. High-sided ships like carracks could defeat galleys because their high-sides made them invulnerable to boarding from those lower ships (a hyperbole to be sure, but the gist of it is correct). Carracks could mount lots of cannon, and could do battle with cannon --> galleons --> the Battle of Trafalgar.

More modern, and more detailed analysis shows that while carracks were effective at dealing with galleys during the 15th century, the introduction of heavy cannon flipped the equation, and breathed new life back into the galley. It was transitory, because eventually sailing ships got enough firepower that they could take on galleys, but for a while galleys were the champs. Of course, the Atlantic was never a very suitable place for galleys, and while they did operate there it was typically on a small scale. So it's understandable that earlier Northern European authors dismissed the galley in their study of naval history, as just some mediterranean anomaly (worse they typically used it as an example of Southern European backwardness). But to be accurate, galleys were the first to benefit from naval artillery -- sailing ships took a while to catch up, while the galley eventually headed up a technological cul-de-sac.

Galloglaich

2013-08-06, 11:33 PM

The ships I cited were all from the very beginning of the 16th century, and they were all carrying guns big enough to sink a ship (especially a galley, which tended to be very fragile) the notion that they didn't have A) guns big enough or B) guns well mounted enough (anywhere but the stern) is blown out of the water like a foundering Spanish galley smashed to bits by one of the EIGHT 48 lb guns on the Adler von Lubeck. Or by the forward mounted basilisk of the Great Michael, or by one of it's 36 cannons mounted broadside.

I am not describing a 'northern' (let alone an old Victorian / Anglo-Saxon, which I think is what you are implying) perspective, to the contrary I think you are doing your usual thing of seeing the entire world through the lens of your area of interest, in this case, the Med.

You probably missed it upthread and I don't have time to go collect it to repost, but I pointed out that there were basically three theaters of naval war in the 15th and 16th Century - Mediterranean Sea, Atlantic Ocean, and North / Baltic Seas, and they were all different. In the Med, I noted, galleys (and their variants) remained dominant right up to the 18th Century. This is basically because sailing winds were so unreliable and there was so much coastal area.

In the Atlantic only the most seaworthy ships could venture far from the coast, and that was the realm of the carrack and later the caravel and the galleon.

In the North, it was the cogg, and later the carrack, which really dominated warfare and the rowed boats, Viking style and Mediterranean galley style, played second fiddle, guns or no guns. They had a few successes mainly in coastal areas but then so did coggs and carracks in the Med occasionally.

Unlike you I'm not picking a side to be for in this debate, I'm as much a fan of the Venetians or for that matter the Ottomans naval history as I am the Hanse or the Scots.

As for the sink or board issue - the blasting with cannon usually stopped for one of two reasons, the pursuing ship was disabled and had to leave off, or the pursued ship was disabled and then helpless, at which point the crew would often surrender rather than be shot to pieces. Alot of time the goal was to break the mast or a bank of oars to stop or slow the ship in question. Galleys, as I already noted, did break apart quite often when hit with big guns (several Ottoman galleys were sunk by the Venetian cannons at Lepanto for example), more easily than carracks did. But any of these ships could be sunk once they no longer had the means of maneuvering or shooting back, it was just a matter of time and ammunition at that point. It did take a lot of ammunition because these were not explosive shells, just solid shot. Ships being so valuable though the goal was more often to capture the ship and if you needed to sink it, light it on fire with fire- arrows or other means was cheaper than using all the gunpowder. Cannon were used to disable, for the most part. But they did also sink ships.

Finally yes I am saying there is evidence of ships being sunk by gunfire in the 14th Century. I know of two cases. One was at the very end of the period, in the 1390's, by Simon of Utrecht (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_of_Utrecht) during his campaign against the Victual Brothers pirate guild. He allegedly sank several of their ships and captured others in two large naval engagements in the Baltic, one near Gotland and one near the island of Rügen.

The other was much earlier by the Breton pirate Jeanne de Clisson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_de_Clisson), who is reported to have sunk French ships by gunfire in he 1350's by at least one source I have. I'll transcribe and post when I can.

Regarding the gunpowder issue, corned powder was invented in the late 14th Century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#Manufacturing_technology) so I don't see how that argument works. The 'modern' chemical formulae for gunpowder were actually laid out in the Liber Ignium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Ignium) which dates to the late 13th (of which by random coincidence, there is a copy within the late 14th century fencing manual known as the 3227a (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3227a)), in folios 1r to 5v)

In the 15th Century I think it was actually not very uncommon for ships to be sunk by gunfire. There were also several ships sunk by gunfire during the sieges of Constantinople and Rhodes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Rhodes_%281480%29) in 1453 and 1480 respectively, though I have to go back and read if it was all shore gun or also naval gunfire. I have to go find the right books in my office.

but I'll check!

In the meantime, here is the other image I had promised upthread.

http://www.codexmartialis.com/download/file.php?id=94

It's a fanciful stylized image, 15th Century, I think it's from one of the versions of Belifortis (I honestly can't remember where I found it) but it gives you an idea of how they perceived using missile weapons in naval warfare, taking advantages of all the crows nests and other high structures, as well as hand weapons for boarding troops or 'marines'.

G

Brother Oni

2013-08-07, 02:13 AM

Uh guys? This isn't going to turn into another condittori shouting match discussion is it?

Knaight

2013-08-07, 02:21 AM

Uh guys? This isn't going to turn into another condittori shouting match discussion is it?

Honestly, I kind of hope it does. I learned a fair amount just watching that discussion, and I doubt I'm the only one.

fusilier

2013-08-07, 04:03 AM

Unlike you I'm not picking a side to be for in this debate, I'm as much a fan of the Venetians or for that matter the Ottomans naval history as I am the Hanse or the Scots.

What are you talking about? I'm on the side of scholarly research and study. ;-)

I am not describing a 'northern' (let alone an old Victorian / Anglo-Saxon, which I think is what you are implying) perspective, to the contrary I think you are doing your usual thing of seeing the entire world through the lens of your area of interest, in this case, the Med.

Actually you are describing that perspective, you're just not aware of it, because you haven't read the more recent research into the development of effective naval artillery. I would suggest you begin with (if you can access it):

The Earliest Shipboard Gunpowder Ordnance: An Analysis of Its Technical Parameters and Tactical Capabilities, by John F. Guilmartin Jr. The Journal of Military History, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Jul., 2007), pp. 649-669

It provides an excellent introduction, and covers the very early developments in gunpowder artillery at sea.

A more detailed description of the carrack and its development as well as comparisons to other galleys, can be found in his Galleons and Galleys book from 2002. Which covers from the battle of Sluys through the Battle of the Downs, and the development of European ships during that time (with a brief excursion to Japan).

To sum up. Carracks lacked the firepower to use their cannons offensively in naval combat, Galleons would be the first sailing ships to do so.* Carracks could use their firepower defensively, in a stand-off action. Galleys could use their cannons offensively, although sinking was still rare, and often not the goal. They had the edge in "stand-off" artillery, even though they had less weight of shot. The defeat of the English ships, which were some of the most heavily armed carracks of the time (including the Mary Rose), in April 1513, by 6(!) French galleys in a series of actions in Brest Roads is a very good example of how all those guns on those early carracks weren't a match for the one big gun that each galley carried.

--

* I have yet to find a definitive example of an early-mid 16th century carrack sinking another carrack with cannonfire -- I believe it exists, but so far all I can find is such ships being rammed or set on fire and sunk, even among the unusually heavily armed Baltic carracks of the 1560s. For galleons on the other hand, there are a few early examples, but they start to tick up quickly in the 1580s. Nevertheless the effort it takes to sink a ship during the 1588 Armada campaign with gunfire alone seems prodigious.

