Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

[snowblizz]

Lack of plate is true, but did India use the combined mail and plate style of armour we see in the Middle East? I am referring to the suits that look like a combo of mail and a coat of plates, with the plates connected together via mail. I wouldn't be surprised if the north of India did, but the south didn't. Armour seems to be unpopular in tropical regions, due to the climate and issues in overheating I assume.

Forgot to reply to this amidst the heaivng mass of "braaaaains".:smallbiggrin:

The combination of mail and plates was a very common type of armour in the Indian subcontinent yes. Not in the least because the major power on the Ganges plain was often a conqueror from the outside with an origin back into the areas that used such styles.

However, this is a very different beast from Western platearmour and is no where near as protective as full on platearmour. It's more accurate to consider it a special type of chain/splint mail really, or a chainmail with some excessively large rings included. So to say. I will still contend that there was no actual platearmour in any wider use as was the case with Europe. Obviously the heat and humidity are a problem also for plate wearers. And note all of the Indian continent is more or less tropical, the Northern parts are still decidely hot in summer. The British Raj had a summer capital in the Himalayas 2kms altitude for a time to get some decent coolness.

Re: Zombie stuff. This is a link to what I believe is part of the sparks for the discussion: http://zombie.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Yonkers
So have go at reading that description and poke holes in the explanaiton I guess. Am sure tere are some. It seemed a bit more involved than what I recall from the book, which ofc is framed as the memorires of various people living thorugh WWz.

[Mike_G]

1. Your telling me you can't get an abrams so mired in mud it will throw a track? Pulped flesh and cartilage should create roughly the same issues AFAIK. The human body is mostly water after all.



Not even close.

This is beyond apples to oranges. The density of human tissue is so far below that of the kind of mud that sticks a vehicle it's not even comparable. Go outside the next time you get a real good rain or spring melt, the kind of mud that sucks your shoes off your feet. Take a shovel full of it and see how much that weighs. Now imagine the volume of a human body, all that density. Human tissue isn't nearly as dense or viscus as that.

And, yeah, we're theoretically 70-ish percent water, but that's not the same as a barrel of water for purposes of stopping fragments or vehicles. Flesh isn't very dense. And the dead will dehydrate pretty quickly, since they aren't drinking and they are losing vapor to the environment constantly, ever more quickly as the skin disintegrates ans stops doing its main job of keeping the moisture inside.

I don't want to harp on this point but I've shoveled a lot of mud and I've seen what bodies do when hit by vehicles, and unless you are feeding zombies into a blender and shoveling in gravel at 1 part to three, you won't get mud that will throw a track.

As for the rest of it, we have loads of weapons and munitions, and loads of old lifers who know ho w to use them. Hell, I'm sure with five minutes on Youtube you could learn how to operate a recoiless rifle.

The only way a zombie apocalypse is even mildly concerning is if the disease is widespread before the threat is realized, and you have millions of zombies spread all around the country, in among the people and stuff you want to protect.

[Clistenes]

About the zombies, I think the main issue would be that it would take forever for the authorities to order the police and army to shoot the zombies. They would treat the zombies as sick people and tell the police to try to restrain them and take them to the hospital, use riot gear and equipment to control zombie mobs and arrest people who did kill zombies. Policemen would soon get zombified or leave town, and soldiers would get the same problem later... Zombies would be everywhere before real measures were taken...

And yes, many, maybe most zombies would get their bones broken by cars trying to run away...

[ExLibrisMortis]

The only way a zombie apocalypse is even mildly concerning is if the disease is widespread before the threat is realized, and you have millions of zombies spread all around the country, in among the people and stuff you want to protect.
Blowing up zombies isn't the problem, it's telling zombies from humans at mortar range :smalltongue:. Is anyone else reminded of the Pandemic games, where this is pretty much the winning strategy?

[Max_Killjoy]

Let's not forget how well armed the US population is and how many people would volunteer to assist in the patrols, including many people who used to be in the military or who have target shooting practice.

Maybe it's just my utter lack of regard for the zombie genre, but, meh.

[Brother Oni]

Consider something like a mine flail. An armoured vehicle with a spinning wheel of chains with fist-sized iron balls at the ends would probably make short work of a large amount of zombies if employed correctly. A main battle tank might even be better employed simply running zombies over than actually firing.

You'd probably want something more like an Aardvark JSFU rather than a Keiler though, simply because the crew is more inaccessible and has better line of sight.

http://tse4.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.NkAj2pTu6-DjrXLxcRLsKAHaEm&pid=15.1
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Mine_Clearing_System_KEILER.jpg

I'm not 100% sure a tank flail can be retro-fitted to a MBT, at least not like a Sherman Crab though.


Source: I’m an army officer and – believe me – it’s a regular debate at the office :P

With regard to a government/military response, various organisations have actually used a zombie apocalypse as a training scenario. Off the top of my head, the CDC have one, as the US government (CONPLAN 8888-11) which are freely available on the internet.

CONPLAN 8888-11 also addresses the potential response to several different types of zombies, from the real Haitian ones, shamblers, fast and zombie chickens (no, really).

[Mike_G]

Re: Zombie stuff. This is a link to what I believe is part of the sparks for the discussion: http://zombie.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Yonkers
So have go at reading that description and poke holes in the explanaiton I guess. Am sure tere are some. It seemed a bit more involved than what I recall from the book, which ofc is framed as the memorires of various people living thorugh WWz.

Just read the link.

So, yeah, if you assume that explosive don't work right, because crowds of flesh somehow make them less effective, and assume that the military makes the worst possible decision at every turn, then yeah, I guess if you try real hard you could lose that battle.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Zombies would never be a problem, and especially not in the US (or other places with that many guns, which the zombies themselves conveniently can't use at all). Maybe people shooting each other en mass in a zombie scare, but the zombies themselves?