Sinking a galley with artillery fire isn't too difficult as they were pretty light -- but a cannon armed galley would have the edge in stand-off artillery against a sailing ship until the end of the 16th century.

fusilier

2013-08-07, 04:37 AM

Finally yes I am saying there is evidence of ships being sunk by gunfire in the 14th Century. I know of two cases. One was at the very end of the period, in the 1390's, by Simon of Utrecht (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_of_Utrecht) during his campaign against the Victual Brothers pirate guild. He allegedly sank several of their ships and captured others in two large naval engagements in the Baltic, one near Gotland and one near the island of Rügen.

The other was much earlier by the Breton pirate Jeanne de Clisson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_de_Clisson), who is reported to have sunk French ships by gunfire in he 1350's by at least one source I have. I'll transcribe and post when I can.

Regarding the gunpowder issue, corned powder was invented in the late 14th Century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#Manufacturing_technology) so I don't see how that argument works. The 'modern' chemical formulae for gunpowder were actually laid out in the Liber Ignium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Ignium) which dates to the late 13th (of which by random coincidence, there is a copy within the late 14th century fencing manual known as the 3227a (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3227a)), in folios 1r to 5v)

Corned powder was not the only issue. Gunpowder made from potassium nitrate has problems with absorbing moisture at sea. Prior to around 1400 European gunpowder wasn't made with potassium nitrate, it was with Calcium Nitrate. Calcium nitrate absorbs atmospheric moisture much more readily than potassium nitrate! Corning isn't established until sometime in the early 1400s.

The first record of the effective use of shipboard artillery comes from the siege of Chioggia in 1379-80. It's interesting to note that it predates the two advances in gunpowder noted above. Venetian galleys operating in lagoons were fitted with presumably light bombards and participated in the siege. They were not used against other ships, and as references to any sort of artillery on galleys don't appear for several decades afterwards, we can safely assume this was a one-off event.

According to Guilmartin's The Earliest Shipboard Gunpowder Ordnance . . ., "References to guns at sea before 1400 are few and equivocal and, the siege of Chioggia aside, where they can be trusted at all seem mostly to involve guns carried as cargo. Then from around 1410 references to shipboard ordnance become common, indeed almost commonplace."

I have read of some earlier claims of shipboard artillery, but I've usually seen such claims dismantled as being a bit eager to place an early date to artillery use. So I'm very dubious of any claims that ships were sunk by shipboard artillery fire during the 14th century (well, outside of the very limited siege of Chioggia I'm dubious that ships mounted ordnance at all in that period!).

Galloglaich

2013-08-07, 08:43 AM

Actually you are describing that perspective, you're just not aware of it, because you haven't read the more recent research into the development of effective naval artillery. I would suggest you begin with (if you can access it):

Gee fuslier, that's a rather broad assumption and not entirely charitable. Not only am I repeating Victorian fantasies, but I'm not even aware of it, and on top of that you know better than I do what I've read and what I haven't read? :)

What I have found during long years of amateur research, and getting a peer reviewed academic article published myself, is that most of the best available information on 15th or 16th century military matters are in the primary sources, and the archeological record. There is often a lag of 15 or 20 years at minimum before any of this stuff gets published in a book or synthesized into a big PhD thesis - and when it does, this often gets skewed in one direction or another. So maybe I'm not the one a half a step behind the latest information? Or who knows, probably we both are. But I'm more comfortable with my own method, it's worked for me in the past.

To sum up. Carracks lacked the firepower to use their cannons offensively in naval combat, Galleons would be the first sailing ships to do so.*

The only real difference between galleons and carracks was that galleons were usually bigger and could mount more guns.

Carracks could use their firepower defensively, in a stand-off action.

If that were the case, I wonder why all the ships I linked upthread had forward mounted guns?

The defeat of the English ships, which were some of the most heavily armed carracks of the time (including the Mary Rose), in April 1513, by 6(!) French galleys in a series of actions in Brest Roads is a very good example of

...a single anecdote, to which I can offer the defeat of more than 20 Ottoman galleys by two Genoese carracks at the siege of Constantinople in 1453, or the capture of a heavily armed Italian galley by the Peter Von Danzig in 1470.

For the rest of it, you are incorrect about the gunpowder - there were many different gunpowder formulae in use in the 14th Century but the document I cited (the liber ignium) which was extant from the 13th Century and published in a fencing manual in the 14th, uses 'salt of st. peter' as the nitrogen component which was potassium nitrate. From the wiki:

"Recipe 14 contains advice for the harvesting and processing of saltpeter. In Berthelot's interpretation, it says: "saltpeter is a mineral of the earth, and is found as an efflorescence on stones. This earth is dissolved in boiling water, then purified and passed through a filter. It is boiled for a day and a night and solidified, so that transparent plates of the salt are found at the bottom of the vessel"

You are also incorrect about the galley rowers, in the late Medieval period only the Venetians and, for a while, the Genoese were making significant use of paid professional rowers. The Spanish used Muslim captives (slaves) to row, later convicts as well, and the North Africans and Ottomans used Christian captives (slaves) and other foreign slaves, for the most part. In the 16th and 17th Century this only got 'worse' in the sense that more and more (event the Venetians, during their decline) were using rowers chained to the oars. The author Cervantes, for example, was for a while a galley slave on a Muslim galley.

Obviously this discussion has become yet another contest, I'm going to refrain from saying anything unfriendly. Out of respect for you and your knowledge, lets both make an effort not to extend ourselves for sake of 'the pursuit of victory' beyond what we actually do know about. I have fairly well exhausted what I know about it, I hope what I posted was useful.

Beyond that, it's ok for us to disagree. I'll simply refer to the images upthread of the guns from the Mary Rose for the other readers of the thread to decide if they think a carrack could sink a ship with gunfire.

G

Galloglaich

2013-08-07, 09:41 AM

warty goblin

2013-08-07, 10:43 AM

Beyond that, it's ok for us to disagree. I'll simply refer to the images upthread of the guns from the Mary Rose for the other readers of the thread to decide if they think a carrack could sink a ship with gunfire.

G
I'm extremely far from any sort of expertise in this field, but isn't it quite difficult to actually sink a wooden vessel? Batter it into a hulk sure, but wood floats. It also depends on how strongly and heavily built the ship is.

Those are also very large looking guns. But the bore size isn't clear in the picture, and I don't know enough about bronze (those are bronze right?) guns to guess.

Galloglaich

2013-08-07, 11:29 AM

Yes it is hard, especially since they were using solid shot rather than exploding shells.

But if you break a ship apart, it's going to sink. If you cripple it, you can sink it at your leisure so it's a moot point. Some of those galleys were very thin in the middle and could fairly easily break in half when being struck by gunfire. Carracks and cogs as well could be broken apart if critical parts of the structure were hit. Ships could also be set on fire and if they had cannon or a large amount of firearms, this made them particularly vulnerable (i.e. to a hit to a magazine). Heated shot was also used going way back and this helped explode powder magazines.

Some early examples of the powder magazine exploding include the destruction of the Breton warship Cordelière at the Battle of Saint Mathieu in 1512, destroying both the Cordelière and the English warship Regent (which was trying to board her) in the resulting explosion and fire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_St._Mathieu

In the same battle, incidentally, the cannon of the Mary Rose crippled the Breton ship Petite Louise, which then retired from the battle, and the cannons of the huge (1000 ton) Cordelière de-masted both the Sovereign and the Mary-James which became helpless wrecks and drifted away from the battle (before any boarding was done). So again, I'd say if you can de-mast a ship with your cannons in 1512, that is a pretty effective cannon.

Broadsides were being shot by carracks with side -gunports as early as 1501 AD, incidentally.

I suspect, though don't know for sure, that one of the most common ways ships were actually sunk was by setting the sails and rigging on fire, which could be done with cannon (some of which had a theoretical range of over 1000 yards, though effectively closer to 300-400) but could also be done with bows and crossbows shooting fire arrows / bolts, which I think was the most common method (probably limited to around 100-200 yards at the most) as well as thrown incendiary and pyrotechnic devices, and even exotic things like rockets which were also used going back to the 14th C. And fire ships (unmanned empty ships used as flaming battering rams) were also a common strategy.

But to win a naval engagement as I said, all that really had to be done was to disable the ship or even just slow it down a little, which could dramatically change the nature of the battle.