It might be different for a virus that just makes people hyper aggressive and looking to bite others without making them super stupid at the same time. Zombies using guns and setting traps and acting like they're sick and they need help. Now if that were to happen we might all die. But normal zombies, not really. If you had an unreasonably fast acting virus, super fast super strong zombies, zombies looking to bite others without eating them, the sudden appearance of the disease without anything similar being previously known, basically the WWZ movie rules, you could probably get a city in big trouble. If randomly some people take longer to turn (more basically the WWZ movie rules) maybe a state. The world? I don't see it. Actual zombie zombies doing any of that? Not a chance.

That's probably the main reason the fantasy is so popular: Zombies are supposedly threatening enough to kill most of the world, but you could handle them! That makes you one of the best humans, the best! Congratulations! To be actually dangerous the average zombie would have to have an above 50% chance to take down and turn the average human, and the military is included in that average. If they don't live up to that standard they just fail. Maybe we should start with a virus that turns the infected into theropod dinosaurs or something, or like bears and sharks and birds of prey, just to make it a little sporting.

[Vinyadan]

How about using the Assault Breacher Vehicle's mine-clearing line charge system against zombies?

[Knaight]

On a totally different note - molotov cocktails: How effective were they, really? Similarly what do they actually do?

I'm used to the media depiction of molotov cocktails as a big fireball in a bottle, and I trust it roughly as far as the usual media depiction of weapons (where all explosives are big fireballs with nothing in the way of pressure waves, spears are held in the middle and usually have a range disadvantage to one handed swords, and big swipes with no defense is how one fights with a sword). I'd be interested in finding out how they actually behave.

[Mike_G]

On a totally different note - molotov cocktails: How effective were they, really? Similarly what do they actually do?

I'm used to the media depiction of molotov cocktails as a big fireball in a bottle, and I trust it roughly as far as the usual media depiction of weapons (where all explosives are big fireballs with nothing in the way of pressure waves, spears are held in the middle and usually have a range disadvantage to one handed swords, and big swipes with no defense is how one fights with a sword). I'd be interested in finding out how they actually behave.

They're fine for starting fires. When the bottle breaks the liquid (generally gasoline) inside does splash and spread and vaporize which does make a nice fireball. And burning fuel on your clothes is terrible, and if thrown into a place filled with flammable stuff it could be really bad. They were really used a lot by forces that don't have access to real grenades. Lobbed out of a second story window onto an open vehicle they would be pretty dangerous. And they're pretty easy to make, so if you're a poorly supplied rebel, and the Russians are rolling tanks through your city, that might be a way to go.

But there's only so much volume of flammable liquid you can get into a bottle that's easily thrown, you risk setting yourself on fire if you screw up, so it's a weapon of desperation.

[Mr Beer]

On a totally different note - molotov cocktails: How effective were they, really? Similarly what do they actually do?

I'm used to the media depiction of molotov cocktails as a big fireball in a bottle, and I trust it roughly as far as the usual media depiction of weapons (where all explosives are big fireballs with nothing in the way of pressure waves, spears are held in the middle and usually have a range disadvantage to one handed swords, and big swipes with no defense is how one fights with a sword). I'd be interested in finding out how they actually behave.

They are not terribly effective, but if you don't have anything better, you can use them to attack armoured vehicles. In fact I believe that's how they got their name, the Finns called them 'Molotov cocktails' because Molotov was a Soviet bigwig at the time.

I guess they tried to get them inside the hatch if it was open and in that case it would be extremely effective - a bunch of guys in a very cramped space with fuel supply nearby are in major trouble. I don't know if dropping a few Molotovs on a T34 would reliably incapacitate it or not. A modern tanks would probably be virtually immune to them otherwise insurgents would use cheap petrol bombs instead of massive IEDs.

Other than that, they are an effective terror weapon, so for example if your house is surrounded by a mob, chucking petrol bombs at them will probably slow them down. No-one wants to get burned to death.

It's hard to really immolate someone with them though, because they are slow moving, therefore easy to dodge and bottles don't tend to reliably break on people. If it lands at your feet, you will get badly scorched in the fireball and splashed with burning fluid but you are unlikely to just keel over and burn to death.

You will notice that rioters tend to use them and police don't feel the need to respond by shooting people. If rioters used guns or grenades, I think it would be a different story. So that should tell you something.

[rs2excelsior]

I guess they tried to get them inside the hatch if it was open and in that case it would be extremely effective - a bunch of guys in a very cramped space with fuel supply nearby are in major trouble. I don't know if dropping a few Molotovs on a T34 would reliably incapacitate it or not. A modern tanks would probably be virtually immune to them otherwise insurgents would use cheap petrol bombs instead of massive IEDs.

I believe they were more commonly thrown onto the engine deck of an enemy tank. The burning gasoline/whatever fuel you have would get down into the engine and hopefully ignite the tank's own fuel. At least that's my understanding of how they're used. Aside from obvious applications against wooden structures, I imagine they could also be used for area denial, if the liquid keeps burning for a bit--not sure how long it'd last, though.

They can have an effect, but there's a reason armies who have access to other weapons generally don't use them.

[Carl]

Forgot to reply to this amidst the heaivng mass of "braaaaains".:smallbiggrin:

The combination of mail and plates was a very common type of armour in the Indian subcontinent yes. Not in the least because the major power on the Ganges plain was often a conqueror from the outside with an origin back into the areas that used such styles.

However, this is a very different beast from Western platearmour and is no where near as protective as full on platearmour. It's more accurate to consider it a special type of chain/splint mail really, or a chainmail with some excessively large rings included. So to say. I will still contend that there was no actual platearmour in any wider use as was the case with Europe. Obviously the heat and humidity are a problem also for plate wearers. And note all of the Indian continent is more or less tropical, the Northern parts are still decidely hot in summer. The British Raj had a summer capital in the Himalayas 2kms altitude for a time to get some decent coolness.

Re: Zombie stuff. This is a link to what I believe is part of the sparks for the discussion: http://zombie.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Yonkers
So have go at reading that description and poke holes in the explanaiton I guess. Am sure tere are some. It seemed a bit more involved than what I recall from the book, which ofc is framed as the memorires of various people living thorugh WWz.