The bottom line is that we don't know exactly how naval combat was conducted except in a few more well documented incidents and some archeology, and even these are often murky. The literary evidence is often politically slanted, the archeological evidence is typically inconclusive (they still don't know exactly what sunk the Mary Rose, one of the most thoroughly investigated ships from the pre-industrial period, whether it was a sailing accident or in fact, a hit by a cannon fired by another ship, or both, or for some other reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose#Causes_of_sinking

G

Galloglaich

2013-08-07, 11:32 AM

A 16th century depiction of the Cordelierre and the Regent. Note the large side-mounted guns.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/Cordeliere_and_Regent.jpg/411px-Cordeliere_and_Regent.jpg

G

fusilier

2013-08-07, 11:12 PM

The issue is that historians have extrapolated backwards, from ship-of-line tactics, assuming that because ships like carracks mounted heavy broadsides that they used broadside, line-ahead, tactics. However, from a careful analysis of battle records, we know that this was not the case. Ships, including carracks, went straight at their opponents when they wanted to attack. Ideally hitting them amidships, where the tall forecastle would dominate the enemy ship. The broadside was necessarily defensive, and it could enough to force off a would be attacker.

We know that English tactics, by the time of the Armada, at which point they were focusing on gunnery, not boarding, involved bearing down on the enemy, firing the bow guns, turning, firing a broadside, turning, firing the stern chasers, turning, firing the the other broadside, and finally pulling away to reload. Used with galleons, this appears to have been the usual way of doing an artillery fight (when wanting to avoid a boarding action). Line of battle tactics would not ve developed as a standard way of fighting at sea until the Anglo-Dutch Wars. We do know a few examples before then, but they were exceptional, and definitely not standard (and defensive, not offensive).

Galleons, had many differences to carracks, primarily the under water lines, were significantly different. They had a narrower hull ratio but also the bow was redesigned allowing it to support heavier forward firing artillery. Most obviously the forecastle was significantly shortenen, making the more handy.

AgentPaper

2013-08-07, 11:30 PM

fusilier

2013-08-08, 01:25 AM

Just a quick interjection: Using guns defensively and using guns to sink ships are not mutually exclusive. In fact, one goes in hand with the other; if you aren't capable of damaging and sinking an enemy ship with your guns, then they will prove a very poor form of defense.

Sorry about my not so quick response. :-/ My answer is buried in there, and also a comment as to why the question of effective "ship-killing" artillery is important. I'm in a very verbose mood and can't think of quick summary. ;-)

You bring up good issues. The question that I have been talking about it, if I may reframe it, is *when* did ships gain the ability to reliably and effectively sink each other with artillery. Prior to that point in time -- although point is not an accurate term but for the sake of argument -- prior to that point, the reasonable option to "defeat" an enemy ship was to board it. I use the word defeat in quotes because here I mean the destruction or capture of the enemy ship, while your ship survives -- if survival of your own ship is the primary goal, then "defeating" can be limited to preventing the enemy from boarding and capturing/destroying your vessel.

Boarding has some rewards if you capture the enemy ship, but in naval combat (i.e. warships fighting warships), the destruction of enemy ships will weaken their navy, even if the pay off isn't as good as their capture. However, boarding also has risks: both ships can be damaged when they collide, if one catches fire it might spread to both, your enemy might be able to turn the boarding action against you and take over your ship, etc. If you can avoid boarding, and destroy the enemy ship with your guns then you reduce the risk to your own ship (although you also lower the potential reward of capturing the enemy vessel).

Certainly just because a ship attempted to board another doesn't always mean it succeeded, and the defensive of use of powerful artillery might prevent a ship from closing to board, by beating it up bad enough that the attacker decides to abort. At the very least it might disrupt/weaken the enemy's boarding party, making it easier to repulse. It can also disrupt the enemy's artillery (and missile armed marines) that would be supporting their boarding party. Until the 1580s, sailing ships didn't expect to fire their heavy cannon (i.e. anything heavier than a swivel piece) more than once in combat (EDIT -- in a particular combat)! They were typically used just prior to the moment of boarding and that was all -- so the timing of the broadside was key. (This may also explain why the Mary Rose had mounted it's heaviest artillery higher in the ship -- so that at close range it was more likely to sweep the enemy's deck).

If you can reliably attack another ship with your guns alone and sink it without having to force a boarding action, then your offensive artillery capability can be considered "ship-killing".

This is important to naval historians, because it marks a major shift in how naval warfare was fought. Not until around the time of the Spanish Armada did it become feasible to destroy enemy warships with cannons, reliably. Obviously, adding more cannons was a goal. But there was a problem with adding more cannons. The designs of carracks and galleons meant as they got bigger, they could only really add more (and heavier) cannons to the broadside -- and tactics to utilize the broadside effectively hadn't developed. So they could make a big ship with a big broadside, but until line-ahead tactics became common, those ships would be criticized as being too unwieldy.

But, as you point out, if you can't reliably destroy/disable an enemy ship with gunpowder artillery, why bother with it in the first place? Simply, it helps. It kills people, damages the rigging, and puts holes in the enemy ship. It might be unlikely that it will put enough in it to sink it, but there's a chance. Even if not enough to sink it, a leaky ship doesn't maneuver as well and distracts the crew. If your enemy can't maneuver well, you have a better chance of ramming him in the ideal spot, or escaping if that's your goal. A big gun is a more efficient way of doing those things. Loaded with something like grape-shot or chain shot it would be immensely useful just before the boarding action. You could get a similar effect with several small cannon, but together they would weigh more than a big one (it's an economy of scale). Also the big cannon could be loaded with solid shot and fired at longer range. Meaning you can start to harass the enemy at a greater range. This also answers your next question:

If your aim instead is to simply kill the people on the other ship, then wouldn't you be better off with much more, smaller guns, or ones that fired buckshot? Why would you fire single, large hunks of metal weighing 60-80 lbs if you weren't planning to sink an enemy ship with it? Those things (and the cannons that fire them) don't exactly grow on trees, so I don't see why anyone would invest in them if they weren't effective.

This had always fascinated me when it came to galleys. While they could use their heavy cannon at long ranges (and did), standard tactics when fighting against another galley was to ram, waiting until the moment before impact to fire the entire front battery! Given how fragile a galley was I would be surprised if it wasn't sunk out-right at that range. I had speculated that perhaps at such a close range you are unlikely to actually hit it at the water line (as the prow of your own galley gets in the way). But as it turns out they typically didn't fire solid shot out of the main gun for a boarding action, but instead used grape-shot or something similar. Big enough to do minor structural damage, and more of a spread to increase casualties.

Galleys, by their design, could use large cannons more effectively as an offensive weapon than carracks. The galleys guns were easily mounted right at the front -- conveniently there to support a boarding action! (Note, that if fleeing this is a terrible location for your artillery) Unfortunately, the high-sided carrack still had the advantage in a boarding action versus a galley. The main advantage to the galleys cannon when dealing with a sailing ship, assuming proper conditions, was that a galley could harass the larger ship, by staying out of the larger ships's guns -- even if that ship had comparable cannon, they couldn't mount them everywhere , and the galleys maneuverability would allow it to stay away from them, briefly run into range to shoot, then back off to reload (and they are documented as using this tactic). The centerline gun was large enough to sink a large sailing ship in a single lucky shot -- still not reliably, but the chance was greater. This tactical dominance reversed a trend in the mediterranean and navies there started abandoning sailing warships (not all sailing ships, but warships) during the 16th century. However, the Atlantic had poor conditions for galleys and outside of rather limited actions in the English channel they were rarely used, so the carrack dominated naval warfare there. (Galleys were also used in the Baltic down to the Napoleonic times, but I've been unable to trace a clear line of their use there).

Nevertheless, the Carrack had a lot of room to evolve, first into the galleon, then into the ship of the line -- the Galley, however, was already nearing it's evolutionary limitations. Several factors drove it up a technological cul-de-sac, and while galleons could mount more and heavier guns, the galley couldn't keep up. Thus, at the end of the 16th century the galley had been defeated in its home waters by galleons. Increasingly during the 17th century Dutch and English galleons began to intrude upon the Mediterranean with relative impunity. The galley never quite disappeared until the introduction of steamships, it had a slow but steady decline beginning in the 17th century. It had actually been on the decline before heavy artillery was introduced. That introduction breathed new life into the galley, but sailing ships caught up in about a century, and galleys started to look more like dinosaurs again. :-)

Vitruviansquid

2013-08-08, 05:40 AM

What are the drawback of guerilla warfare tactics? It's always seemed to me that whenever we discuss putting the PC's in charge of a war in some RPG on these forums, the players or commenters immediately jump on the idea of guerilla war. Definitely, guerilla tactics have been used, sometimes very successfully in the past, but I think modern folk, especially Americans like myself, have a somewhat romanticized view of guerilla warfare that cause us to place more faith in it than actual soldiers and general would.

These are some of the problems of using guerilla warfare as far as I can intuit:

1. Guerilla warfare doesn't work on an army not seeking to annex, occupy, or otherwise stay in your territory. When barbarians are coming to sack your cities, they're just going to roll in, kill anyone who tries to stop them, take as much of your gold as they can carry, and go back home. By the time you have a guerilla resistance going, there won't be anyone to resist against because they're all gone. Likewise, if an enemy's just coming to kill everything in the land, like if a necromancer seeks to kill off your entire kingdom, Guerilla warfare seems like it would leave you much more vulnerable than amassing as large an army as possible and meeting the enemy on your border.

2. Guerilla warfare doesn't stop an enemy army from massacring your family if they really wanted to. That is to say, because guerilla warfare relies in your own force being formless, you can't actually defend any single object or area that your enemy chooses to strike at with determination.

3. Guerillas probably get caught and killed at a higher rate than they can kill enemy soldiers. There's a reason why armies since ancient times carried tons of equipment and relied upon the leadership of a either a warrior class or a specially chosen individual experienced and trained in tactics and strategy - it helped reduce their casualties and raise their efficacy. A guerilla force depends on diffused leadership, with each soldier or cell of soldiers taking the initaitive. This means that a larger percentage of their forces have to be able to call the shots, but you can't have a military genius, or likely even a well-trained person in every small cell, whereas you can have a military genius oversee a large army. At the same time, guerillas have to keep their war gear hidden because of their inability to defend any objective the enemy makes a determined effort against, so it seems much more likely that guerillas will be lightly armed compared to the cohesive army... but of course, the army wouldn't have its war gear unless that war gear was effective. For pre-gunpowder settings, it would probably be hard to hide suits of armor or warhorses from the army, in post-gunpowder settings, it seems like the guerillas would have a difficult time getting or keeping cannons or fighting vehicles like tanks.

4. Guerilla warfare will never be decisive. In war, I suppose armies will either want to win without firing a shot, or win at one decisive engagement because the more a war drags on, the more casualties both sides will suffer. Guerilla warfare depends on dragging out the war until it gets intolerable for the opposing force to keep at it. However, since the war will take place in the guerillas' homeland, all the collateral damage will affect their friends and family, making it unpalatable for people fighting to defend their homeland.

Yora

2013-08-08, 05:59 AM

In conventional warfare, how much are landmines used to actually inflict damage to an enemy? Or are they more commonly well marked to keep the enemy from passing through certain areas?

Brother Oni

2013-08-08, 07:03 AM

What are the drawback of guerilla warfare tactics?

I think you've pretty much got all of them, but one you've missed is a lack of concentration of force.

Suppose two sides have 100 men, side A is employing guerilla warfare tactics with 10 cells of 10 men dispersed while side B has a single 100 man unit.
If A attacks with each cell individually, they'll all get chewed up with minimal losses to side B and A's dispersed organisation now works against them in co-ordinating attacks.

I think your first point is of main importance - if the invaders are entirely uninterested in your territory, they'll just raze everything to the ground, take what loot they can and move on. In a fantasy setting or where limiting civilian casualties is not a concern, guerilla warfare is ineffective at protecting anything.
I'm sure you can imagine how currently conflicts would have gone if the Allied forces were allowed to use tactics more in common with the Mongols or W40K Necrons.

In conventional warfare, how much are landmines used to actually inflict damage to an enemy? Or are they more commonly well marked to keep the enemy from passing through certain areas?

For simply keeping people out of an area, signposting is common as you just don't want them to go into sensitive areas; casualties are a secondary concern.
This is exemplified by the Blue Peacock project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock) which was a proposed nuclear landmine system intended for West Germany against a Soviet invasion during the Cold War.

In actual warfare, landmines are intended to kill as well so their effectiveness is somewhat hampered if the installing side signposts them (see IEDs).

Other landmine systems such as the M18 Claymore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M18_Claymore_mine) escape the current anti-personnel mine ban due to the way they're triggered and these are intended more for immediate combat.

Yora

2013-08-08, 07:21 AM

I think the primary aim of guerilla warfare is not to defeat the enemy, but to make staying in your territory too annoying and burdensome until they just choose to leave rather than trying to continue the war.
It's a stalling tactic in which your goal is "not being defeated". The best you can hope for is being left alone, but in the end, you are almost always on the defensive. If you want to take enemy held territory by force, you have to resort back to more conventional strategies.

I think in most cases, going guerilla is a means of last resort, when you already have accepted that you have no chance to defeat the enemy armies. Or you want to keep the enemy occupied and slowed down until you get reinforcements. I think nobody ever really conquered or took controll of anything with guerilla tactics. (Except for moving in once the enemy has left.)

Galloglaich

2013-08-08, 10:22 AM

In the study of the Classical era, literary evidence (i.e, written records) are never used without careful analysis of the Tropes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trope_(philosophy)), or tropos, that influenced them. The theory is that no writer of that era, from Herodotus to Julius Caesar, wrote exclusively from their own personal motivation or analysis, but used language and legends that were derived from the rules of Rhetoric and established in earlier sources.

An example of this is the alleged 'noble savagery' trope which colors all the Greek / Roman literature about the Celts, (and even, it is argued now in Academia, led to the Roman invention of the idea of the Celts as a race or a culture)

We also know pretty well today that there were, similarly, Victorian tropes in the 19th Century which tended to reduce history into self-serving clichés, such as 'the white mans burden' or 'manifest destiny'. Or the varies ideas which made up late Victorian Orientalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism).

These things tend to form certain symmetrical and mathematically clean patterns, which are then imposed upon a non-symmetrical and mathematically 'dirty' real world. Often leading to unfortunate consequences.

We tend to think of ourselves today as being modern, post-historical, beyond being influenced by such narrow intellectual fashions and trends. But we are not and the tropes continue. When it comes to the pre-industrial world, especially before the 17th Century, these tropes dominate the discussions around them and obfuscate the much more complex and baffling reality.

One example of this are in the history of firearms. In RPGs', we tend to think of firearms as something which came long, LONG after the era of chivalry and knights in shining armor (itself another badly cliché ridden concept). This is why gamers and game designers (myself included) usually wanted to exclude firearms from fantasy or even historical RPG's. But the reality is that firearms existed before plate armor did. The firearm was an integral part of late Medieval life. Knowing this, popular historians of the History Channel / Discovery channel variety, simply dismiss early firearms as smoke and noisemakers (we can see the depths that popular "science" actually sinks to appealing to ignorance in the recent controversy over Discovery channels 'documentary' about a megaladon shark (http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/08/06/discovery-channel-megalodon-controversy/))

But hard core military historians, looking at the primary source literary and archeological data, are now well aware that firearms were well developed 100 years before the first musket, and played a critical role in combat in the 15th century.