Didn't know about that, will have to find some time to read it, though from what mike G put below it sounds like maybe the scenario was somewhat different to how it was described to me in the past discussion.


Not even close.

This is beyond apples to oranges. The density of human tissue is so far below that of the kind of mud that sticks a vehicle it's not even comparable. Go outside the next time you get a real good rain or spring melt, the kind of mud that sucks your shoes off your feet. Take a shovel full of it and see how much that weighs. Now imagine the volume of a human body, all that density. Human tissue isn't nearly as dense or viscus as that.

And, yeah, we're theoretically 70-ish percent water, but that's not the same as a barrel of water for purposes of stopping fragments or vehicles. Flesh isn't very dense. And the dead will dehydrate pretty quickly, since they aren't drinking and they are losing vapor to the environment constantly, ever more quickly as the skin disintegrates ans stops doing its main job of keeping the moisture inside.

I don't want to harp on this point but I've shoveled a lot of mud and I've seen what bodies do when hit by vehicles, and unless you are feeding zombies into a blender and shoveling in gravel at 1 part to three, you won't get mud that will throw a track.

As for the rest of it, we have loads of weapons and munitions, and loads of old lifers who know ho w to use them. Hell, I'm sure with five minutes on Youtube you could learn how to operate a recoiless rifle.

The only way a zombie apocalypse is even mildly concerning is if the disease is widespread before the threat is realized, and you have millions of zombies spread all around the country, in among the people and stuff you want to protect.

I'll take your word on the throwing a track. As far as the effects of explosive weapons, i'm not basing that on the water content, (though i'm sure thats part of why it's so), but rather on a number of times mythbusters did tests involving human analogues and shrapnel or shrapnel like objects. They've shown that the human body has a remarkable ability to absorb shrapnel and shrapnel like objects. Often without bone analog present to make it worse. I don't expect a 155 to behave like the hand grenade in their jumping on a grenade test, but i do expect a correlation in that the maximum number of bodies it can go through is going to be severely limited even accounting for the pulping effect vs zombies within a few meters of the initial impact point producing extra shrapnel. It's a shame they aren't still going as it would be a great myth for them to test IMO.

As for the drying, again we come back to zombie types, some don't decay and seem to get moister.


Just read the link.

So, yeah, if you assume that explosive don't work right, because crowds of flesh somehow make them less effective, and assume that the military makes the worst possible decision at every turn, then yeah, I guess if you try real hard you could lose that battle.

I'll take your word on that, but i don't think that invalidates the scenario as i understood it, namely a military dealing with mass outbreaks due to improper early recognition of what was going on, severely overstretched, and with friendly fire concerns on civilians coupled with i'd imagine severe political interference from on high. I don;t think the scenario is unreasonable given human nature, and i suspect that would give most militaries a hard time, (somwhere like switzerland would probably fare quite well, they make the US seem positively gun free due to how their military reserves system works), although they might have issues with soldiers being trained to go for center mass leading to a lot of ineffective small arms fire as everyone's training kicks in.

[Mabn]

so I was thinking. At some point spears became two handed and swords became two handed because they would reach longer and hit harder. But all the depictions of lances I've seen were one handed and I know they did every other thing they could think of to make those long and hard hitting. So why did people use lances with one hand?

[Kiero]

so I was thinking. At some point spears became two handed and swords became two handed because they would reach longer and hit harder. But all the depictions of lances I've seen were one handed and I know they did every other thing they could think of to make those long and hard hitting. So why did people use lances with one hand?

Spears never "became two-handed", pikes came into use but they're not simply a longer spear. Spears remained one-handed, because they were almost always partnered with a shield. They were counter-weighted to keep them handy with one hand.

Some lances were used two-handed, like the xyston and kontos.

[Mabn]

Spears never "became two-handed", pikes came into use but they're not simply a longer spear. Spears remained one-handed, because they were almost always partnered with a shield. They were counter-weighted to keep them handy with one hand.

Some lances were used two-handed, like the xyston and kontos.

any reason both those lances were from way before the invention of the stirup? Like, did 2 handed lances stop being efficient?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I suspect a large part of the story is that the point (not the literal one) of a lance is using the speed and mass of a horse. You don't need two hands to hit harder, and ideally you don't even need them to aim better, you're using your horse for that.

[Vinyadan]

On a totally different note - molotov cocktails: How effective were they, really? Similarly what do they actually do?

I'm used to the media depiction of molotov cocktails as a big fireball in a bottle, and I trust it roughly as far as the usual media depiction of weapons (where all explosives are big fireballs with nothing in the way of pressure waves, spears are held in the middle and usually have a range disadvantage to one handed swords, and big swipes with no defense is how one fights with a sword). I'd be interested in finding out how they actually behave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udhB0kVgCYk

(Polanski, as usual.)

[Knaight]

Spears never "became two-handed", pikes came into use but they're not simply a longer spear. Spears remained one-handed, because they were almost always partnered with a shield. They were counter-weighted to keep them handy with one hand.

There were spears that saw two handed use other than pikes though - any number of hewing spears, records of normal spear techniques for two handed use (especially in Chinese and viking documents), so on and so forth.

[Mike_G]

Didn't know about that, will have to find some time to read it, though from what mike G put below it sounds like maybe the scenario was somewhat different to how it was described to me in the past discussion.



I'll take your word on the throwing a track. As far as the effects of explosive weapons, i'm not basing that on the water content, (though i'm sure thats part of why it's so), but rather on a number of times mythbusters did tests involving human analogues and shrapnel or shrapnel like objects. They've shown that the human body has a remarkable ability to absorb shrapnel and shrapnel like objects. Often without bone analog present to make it worse. I don't expect a 155 to behave like the hand grenade in their jumping on a grenade test, but i do expect a correlation in that the maximum number of bodies it can go through is going to be severely limited even accounting for the pulping effect vs zombies within a few meters of the initial impact point producing extra shrapnel. It's a shame they aren't still going as it would be a great myth for them to test IMO.

As for the drying, again we come back to zombie types, some don't decay and seem to get moister.