Naval warfare became a very popular academic subject during the Age of Sail and the discovery of the Americas and the routes to the Pacific. Before that it remains largely a confusing muddle like so much of the rest of the Medieval period which is typically portrayed as 'backward' and a confused mess. We have the counter - meme of the Renaissance, invented by the brilliant historian Jakob Burckhardt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Burckhardt) (Nietsche's history teacher among other notable accomplishments) but this only becomes another contrast to the medieval 'dark age', when we are led to believe people staggered around suffering from leoprosy only pausing long enough to burn a witch, even though in reality almost all of the witch burnings took place well after the Medieval period (http://www.gendercide.org/case_witchhunts.html).

And yet it was the medieval mariners, in their clumsy carracks and caravels, who found their way across the Atlantic, who navigated around the Cape of Good Hope, who sailed to the South Pacific. In the popular culture, these people seem to arise out of nothing. But we know better than that. We may not be able to fit everything into a neat pattern, but as Burckhardt himself noted, history and life itself does not follow neat patterns.

Part of what we try to do in this thread, all of us, is to help untangle these tropes or clichés from what the actual evidence is. The reason is two fold: to answer questions for those who actually want to know, and because the reality (or at least, the little bit we know about it) is often far more interesting than the tropes and clichés are.

G

Mike_G

2013-08-08, 11:11 AM

Matthew

2013-08-08, 02:35 PM

Last time I floated the following theory on this board people reacted like I was a crazy person from the far side of the moon. I don't want to rehash all that again, but it was a pretty good theory for explaining why the Roman army failed to deal with barbarians, when they had been so successful before.

When I was in college, the fact that the Roman infantry switched to a longer sword was seen as evidence that they were no longer expected to fight with swords in formation, this was then extrapolated to a decline in discipline. Also the increased use of cavalry was considered evidence that discipline in the army was declining (less disciplined infantry being unwilling to conduct rapid marches).

My understanding was that this occurred during or shortly after the Military Anarchy (aka Imperial Crisis), of the 3rd century. But Galloglaich and Matthew are saying that it occurred before then? (For the infantry?) That would cast doubt on some of the evidence for the claim that Military Anarchy messed up the army's traditions and discipline. (It wouldn't disprove the theory, but it would remove some of the supporting evidence)

Another thought that I had had was based on the observation that formation tactics require a certain threshold of men to be effective and a certain amount of preparation time. If the Roman Legions were no longer keeping the border secure, and relatively small escorts were being ambushed on the frontier, then switching to a long sword may have been a practical decision.
It is not clear quite when the transition took place, and I get hazy on the Roman Empire after the first century AD, but I would be surprised if we could nail down the change to the time of the Military Anarchy. My impression is that longer swords for infantry was a gradual change linked to the increasingly barbarian character of the army. The inability to deal with the military crises is, I think, rooted in declining power overall.

Raum

2013-08-08, 05:46 PM

What are the drawback of guerilla warfare tactics?Asymmetrical (aka guerrilla) warfare is what a significantly weaker force resorts to when they can't directly challenge their opponent.

That's the single largest drawback - they're weaker, by a significant factor, than their enemy. If they could achieve victory through conventional means they almost certainly would. Instead almost everything they do is an attempt to cover weakness.

These are some of the problems of using guerilla warfare as far as I can intuit:

1. Guerilla warfare doesn't work on an army not seeking to annex, occupy, or otherwise stay in your territory.
2. Guerilla warfare doesn't stop an enemy army from massacring your family if they really wanted to.
3. Guerillas probably get caught and killed at a higher rate than they can kill enemy soldiers.
4. Guerilla warfare will never be decisive.
Regarding #1 - perhaps. I'm not sure asymmetrical warfare has been used against an opponent who couldn't be classified as an occupier though - so not a lot of evidence either way.

Item #2 is a bit less certain than you make it out. In some cases the guerrilla force may well control large areas (FARC, Vietnam, Afganistan in the 80s) and in other cases they attempt to maintain secrecy (IRA, French Resistance). So there are methods they can use to protect dependents. Of course they won't always be successful. There are examples where your statement is correct - Boers and French Resistance among others.

Your third item is questionable - but it was certainly true in Vietnam. I'm not sure it was with the IRA, FARC, or Afganistan. If you count civilian deaths I'm pretty certain it hasn't been true in Iraq.

Item #4 is wrong. The weaker side won in the American Revolution, Vietnam, and 1980s Afganistan. Can make an argument for the IRA resolution being a draw.

Counterinsurgency is difficult. The US found that out in Vietnam. While the US has gotten better at it, it has taken decades.

Counterinsurgency needs good intelligence, support from the populace (and removing popular support of the insurgents), and fast responses by superior force. The intelligence and popular support have to be there for the response in force to be effective. Without it you don't know where to strike.

fusilier

2013-08-08, 07:46 PM

It is not clear quite when the transition took place, and I get hazy on the Roman Empire after the first century AD, but I would be surprised if we could nail down the change to the time of the Military Anarchy. My impression is that longer swords for infantry was a gradual change linked to the increasingly barbarian character of the army. The inability to deal with the military crises is, I think, rooted in declining power overall.

That sounds fair. I do remember "barbarization" of the army being discussed at length in my classes, but as I recall that was a fairly complicated issue too. :-) Thanks.

Lapak

2013-08-09, 10:37 AM

Asymmetrical (aka guerrilla) warfare is what a significantly weaker force resorts to when they can't directly challenge their opponent.

That's the single largest drawback - they're weaker, by a significant factor, than their enemy. If they could achieve victory through conventional means they almost certainly would. Instead almost everything they do is an attempt to cover weakness.Indeed.
Regarding #1 - perhaps. I'm not sure asymmetrical warfare has been used against an opponent who couldn't be classified as an occupier though - so not a lot of evidence either way.That you can't find an example is a pretty good indicator that it isn't useful outside of that circumstance. :smallwink:
Item #2 is a bit less certain than you make it out. In some cases the guerrilla force may well control large areas (FARC, Vietnam, Afganistan in the 80s) and in other cases they attempt to maintain secrecy (IRA, French Resistance). So there are methods they can use to protect dependents. Of course they won't always be successful. There are examples where your statement is correct - Boers and French Resistance among others.I think what he's getting at is that those situations depended on restraint by the invading force. The French and later the US didn't just decide to carpet-bomb every village in Vietnam, because we (rightly!) see that as a horrible, genocidal war crime in the modern era. But in a situation where the invaders are A-OK with literally wiping out everyone on your side, the guerrilla force can't stop it. What makes guerrilla tactics work is the ability to disappear into the population combined with the unwillingness of the enemy to simply kill everyone; if that restraint isn't present you're in trouble. Think in terms of European siege warfare in the 15th-17th centuries; when the enemy is literally willing to starve an entire city to death - to the point where they'll try and execute casual fishers and hunters they catch in the area in case they're supplying food to the city under siege - guerrilla warfare is going to do nothing but mildly inconvenience them, and that only until your people are wiped off the map.
Your third item is questionable - but it was certainly true in Vietnam. I'm not sure it was with the IRA, FARC, or Afganistan. If you count civilian deaths I'm pretty certain it hasn't been true in Iraq.Yeah, that definitely depends on the particular action.
Item #4 is wrong. The weaker side won in the American Revolution, Vietnam, and 1980s Afganistan. Can make an argument for the IRA resolution being a draw.The American Revolution wasn't primarily a guerrilla conflict, and there was plenty of staight-up warfare in Vietnam, but Afghanistan is a good example. But I don't think you're speaking the same language here; 'eventually victorious' isn't the same thing as 'decisive.' Vitruviansquid was saying that the tactic will never force a decision on the enemy - they have to eventually decide it's not worth the cost they're paying, unlike a pitched battle where you can literally smash their ability to continue fighting.

Counterinsurgency is difficult. The US found that out in Vietnam. While the US has gotten better at it, it has taken decades.

Counterinsurgency needs good intelligence, support from the populace (and removing popular support of the insurgents), and fast responses by superior force. The intelligence and popular support have to be there for the response in force to be effective. Without it you don't know where to strike.All your points are true these days, in a modern political environment, but the 'populace' bits all come back to what I was originally saying - when you're dealing with a certain kind of invasion, none of that is true. An opponent who is willing to simply kill the populace doesn't have to worry about any of that. Against an opponent whose actual GOAL is to kill your entire side, guerrilla tactics are nearly useless. Or, as Vitruvian said, against an enemy who wants one particular thing from you (all the easily portable wealth in your cities, say) and then wants to leave anyway? It's pointless.

Galloglaich

2013-08-09, 11:29 AM

I think it's kind of an illusion that the only thing preventing the stronger power from killing / driving out / enslaving the entire population is simply forbearance - i.e. we could have won Vietnam if we had just been a little meaner*. There are also often tactical, operational and strategic reasons.

These can include, in no particular order: your soldiers may not want to execute large numbers of civilians, it may galvanize resistance against your invading army among the civilian population (thus swelling the ranks of the active guerilla opposition), it may undermine support by your own allies, and it may trigger the involvement of heretofore neutral third parties or cautious uninvolved allies of whoever you are at war with, and the destruction of (economic, military, political) infrastructure in some place that you are conquering can also lead to all sorts of problems.

These can also stack up against you, and taking an 'all or nothing' or 'total war' strategy against an entire population can backfire on you in a really rough way, as the Germans learned to their great sadness at an accelerating rate after the Battle of Stalingrad through to 1945 and for a little while beyond - with their country split in two and under enemy occupation, nearly every centuries old city in their nation smashed to rubble and 8,000,000 of their own people dead.

Classic examples like the Partisans in Eastern Europe in WW II and the Spanish guerilla campaign against the Napoleonic troops did not depend on any special forbearance

States which do practice this level of total war up to and including wholesale slaughter of civilian populations are fairly rare historically, though they were successful - the Mongol Empire and the Roman Empire among others. But they had entire States set up for that kind of total conquest. That is a strategy which requires total commitment and it's a very rough road.

G

* if you really look at the statistics we were plenty mean.

Lapak

2013-08-09, 12:09 PM

Galloglaich

2013-08-09, 02:05 PM

True, and you are correct that at least a somewhat limited amount of scorched-earth was a very common tactic in pre-industrial (and post-industrial) war for a long time. The effects were often somewhat moderated by precautions taken by the peasantry (who would hide grain in holes underground and hide themselves in forests, castles, and fortified towns which would let them in for the duration of a siege - and it wasn't unusual for such places to hold out for years on end.)

An invading army had to try pretty hard to exact truly scorched earth tactics, which could make the raids that made up typical wars much more effective. But it's interesting how sometimes the cost-benefit of this can shift unexpectedly.

One of the things that happened in Medieval Europe (and I suspect, in earlier cycles such as in the time of Justinian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian) and Ancient Athens before that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Athens)) was that scorched - earth tactics, often practiced by both sides in a war for an extended period, could trigger epidemics of truly disastrous proportions.

It was normal for troops involved in prolonged sieges, both attackers and defenders, to get sick and die, but sometimes plague could spread far beyond the battlefield. After the original European outbreak of the Black Death (linked to a siege by the perennially ruthless Mongols against the Genoese) European sieges often ended when plague broke out and started to spread beyond the battlefield.

One example I mentioned before was the so-called "Hunger Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_War)" between the Teutonic Knights and the Poles in 1414. One summer of scorched-earth led to famine which led to 6 years of plague - which ended up wiping out 1/4 of the Teutonic Knights military strength. The results of the fear of these kinds of results are what finally put the teeth in the long standing efforts by 'the Church', towns and others to establish what came to be called the 'peace of the roads' in many districts. Effectively this meant limitations to scorched earth tactics, bans on burning mills, bridges, or other expensive 'infrastructure', killing hunters and farmers, women, priests and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfrieden

Landfrieden was never completely established but there were vast zones in which local Landfrieden (or Landfrydy, as the Czechs knew them) enforced this 'peace' quite effectively through force of arms. That is to say, war continued, but with certain limitations.

Guerilla tactics could still work even against the most ruthless enemies, as was shown by the Hungarians against the occupying Mongols in the 1280's, and on a smaller and lesser known scale (but one I happen to be pretty familiar with), by the town of Wroclaw / Breslau in Silesia during most of the period 1220 - 1500 against a variety of ruthless invaders.

G

AgentPaper

2013-08-09, 02:25 PM

endoperez

2013-08-09, 03:10 PM

Galloglaich

2013-08-09, 04:17 PM

Yes, the Samogitians, that is another really good example. They were invaded something like 500 times by the Teutonic Order and the Livonian Order (before that the Sword Brothers) over the course of a couple of centuries, were provisionally conquered at least twice and had their land handed over to their enemies politically (by the one and only King of Lithuania) at least once. The majority of their population was wiped out again and again, but they were never actually conquered and continued their resistance, ultimately breaking the will of their invading enemies who had come to fear the grauden, the forest which formed the border of Samogitia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samogitia#History

And I agree 100%, the typical villains of fantasy genre fiction pale in comparison to the reality of somebody like the Mongols, or the Teutonic / Livonian Knights especially in places like Estonia, or even (in many cases) to European soldiers fighting their own people.

For example, in the sack of Beziers in 1209 or the sack of Rome in 1527 or Magdeburg in 1631, or (more recent non European example) the rape of Nanking in the beginning of WW II (or any of the myriad other atrocities of WW II and a dozen other genocidal wars of the 20th century).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_B%C3%A9ziers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(1527)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Magdeburg

Or the entire career of Ghenghis Khan or Tamarlane (http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tamerlane.html) who makes Sauron look like my Justin Bieber throwing a tantrum in a hotel room.

Ghenghiz Khan is, by the way, the actual source of the famous 'lamentation of the women' quote attributed to Conan or Arnold Schwarzenegger in gamer / pop culture...

G

Brother Oni

2013-08-09, 04:34 PM

Ghenghiz Khan is, by the way, the actual source of the famous 'lamentation of the women' quote attributed to Conan or Arnold Schwarzenegger in gamer / pop culture...

Well a bowdlerised version anyway. I'm not sure they would have let 'clasp their wives and daughters to your breast' into the Conan film, even back in the 80s.

Berenger

2013-08-09, 08:22 PM

Don't think this is really new, but regarding guerilla warfare:

1. This is not exactly a "drawback" since regular warfare has its own opposite limitations in that regard, but you need terrain features you can use to your advantage or that at least impede the enemy more than they impede you. Those features can be defensive (swamps, mountains, forests etc. that deny the possibility to field large formations, supply trains and war machines, wooden bridges you can burn...) or offensive (mountains you can launch avalanches from, dykes you can break to flood an area...) in nature.

2. There can be some kind of "guerilla warfare" between roughly even forces, for example in early medieval warfare when two feuding lords avoid a pitched battle and prefer to aim for an "economic victory" by sending raiding parties to burn crops and villages, kill peasants, steal cattle and retreat. I think this happens when both sides are too afraid to lose everything in a single day or when no one is convinced he can win a battle with enough troops left to exploit the victory.

Galloglaich

2013-08-10, 01:12 AM

Both very good points...

1) is definitely true, the places where guerrilla tactics were most successful were often characterized by difficult terrain ... in some cases contributing to the creation of States like Switzerland.

2) is also true, that was by far the most common type of warfare in pre-industrial times (this is also because of the toughness of a good fort giving an advantage to defense through most of history)

in fact you could describe the cavalry tactics which were used on the very open areas that did lack swamps, forests, mountains etc., as a sort of permanent guerrilla war, either scaled up or scaled down, as raids, trickery, ambushes, feigned retreats and so forth were a constant part of it. Superficial accounts tend to treat feigned retreats in particular as a tactic only employed upon the naive - but even he hard core Steppe nomads were susceptible to these tricks and they practiced them on each other.

G

fusilier

2013-08-10, 02:05 AM

Reading a bit further on the purification part of the production of potassium nitrate mentioned in the liber ignium, they apparently used to boil down the crude form, then mix it with wood ashes to remove the calcium and magenese. This practice dates from 1270 and was first published in the al-Furusiyya wa al-Manasib al-Harbiyya ('The Book of Military Horsemanship and Ingenious War Devices') by the Syrian Hasan al-Rammah.