I'll take your word on that, but i don't think that invalidates the scenario as i understood it, namely a military dealing with mass outbreaks due to improper early recognition of what was going on, severely overstretched, and with friendly fire concerns on civilians coupled with i'd imagine severe political interference from on high. I don;t think the scenario is unreasonable given human nature, and i suspect that would give most militaries a hard time, (somwhere like switzerland would probably fare quite well, they make the US seem positively gun free due to how their military reserves system works), although they might have issues with soldiers being trained to go for center mass leading to a lot of ineffective small arms fire as everyone's training kicks in.

Just a few issues.

I realize that plenty of wounds that will take out a human won't take out a zombie, but the author gives that too much credit, claiming most of the artillery and gunship attacks are ineffective.

First, the effectiveness of artillery is greatly understated. Many, many shells are designed to be airbursting, which would invalidate all the muffling effects of the mob of zombies and result in lots and lots of head wounds from fragments. We also have munitions intended to start fires and Area Denial rounds which drop landmines, which could be deployed in front of the horde. These are bounding fragmentation mines which bounce up before exploding, so, again, plenty of head wounds. Even static mines would blow off legs, which would slow then further, and if the front zombie in a mindless horde is just pulling itself forward with its arms, it will probably be trampled to paste by the ones behind it. And the barrage could be started when the zombies were miles and miles away, to give plenty of time to adjust the defense if things weren't working right.

Worth a read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M198_howitzer


Second, napalm is a thing.

Airstrikes of napalm on a crowd of zombies would incinerate loads and loads of them, and the fires it would start would continue to serve as damage or area denial, depending on if they are smart enough to avoid fires.

Yes, they'd live longer on fire than a human, but only so long. Not sure how hot it has to be to cook a brain, but that should be as good as shooting one, and they won't have eyes for ears or noses after a minute on fire, so even if they keep walking, they'll be crippled.

Lastly, the idea of small arms fire reverting to Center of Mass, which we can all agree would be ineffective against a zombie.

You use Center of Mass because it's the best chance to hit what is usually a target that is moving fast and taking advantage of cover. If the enemy is moving slowly toward you, you have plenty of time to take careful aim. The current M16/M4 variants are very accurate and almost everybody has some kind of advanced optics today, so head shots at a slow moving guy at fifty or so yards is really not asking a lot.

Plus, much of the inaccuracy in combat is from nerves because you are usually being shot back at. If you aren't worried by the bullets snapping past your head, it will be much easier to take a moment to get a good sight picture. And a zombie at 50 or 100 or even 20 meters isn't a threat like the average enemy soldier is, so you can take a nice steady firing position and not sweat needing to hug the cover, make a nice slow rifle range trigger pull, and wait until the target is close enough to hit the head.

The situation described in the book has riflemen in fighting holes, which is stupid against zombies, who have no guns or artillery that the holes would protect against. And it's hard to retreat if you're in a hole. Better to use that prep time to make obstacles to slow the zombies at 20-50 yards (just barbed wire entanglements or even piles of debris would work, let lone pit traps) and now you have a slowed, entangled enemy with no way to return fire 25 yards from you with your modern rifle and scope. And once they get 15 yards from you, you run back to your APC, jump in it and fall back to your second line of defense, which any officer with an IQ higher than dirt should have prepared.

So, this is the Stupid Hollywood Military its finest. Use the wrong tactics, underestimate the weapons they have, and assume that professional generals wouldn't think of things like how anti armor penetrators designed to put a small hole in a T-72 probably are the wrong rounds to fight crowds of fleshy mindless enemies.

Most monster/sf films need the military to get overrun by things that couldn't possible be a threat in real life, so they make the military really stupid. These are the armies that fly helicopters close enough to the enemy that the gorilla in Planet of the Apes can jump into it, despite having weapons that can kill gorillas at a mile out.

Sorry to go on a rant, but this kind of thing makes me nuts.

[Kiero]

any reason both those lances were from way before the invention of the stirup? Like, did 2 handed lances stop being efficient?

Stirrups have nothing whatsoever to do with making couched charges from horseback. They are for making stable archery platforms, and giving better side-to-side stability in a standing melee.


There were spears that saw two handed use other than pikes though - any number of hewing spears, records of normal spear techniques for two handed use (especially in Chinese and viking documents), so on and so forth.

All the longer Chinese weapons I'm aware of are polearms, rather than spears. Glaive-bladed weapons and such.

[Knaight]

All the longer Chinese weapons I'm aware of are polearms, rather than spears. Glaive-bladed weapons and such.

I'm not talking about the longer weapons, I'm talking about records (and to some extent fighting manuals in miniature) of fighting with the typical spear with two hands.

[Haighus]

I'm not talking about the longer weapons, I'm talking about records (and to some extent fighting manuals in miniature) of fighting with the typical spear with two hands.

Later on we also see "half-pikes", such as boarding pikes, which are of spear length and pretty much a spear. Boarding pikes are not long, and not really pikes.

[Max_Killjoy]

The situation described in the book has riflemen in fighting holes, which is stupid against zombies, who have no guns or artillery that the holes would protect against. And it's hard to retreat if you're in a hole. Better to use that prep time to make obstacles to slow the zombies at 20-50 yards (just barbed wire entanglements or even piles of debris would work, let lone pit traps) and now you have a slowed, entangled enemy with no way to return fire 25 yards from you with your modern rifle and scope. And once they get 15 yards from you, you run back to your APC, jump in it and fall back to your second line of defense, which any officer with an IQ higher than dirt should have prepared.

So, this is the Stupid Hollywood Military its finest. Use the wrong tactics, underestimate the weapons they have, and assume that professional generals wouldn't think of things like how anti armor penetrators designed to put a small hole in a T-72 probably are the wrong rounds to fight crowds of fleshy mindless enemies.

Most monster/sf films need the military to get overrun by things that couldn't possible be a threat in real life, so they make the military really stupid. These are the armies that fly helicopters close enough to the enemy that the gorilla in Planet of the Apes can jump into it, despite having weapons that can kill gorillas at a mile out.

Sorry to go on a rant, but this kind of thing makes me nuts.



The way Hollywood depicts soldiers and militaries about 98% of the time is so ignorant that it borders on immoral.

[Haighus]

The way Hollywood depicts soldiers and militaries 98% of the time is so ignorant that it borders on immoral.

Equipment too. Useless tissue paper armour cut through by swords and daggers is a personal bugbear.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The way Hollywood depicts soldiers and militaries about 98% of the time is so ignorant that it borders on immoral.

You could replace "soldiers and militaries" there with almost any remotely technical field with approximately the same precision. The way they treat science and scientists is horrific. And teaches students bad lessons.

[Max_Killjoy]

Equipment too. Useless tissue paper armour cut through by swords and daggers is a personal bugbear.

Ugh, yeah... quality plate armor being stabbed through like it's paperboard, sword "techniques" that look like flailing about with a length of iron pipe, archers being the smallest weakest soldiers, etc.



You could replace "soldiers and militaries" there with almost any remotely technical field with approximately the same precision. The way they treat science and scientists is horrific. And teaches students bad lessons.

Certainly.

See also forensics, police, investigations, computers and "hacking", explosions and collisions, etc.

Sometimes I wonder if you could make a name in movies by adhering to a standard of "show it like it really is"... explosions that act like real explosions, professional soldiers and SWAT who act like the thing, etc.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Certainly.

See also forensics, police, investigations, computers and "hacking", explosions and collisions, etc.

Sometimes I wonder if you could make a name in movies by adhering to a standard of "show it like it really is"... explosions that act like real explosions, professional soldiers and SWAT who act like the thing, etc.

I doubt it, especially with the way movies are going these days. Go back and watch a movie from the 60s or 70s. It feels slow (to a lot of people). With much more of the revenue coming from overseas (China!), they're leaning more and more on fancy special effects and action sequences, which don't play well with realistic depictions. Visual media just need different conventions/visual shorthand for certain things to work well.

I don't really mind, until they (or other people using movies as fact) start trying to meddle in the real world. Hint--just because you played one on TV doesn't make you a [doctor/lawyer/soldier/spy/scientist/etc].

[Haighus]

I doubt it, especially with the way movies are going these days. Go back and watch a movie from the 60s or 70s. It feels slow (to a lot of people). With much more of the revenue coming from overseas (China!), they're leaning more and more on fancy special effects and action sequences, which don't play well with realistic depictions. Visual media just need different conventions/visual shorthand for certain things to work well.

I don't really mind, until they (or other people using movies as fact) start trying to meddle in the real world. Hint--just because you played one on TV doesn't make you a [doctor/lawyer/soldier/spy/scientist/etc].
On the other hand, combat with melee weapons is often much slower than the actual thing. Especially in a battlefield context in medieval/ancient settings. Although street fights often have the protagonist moving round the opponents like they are standing still...

[PhoenixPhyre]

On the other hand, combat with melee weapons is often much slower than the actual thing. Especially in a battlefield context in medieval/ancient settings. Although street fights often have the protagonist moving round the opponents like they are standing still...

True enough, although I'd say that's due to some of the same limitations. If it's over in the blink of an eye (one or two moves), people will miss it and wonder what happened. People expect it to take a while (because they don't really know), so unless it does it doesn't have the right dramatic weight.

A "realistic" movie would be hard to watch, and it runs the uncanny valley risk pretty heavily. I can't watch things that claim to be "realistic" about science--because they either fail at being a good movie or they fail at being good science. Things that don't make that claim are fine, though.

[wolflance]

Stirrups have nothing whatsoever to do with making couched charges from horseback. They are for making stable archery platforms, and giving better side-to-side stability in a standing melee.

All the longer Chinese weapons I'm aware of are polearms, rather than spears. Glaive-bladed weapons and such.
That also depend on what kind of stirrup. The one used by knights (long and allows you to almost-standing on horseback) certainly helped greatly during a couched charge.

Chinese “spears” are usually pike-length anyway. As a rule of thumb, there's no Chinese melee weapon longer than spear/Qiang.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

You could replace "soldiers and militaries" there with almost any remotely technical field with approximately the same precision. The way they treat science and scientists is horrific. And teaches students bad lessons.

But at least a scientist is often the one who kicks the bad guys into the monster's mouth after they effortlessly shoot all the soldiers.

So the rule might be that every movie character has to be very bad at their own job, but can be reasonably competent in a semi-magical "that wouldn't work in real life" kind of way at someone else's job.

[snowblizz]

Equipment too. Useless tissue paper armour cut through by swords and daggers is a personal bugbear.

In their defence they do make the chainmail out of spraypainted wool sweaters so you can see where they get confused.

[Galloglaich]

I doubt it, especially with the way movies are going these days. Go back and watch a movie from the 60s or 70s. It feels slow (to a lot of people). With much more of the revenue coming from overseas (China!), they're leaning more and more on fancy special effects and action sequences, which don't play well with realistic depictions. Visual media just need different conventions/visual shorthand for certain things to work well.



Nonesense. I've been hearing this kind of argument for decades. This is the reality.

Most films in the 60's or 70's were as bad as today, with different kinds of emphasis. But slight improvements in realism often paid dividends. Kirusawa Samurai films, Clint Eastwood / Sergeo Leoni Spaghetti Westerns were more realistic than the earlier John Wayne type.

John Wick was, if not realistic by any stretch, certainly making use of real fighting techniques. The whole thing was the creation of a fight coordinator.

Saving Private Ryan was a success based largely on the high level of realism of the first 5 minutes of the film.

Real medieval fencing for example is easily adaptable to modern fast cut editing. In fact it is if anything, too fast for most people to follow and you have to slow it down.

Just one example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjT4JepA-Vc


The truth is, most people have been conditioned to actually prefer mediocrity, some people are downright militant about it. It gives them something familiar which they feel they own.

But realistic fighting 'feels' right even to neophytes who know nothing about it. That's why you are seeing more jujitsu and less Peking Opera Wushu in fight scenes even in lame action movies.