G

The problem for historians as regards gunpowder is that at the time both Potassium nitrate and calcium nitrate would be called saltpeter. They both "worked" in gunpowder (as do some other saltpeters actually). Although with differing degrees of effectiveness.

Bert S. Hall's introduction to a reprinted version of Partington's A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder, points out that Partington's interpretation of al-Rammah's description of purifying saltpeter is problematic. Specifically al-Rammah's suggestion to use willow charcoal which is low in potassium, and the lack of any alkaline material to drive the reaction. Hall further references Gerhard Kramer, who points out that the focus on purification of salt peter in later European texts, only makes sense if they had previously been using calcium nitrate, or a saltpeter heavily contaminated with calcium nitrate.

However, Hall does conclude that the issue (of when they developed good methods for obtaining potassium nitrate) is still "up in the air".

You can read it here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=fNZBSqd2cToC&lpg=PR26&dq=Gerhard%20Kramer%201995&pg=PR26#v=snippet&q=Gerhard%20Kramer&f=false

[If somebody knows how to link to a particular page in google books, let me know]

Raum

2013-08-10, 09:40 AM

That you can't find an example is a pretty good indicator that it isn't useful outside of that circumstance. :smallwink:Perhaps. I prefer not to make assumptions without evidence. It may also be worth noting that special ops forces working in enemy territory work a lot like guerrilla forces...the only real difference is a lack of popular support. If you're going to count them as evidence, asymmetrical warfare does work for invading armies.

I think what he's getting at is that those situations depended on restraint by the invading force. The French and later the US didn't just decide to carpet-bomb every village in Vietnam, because we (rightly!) see that as a horrible, genocidal war crime in the modern era. But in a situation where the invaders are A-OK with literally wiping out everyone on your side, the guerrilla force can't stop it. It's more a case of lacking the capability than lacking the will. Operation Rolling Thunder was ~2.5 years of strategic bombing targeting wide swaths of territory. Operations Linebacker I & II dropped massive amounts of ordinance on infrastructure with II concentrating on Hanoi. Air warfare didn't (really couldn't) try to avoid civilian casualties until guided bombs became ubiquitous. Interestingly perhaps, many of those guided weapons need someone (often special ops) on the ground.

Yeah, that definitely depends on the particular action.The American Revolution wasn't primarily a guerrilla conflict, and there was plenty of staight-up warfare in Vietnam, but Afghanistan is a good example. But I don't think you're speaking the same language here; 'eventually victorious' isn't the same thing as 'decisive.' Vitruviansquid was saying that the tactic will never force a decision on the enemy - they have to eventually decide it's not worth the cost they're paying, unlike a pitched battle where you can literally smash their ability to continue fighting.I won't disagree, though I wonder if Dien Bien Phu is a counterexample. As Martin Windrow states, Dien Bien Phu was "the first time that a non-European colonial independence movement had evolved through all the stages from guerrilla bands to a conventionally organized and equipped army able to defeat a modern Western occupier in pitched battle." That said, it had evolved into conventional warfare.

I think it's kind of an illusion that the only thing preventing the stronger power from killing / driving out / enslaving the entire population is simply forbearance - i.e. we could have won Vietnam if we had just been a little meaner*. There are also often tactical, operational and strategic reasons.Agreed.

So for example, guerilla tactics would be somewhere between ineffective and worthless against the typical fantasy villain Orcs, since they're all for total devastation of whatever they can get their hands on, more than willing to kill every human they meet, and typically don't even have a supply chain to disrupt, since they live off the land and/or plunder. They aren't even likely to sit around in one place and let you do raids on them, instead favoring the "march right at the closest city, kill everyone, loot everything, burn it to the ground, repeat" strategy.Many, perhaps most, settings pay little attention to ecology, social structures, and the effects of geography. Orcs are often simply a threat slapped down with no social structure and, at times, not even a food supply. :smallconfused: As such, there's not a lot for would be guerrillas to target. Hit and run tactics against the orcs themselves may have some effect but, as you note, there's nothing stopping them from hitting a dozen civilian targets while the PCs defend one. Can't really apply real world strategies to entities without real world limitations. The real 'answer' here is going to be whatever the GM wants it to be...he's got the endless supply of orcs. :smallwink:

1) is definitely true, the places where guerrilla tactics were most successful were often characterized by difficult terrain ... in some cases contributing to the creation of States like Switzerland.This is worth reiterating. Geography has a far greater effect on politics and warfare than most realize.

Mike_G

2013-08-10, 03:57 PM

I think it's kind of an illusion that the only thing preventing the stronger power from killing / driving out / enslaving the entire population is simply forbearance - i.e. we could have won Vietnam if we had just been a little meaner*. There are also often tactical, operational and strategic reasons.

These can include, in no particular order: your soldiers may not want to execute large numbers of civilians, it may galvanize resistance against your invading army among the civilian population (thus swelling the ranks of the active guerilla opposition), it may undermine support by your own allies, and it may trigger the involvement of heretofore neutral third parties or cautious uninvolved allies of whoever you are at war with, and the destruction of (economic, military, political) infrastructure in some place that you are conquering can also lead to all sorts of problems.

Just to underscore these points, atrocities by the occupying force are often the best recruiting ads a guerilla army has. A Marine wrote of his time in Vietnam, "Every time we went on patrol, and swept through the paddy, trampling the rice crop, we created another Viet Cong. Any time we actually found and killed a Viet Cong, we created five more." The Abu Graib photos were the best thing for Al Qaeda's support ever. They only lost local support when they started killing too many civilians.

The support of the populace is a big advantage if you want to actually run a country.

And usually an invading force wants something from the conquered nation. Wiping out the population, razing the cities and burning the crops tends not to have much in the way of a payoff.

Straybow

2013-08-10, 11:20 PM

Just to underscore these points, atrocities by the occupying force are often the best recruiting ads a guerilla army has. A Marine wrote of his time in Vietnam, "Every time we went on patrol, and swept through the paddy, trampling the rice crop, we created another Viet Cong. Any time we actually found and killed a Viet Cong, we created five more." The Abu Graib photos were the best thing for Al Qaeda's support ever. They only lost local support when they started killing too many civilians.

Soldiers wading through paddies did no more trampling of rice than the farmers' own oxen or the occasional wild pig. I doubt marginal agricultural damage weighed that much. Why didn't the torture, rape and similar Maoist destabilization tactics used against uncooperative villages cause massive uprising against the VC? As for the latter, I suspect Abu Graib did more for demagogues in the US than recruiters in the NME. In either case, it made a good rallying cry for those already predisposed.

It makes a good character development device, like The Patriot, but I think it rarely inspires heroics in real life.

Brother Oni

2013-08-11, 12:20 AM

And usually an invading force wants something from the conquered nation. Wiping out the population, razing the cities and burning the crops tends not to have much in the way of a payoff.

Aside from the plunder, slaves and sheer hell of it (see the barbarian hordes).

In a fantasy or sci-fi setting, the invading force may just want the living space and are more than happy to exterminate the former occupants (for example because their physiology is significantly incompatible and hence need to terraform the environment, or an extremely xenophobic ideology).

Soldiers wading through paddies did no more trampling of rice than the farmers' own oxen or the occasional wild pig. I doubt marginal agricultural damage weighed that much.

Actual damage no, but perceived damage yes.
You can't help damage caused by accidental wandering by oxen or foraging by boars - these are occupational hazards. Soldiers walking through your fields when there's a perfectly usable path is something else (or wade between the rows of plant rather than through them).

I concede that the soldiers may not want to use the path due to potential booby traps, but as demonstrated in Afghanistan, the locals are far more likely to know the position of any traps and may not appreciate that the soldiers aren't aware.