There is a market for more realistic combat but few studio's would bother, because they are aiming low for the niche that they think will pay off. More often than not these days they guess wrong and fail. Hollywood has been losing a lot of money.



As for Zombies and artillery tubes, it's a ridiculous argument to say we don't have enough artillery tubes. The US has a huge military (especially if you include National Guard and Reserve forces) and artillery is a key component of every combat unit. Every base on that map of the US I posted upthread has substantial artillery or mortar ordinance. Mortars in particular, are extremely ubiquitous. Down to the company level - my HQ company had a light mortar section. Every infantry battalion or equivalent has medium (81mm or 80mm) mortar batteries with plenty of ammunition. And mortars can shoot all day long without wearing out a barrel.

Max Brooks had wild success off of tapping into that same middlebrow level that I was referring to above. It's a fun book. But he really didn't know anything about anything. That's why he wrote about zombies - people are into zombies and are about as discerning in quality as zombies themselves are as to what they eat.

And after they eat your brains you can't tell one thing from the other...

G

[khadgar567]

well lot of zombie survivors are common folk so you need some think simple to learn like I dont know automatic cross bow where average joe can reliably shoot and maintain his weapon so best weapon for average guy is from monster hunter called light bow gun. we have clip can hold at least 500 or more bolts to shoot before need to change cartridge. then we need reliable explosive bolts to turn zombies to gibs where they become harmless enough.
when we turn in to army guys we get the best weapon for zombie Apocalypse is unreal tournaments rocket launcher were we have both large loads and fast attacks in single package thus soldier can mov down the grass quick and effectively. so this is my best build options to survive on ground level zombie combat and good base to get bigger builds on. as how we can get both weapons ask Elon musk to prototype them over night then you are done.

[Galloglaich]

well lot of zombie survivors are common folk so you need some think simple to learn like I dont know automatic cross bow where average joe can reliably shoot and maintain his weapon so best weapon for average guy is from monster hunter called light bow gun. we have clip can hold at least 500 or more bolts to shoot before need to change cartridge. then we need reliable explosive bolts to turn zombies to gibs where they become harmless enough.
when we turn in to army guys we get the best weapon for zombie Apocalypse is unreal tournaments rocket launcher were we have both large loads and fast attacks in single package thus soldier can mov down the grass quick and effectively. so this is my best build options to survive on ground level zombie combat and good base to get bigger builds on. as how we can get both weapons ask Elon musk to prototype them over night then you are done.

https://orig00.deviantart.net/aae2/f/2007/344/f/e/lol_wut_by_stfuah.jpg

[Kiero]

Nonesense. I've been hearing this kind of argument for decades. This is the reality.

Most films in the 60's or 70's were as bad as today, with different kinds of emphasis. But slight improvements in realism often paid dividends. Kirusawa Samurai films, Clint Eastwood / Sergeo Leoni Spaghetti Westerns were more realistic than the earlier John Wayne type.

John Wick was, if not realistic by any stretch, certainly making use of real fighting techniques. The whole thing was the creation of a fight coordinator.

Saving Private Ryan was a success based largely on the high level of realism of the first 5 minutes of the film.

Real medieval fencing for example is easily adaptable to modern fast cut editing. In fact it is if anything, too fast for most people to follow and you have to slow it down.

Just one example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjT4JepA-Vc


The truth is, most people have been conditioned to actually prefer mediocrity, some people are downright militant about it. It gives them something familiar which they feel they own.

But realistic fighting 'feels' right even to neophytes who know nothing about it. That's why you are seeing more jujitsu and less Peking Opera Wushu in fight scenes even in lame action movies.

There is a market for more realistic combat but few studio's would bother, because they are aiming low for the niche that they think will pay off. More often than not these days they guess wrong and fail. Hollywood has been losing a lot of money.


Agreed, while a lot of fight choreography in contemporary action movies is lamentably bad, in older ones it was almost universally so. Many of the "classic" war films can just about get away with it because they avoid anything at the personal scale beyond longer-range firefights, but the moment they get to hand to hand combat, they're always terrible.

Never mind that the dialogue in a lot of movies from before the 1970s was incredibly stilted and artifical-sounding, like they'd written for the stage and simply replicated it.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Hyperadvanced automatic crossbow stuff

Honestly an AK47 sounds simpler. To use, to maintain, to make, to make ammo for and to get your hands on. It has less moving parts, requires less explosive substance and is more compact.

But since these are zombies just two people with handguns and enough ammo and either a group of folks with improvised pikes or just a good barbed wire barricade are probably going to be sufficient to clean out a small city. If you don't have any handguns (like me) you can try using bows or spears or slings or atlatls or throwing clubs or knives or screwdrivers or sharp pieces of scrap metal or cobbled together muskets or anything you can get your hands on, but if you're connected enough to have a well known science popularizer make prototypes for you I'm sure you can find some guns. They work fine.

[Yora]

Are the Abrams and the Leopard 2 still considered to be the best tanks in the world? Even though they get continous updates, both were designed back in the 70s.

[Max_Killjoy]

Are the Abrams and the Leopard 2 still considered to be the best tanks in the world? Even though they get continous updates, both were designed back in the 70s.

By most, yes.

By those who are fixated on Russian tanks, the "Armata" is "besttank".

[Haighus]

By most, yes.

By those who are fixated on Russian tanks, the "Armata" is "besttank".

Not to forget the Challenger II, which is certainly in the same ballpark as the Abrams.

[gkathellar]

Never mind that the dialogue in a lot of movies from before the 1970s was incredibly stilted and artifical-sounding, like they'd written for the stage and simply replicated it.

My older relatives swear that this is mostly truth-in-television.


That's why he wrote about zombies - people are into zombies and are about as discerning in quality as zombies themselves are as to what they eat.

This much I'll dispute - I recall an interview where Brooks stated that he wrote about zombies because he finds them really, really frightening. I'm willing to believe that.

In general, the triumph of the book is that it looks at things through a political and logistical lens, and in spite of some flawed assumptions, does a good job of making the problem feel real in a way that crossbows and grizzled dudes with bats full of nails complaining about how life sucks can't. Part of that comes from looking at the concept through the lens of modern social problems - I recall in particular all of the stuff exploring how blood-borne diseases in general are surrounded by misinformation and myth, or the commentary on refugee crises, or the exploration of how countries that have been historically at odds often have better tools for deescalation than countries that ignore each other. Some of it comes from thinking about zombies outside of the standard suburban milieu, like the "oh god zombies in the water," bit, or how people end up fleeing to cold climes where the zombies will freeze. And at least some is the book's focus on the anatomy of an error, examining how militaries and governments overestimate their preparedness for the future while preparing for the past. But there are definitely problems; hell, the book includes a submarine battle, i.e. "that thing that has never happened." Brooks also tailors his subject to his style, making his zombies, for instance, possess a very different consistency than living humans, which allows him to draw certain conclusions that are otherwise implausible. He also makes some political guesses that I think are, at best, optimistic.

If we want to get truly "realistic," a classic zombie apocalypse is almost certainly impossible, simply because biting is not a very effective means of disease transmission. This is why rabies, well before we could treat it, was not a serious threat to human populations. It's hard to envision how the critical mass of zombies required could come about in the first place (and it's something Brooks works really, really hard to rationalize away).

[Rakaydos]

So I've got a worldbuilding weapon&armor question.

My setting has a species of inteligent, pony sized flying hexapedal ambush carnivore (not obligate carnivore, they can have some non-meat) with tool use.

https://i.imgur.com/Qw8GJWf.png

Not as large or as powerful as a classic dragon, and without a dragon's native ranged attack, they arnt overwelmingly powerful, but the danger of random balistic rocks out of the sky will likely affect armor, weapons, and tactics.

I need to know this before those inteligent tool using fliers start smithing their own weapons and armor.

I consider "Everything important is on the ground" to be a tactical consideration- while one of these drakes could drop rocks, the higher they are the less accurate, and they have to go back down to grab more rocks, (or lead darts, or shuriken, once smithing starts) which is tiring for an ambush predator. They are built for short burst sprinting (to get into the air) but their aerial sustained speed isnt actually that high- I'm provisionally pegging it as "slower than a fast horse" for tactical purposes. (and of course, the more they carry, the sooner they get tired.

On the flipside, though, they can ignore most rough terrain between them and the destination, as long as theirs room to get off the ground at the start and the terrain lets them land at the destination. (large woods are impassable unless you know a big burnscar, for instance.) This makes them really good at flanking and supply raiding, and even without rocks, having muscular wings offers a number of melee options capable of defeating unarmed humanoids, even if hollow bones mean the humanoids outmass them.

Wing damage heals slowly, but isnt an instant death sentance. Major wing damage, if it doesnt involve a bone-breaking fall to earth, cripples flight but leaves them perfectly capable on the ground.

What weapons and tech (low magic setting) would be developed prehistorically to hold off such a menace, before communication begins?

[Yora]

Bow and arrow would be my first shot.

[Rakaydos]

Bow and arrow would be my first shot.

Elsewhere, I've gotten "broadhead hunting arrows fired just hard enough to get stuck halfway through the membrane and tear a little more every wingflap," "Horseback spears to deny a drake a place to land," and "Heavy infantry who outmass their waythrough bombardment and outlast the fleeing wounded/exausted."

Like, this isnt meant to be fair. It'll be fair once I give the drakes tech too.

[Carl]

Just a few issues.

I realize that plenty of wounds that will take out a human won't take out a zombie, but the author gives that too much credit, claiming most of the artillery and gunship attacks are ineffective.

First, the effectiveness of artillery is greatly understated. Many, many shells are designed to be airbursting, which would invalidate all the muffling effects of the mob of zombies and result in lots and lots of head wounds from fragments. We also have munitions intended to start fires and Area Denial rounds which drop landmines, which could be deployed in front of the horde. These are bounding fragmentation mines which bounce up before exploding, so, again, plenty of head wounds. Even static mines would blow off legs, which would slow then further, and if the front zombie in a mindless horde is just pulling itself forward with its arms, it will probably be trampled to paste by the ones behind it. And the barrage could be started when the zombies were miles and miles away, to give plenty of time to adjust the defense if things weren't working right.

Worth a read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M198_howitzer


Second, napalm is a thing.

Airstrikes of napalm on a crowd of zombies would incinerate loads and loads of them, and the fires it would start would continue to serve as damage or area denial, depending on if they are smart enough to avoid fires.

Yes, they'd live longer on fire than a human, but only so long. Not sure how hot it has to be to cook a brain, but that should be as good as shooting one, and they won't have eyes for ears or noses after a minute on fire, so even if they keep walking, they'll be crippled.

Lastly, the idea of small arms fire reverting to Center of Mass, which we can all agree would be ineffective against a zombie.

You use Center of Mass because it's the best chance to hit what is usually a target that is moving fast and taking advantage of cover. If the enemy is moving slowly toward you, you have plenty of time to take careful aim. The current M16/M4 variants are very accurate and almost everybody has some kind of advanced optics today, so head shots at a slow moving guy at fifty or so yards is really not asking a lot.

Plus, much of the inaccuracy in combat is from nerves because you are usually being shot back at. If you aren't worried by the bullets snapping past your head, it will be much easier to take a moment to get a good sight picture. And a zombie at 50 or 100 or even 20 meters isn't a threat like the average enemy soldier is, so you can take a nice steady firing position and not sweat needing to hug the cover, make a nice slow rifle range trigger pull, and wait until the target is close enough to hit the head.

The situation described in the book has riflemen in fighting holes, which is stupid against zombies, who have no guns or artillery that the holes would protect against. And it's hard to retreat if you're in a hole. Better to use that prep time to make obstacles to slow the zombies at 20-50 yards (just barbed wire entanglements or even piles of debris would work, let lone pit traps) and now you have a slowed, entangled enemy with no way to return fire 25 yards from you with your modern rifle and scope. And once they get 15 yards from you, you run back to your APC, jump in it and fall back to your second line of defense, which any officer with an IQ higher than dirt should have prepared.