Mike_G

2013-08-11, 10:24 AM

Soldiers wading through paddies did no more trampling of rice than the farmers' own oxen or the occasional wild pig. I doubt marginal agricultural damage weighed that much. Why didn't the torture, rape and similar Maoist destabilization tactics used against uncooperative villages cause massive uprising against the VC? As for the latter, I suspect Abu Graib did more for demagogues in the US than recruiters in the NME. In either case, it made a good rallying cry for those already predisposed.

It makes a good character development device, like The Patriot, but I think it rarely inspires heroics in real life.

Wow.

Just...Wow.

So, enemy atrocities don't inspire anybody to actually fight? How many Americans joined the military right after 9/11?

You don't think that maybe, just maybe widely distributed photos of prisoner abuse turned the population against the Coalition? Maybe made the locals a little more likely to not tell the troops about an IED, or suspected insurgent?

PR is a huge deal in wining the support of the population, both your own and the enemy's and the support of the population is HUGE in fighter on either side of a guerilla war.

A civilian who is largely ignored by the government and is left more or less alone by the occupying force probably won't risk much to fight them. If his crops are destroyed, his neighbors dragged off to prison, his family members killed or raped, then maybe he does figure he has some fertilizer he can donate to the case, and maybe he won't let that truck full of troops know about the strange men burying something on the road last night.

Lots of commanders who were on the ground in Iraq have written about how the insurgency was strengthened by stories of US atrocities, and how it lost popular support because of insurgent atrocities. I'm not pulling this out of my butt.

Galloglaich

2013-08-11, 10:32 AM

Well we started the war on fake incident, killed almost half a million civilians* plus 300,000 Cambodians and 60,000 Laotians for good measure, and deforested vast swaths of the land with Agent Orange and blew a lot of rice paddies up which is a bit worse than walking through them, so that is probably all sufficient to help recruit for the other side, per the original point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Casualties

Vietnam is the classic, text-book case of a tough place to deal with a guerrilla insurgency. Their tactics involving tunnels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cu_Chi_tunnels) for example were also used in Silessia in the 15th Century, by the citizens of Wroclaw / Breslau to pick apart invading armies.

Even the Mongols had a real hard time in Vietnam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Vietnam), as did the Maoist Chinese when they invaded n the late 1970's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese-Vietnamese_War), the Vietnamese regular army was in Cambodia putting down the Khmer Rouge, they didn't even bother to move it back when the Chinese invaded but relied on guerrilla militia to stop the invasion, which they did.

The basic tactics of guerrilla war are applicable against a more powerful invader but also when both sides are equal - and that is how the Vietnamese fought.

One basic principle which is a crucial part of cavalry warfare going back centuries, is to temporarily achieve local numeric and situational superiority. So for example say the enemy has a column of 1,000 men, and you only have 200. If you fought them in a pitched battle, all things being equal, you would face 5-1 odds which would mean your almost certain defeat. But when the enemy column is crossing a bridge, lets say, you could wait until 950 of them have crossed, then sweep down and attack the last 50 with 100 of your guys - you have 2-1 odds which is often sufficient for a victory. You do as much damage as you can

Then once the enemy force recovers from their initial shock and begins to come back across the bridge, you immediately disengage and flee, then if they pursue, draw their force away from the original battle area, and into an ambush. Here once again you use a terrain feature, say the entrance to a narrow valley or a road through a forest, to bottle-neck their force. Your ambush consists of 100 guys plus the original 100 who were being chased. Only 100 of their guys are actually in the valley, the others are queued up behind, so once again you have 2-1 odds, and your ambushing group is in a force-multiplying ambush position, so their vanguard gets slaughtered.

If this causes a morale problem and they start to retreat, you can harry them and try to cause a rout. Or you can split your force again, have one lead a fighting retreat deeper into the valley, while the other uses an egress out of the valley to circle around and attack the rear of the enemy force when it is 90% into the valley, and once again achieve local numeric superiority against their last 50 guys. This way you can whittle down a much larger force.

Each time you engage there will be a chance for the enemy force to become panicked - if they break or rout they can be slaughtered at a much higher ratio than normal, historically very large armies have been destroyed by much smaller forces this way. But it's also how a mobile, alert, well disciplined army can defeat an equally large but less well organized rival.

G

* plus close to that many combatants

warty goblin

2013-08-11, 11:21 AM

Just to underscore these points, atrocities by the occupying force are often the best recruiting ads a guerilla army has. A Marine wrote of his time in Vietnam, "Every time we went on patrol, and swept through the paddy, trampling the rice crop, we created another Viet Cong. Any time we actually found and killed a Viet Cong, we created five more." The Abu Graib photos were the best thing for Al Qaeda's support ever. They only lost local support when they started killing too many civilians.

I believe it's actually an established strategy of insurgency to provoke an occupying power into reprisal attacks against the populace for exactly this reason. The people whose village gets torched tend to blame the people torching the village, regardless of their reasons for doing so.

Mike_G

2013-08-11, 12:32 PM

The trampled rice is anecdote from one guy who fought in Vietnam, and saw the way the locals came to resent him and his comrades, and how resentful locals can work against you.

The point is that things you do and the way you do them can influence the population, and in a war that depends on information about small bands of rebels, sympathizers who supply them, informants for either side, and the locations of booby traps and ambushes, the goodwill of the locals is a valuable commodity.

And to an individual, small acts they can see matter more than large, abstract things they don't. A small scale violation by a squad of soldiers might very well tip an individual peasant over the edge, and he might very well pass on information to the enemy, sabotage bridges, or destroy or poison food he expects the occupiers to confiscate.

Big armies can do things like take a city or wipe out your forces, but local guerillas can impose a draining friction on every move you make, increasing casualties, making you divert more troops to defend supply lines and communications, and harass troops in supposed safe areas, keeping your men on constant edge, under constant stress.

All those things chip away at the effectiveness of your army. Even if the enemy can't wipe out a large unit in a Dien Bien Phu type action, they can grind down your will to fight.

Or did successive waves of occupiers leave Vietnam an Afghanistan over the centuries because they had accomplished all their objectives?

Galloglaich

2013-08-11, 01:28 PM

Good points, all round.

G

Wardog

2013-08-11, 06:36 PM

So for example, guerilla tactics would be somewhere between ineffective and worthless against the typical fantasy villain Orcs, since they're all for total devastation of whatever they can get their hands on, more than willing to kill every human they meet, and typically don't even have a supply chain to disrupt, since they live off the land and/or plunder. They aren't even likely to sit around in one place and let you do raids on them, instead favoring the "march right at the closest city, kill everyone, loot everything, burn it to the ground, repeat" strategy.

A realistic invading barbarian army, if it is large and reasonably organised, and fighting as an actual army, is still going to need a supply train (and/or a loot train to transport loot back home), so that could be a target for guerillas.

If they are living off the land, they will need to send out forraging parties, and you could hit them too.

And eventually they will want to return home (assuming they don't decide to settle down), and then they will be slowed down by loot, making them an easier target for both guerillas and conventional attacks.

Alternatively, is they are not fighting as a large, reasonably cohesive army, but just small bands out to raid targets of opportunity, then they are effectively guerillas themselves.

Also, depending on the politics/culture of the barbarian horde, it may be that they are mainly there to loot for personal gain, and don't have a any great loyalty to The Noble Cause of Invading Civilized Lands, in which case harrasing them until individuals start thinking "Meh, I've got enough loot to last me till next raiding season. I think I'll call it quits while I'm still alive".

Finally, the ability of an invader to make reprisals against the populace will depend on geography. If you have a sparse population in small, widely dispersed villages in rough terrain (as in ancient Caledonia), then it could be difficult for a large, slow-moving army to do much damage. Even more so if they are nomadic, and so not only naturally mobile, but don't even have any settlments to defend.

(I'm currently reading Heroditus, and if you'll pardon the use of modern gaming terms to describe ancient battles, the Scythian response to the Persian invasion could quite easily be summed up in as a combination of "kiting" and "trolling").

Of course, as Raum said, if you are talking about generic cliche orcs who are invading because Evil!, for whom noone has bothered to work out realistic command and logistic system (let alone social structure), then it probably won't work (unless the DM says it will).