So, this is the Stupid Hollywood Military its finest. Use the wrong tactics, underestimate the weapons they have, and assume that professional generals wouldn't think of things like how anti armor penetrators designed to put a small hole in a T-72 probably are the wrong rounds to fight crowds of fleshy mindless enemies.

Most monster/sf films need the military to get overrun by things that couldn't possible be a threat in real life, so they make the military really stupid. These are the armies that fly helicopters close enough to the enemy that the gorilla in Planet of the Apes can jump into it, despite having weapons that can kill gorillas at a mile out.

Sorry to go on a rant, but this kind of thing makes me nuts.

Hey no worries i get the frustration 110%. :smallsmile:.

Also way late on writing this :(.

My understanding of the current howie ammo, (i have read that btw in the past and skimmed it again for this), is that most modern ammo is impact detonating, though as i pointed out i discovered in research that contrary to my assumption and seemingly the authors cluster munitions are airbursting. Obviously getting airbursting HE rounds back into service should be as easy as grabbing sdoem from approriatte storage.

As for the napalm e.t.c. from some stuff passed on in the prior discussion fire only stopped them if it actually burned them up, heat didn't seem to do any damage. Yes it's not realistic, but neither is a creature moving aroudn without eating for days or requiring purely headshots to permanently kill.

For the center mass thing i was thinking more about muscle memory, my understanding is militaries like o get aiming and firing effectively down to as close to muscle memory as possible. I could see a lot of soldiers starting out alert picking their shots, but then quickly falling into a routine followed by their muscle memory kicking in without them even realising it. There's a reason "damn you muscle memory" has a trope entry on tvtropes. it;s somthing that really happens.

That said i'm fully willing to accept your criticisms of how the military handled things, i'm picking round the edges because history is full of to the point where it's almost the rule that no matter how much a military forces has heard about and thought about, if they run into somthing new they tend to make a whole long list of screwups. Add in all the possibility for economic, political, civil, and logistical screw ups, (which is my impression of the focus of the book and somthing gkathellar seems to agree on), before the military even fire their first shot and there's a lot of room for things to go tits up in an unexpected and problematic way. Maybe not to the degree or with the consequences of the book. But i would be downright amazed if there weren't plenty of cases of the military making a serious mistake, it's pretty much a military tradition for them to do so after this many thousands of years of beating each others skulls in with progressively more capable means. Sure it's a tradition i'd really like them to get out of the habit of, but i don't expect miracles.


By most, yes.

By those who are fixated on Russian tanks, the "Armata" is "besttank".

My impression is the Armata has a lot of good idea's that may or may not be individually executed well, but i have doubts about the exact way they've been combined. On the other hand the idea of this stuff getting into others hands a tech generation or two down the line does worry me. It isn't going to be enough in typical quantities to really mess up a typical western military that gets into a war with such a country, but it could get mighty unpleasant for the people who have to actually fight said war, (not that i wouldn't rather they didn't have to fight the war at all of course).

[Brother Oni]

Elsewhere, I've gotten "broadhead hunting arrows fired just hard enough to get stuck halfway through the membrane and tear a little more every wingflap," "Horseback spears to deny a drake a place to land," and "Heavy infantry who outmass their waythrough bombardment and outlast the fleeing wounded/exausted."

When you say 'prehistoric', do you mean Stone Age level? In which case atlatls (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower), spears and low poundage bow stone head arrows would be the optimal (and probably only) defences.

There's a quite an indepth discussion several pages back on flying winged humanoids, both on equipment and tactics they would use and countermeasures against them.

[Knaight]

When you say 'prehistoric', do you mean Stone Age level? In which case atlatls (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower), spears and low poundage bow stone head arrows would be the optimal (and probably only) defences.

There's also the possibility of slings. We're not really sure exactly how early they start showing up, largely because they're highly biodegradable (being some combination of leather, plant fiber, and animal fiber which varied quite a bit), but it's probably somewhere in the stone age.

[Mr Beer]

Flying, tool-using, predators larger than a lion sound like they would make the Stone Age a living nightmare.

[Brother Oni]

Flying, tool-using, predators larger than a lion sound like they would make the Stone Age a living nightmare.

If the humans lived in caves or dense forest and only came out at night, it would remove most of the natural advantages of the predators, although it depends on the predator species population numbers on whether they'd be the fully dominate species or just another apex predator for humans to be wary of.

[Mr Beer]

If the humans lived in caves or dense forest and only came out at night, it would remove most of the natural advantages of the predators, although it depends on the predator species population numbers on whether they'd be the fully dominate species or just another apex predator for humans to be wary of.

Probably being at very cold latitudes would fix reptiles as well. But inability to spread out to temperate climates outside dense forest or being obligated to operate nocturnally would likely have a significant effect on human development.

Of course, if this is set in a Stone Age, it makes sense. Even then, no savannah ape stage except at night.

[Rakaydos]

Every weapon/armor expert I've talked to harps on technology building out of nesessity. In gaming terms, the meta is always evolving.

I'm basically trying to avoid a simple "medival fantasy with armoed dragons" by working out how the meta evolved.

So it sounds like, pre bronze age, the Drakes own the temperate grasslands. And it's probably the tribes in colder regions who develop smithing, while the forestdwellers would have better ranged weapons.

This eventually pushes the Drakes back to elevated, defensable terrain. But not high enough it starts getting too cold. A volcano might be nice.

So, the Drakes start to learn from their enemies, Pierce their wing at armpits and waist to belt equipment on, more aerial projectiles, perhaps some Spears and basic armor of their own.

Where does it go from there?

[khadgar567]

Every weapon/armor expert I've talked to harps on technology building out of nesessity. In gaming terms, the meta is always evolving.

I'm basically trying to avoid a simple "medival fantasy with armoed dragons" by working out how the meta evolved.

So it sounds like, pre bronze age, the Drakes own the temperate grasslands. And it's probably the tribes in colder regions who develop smithing, while the forestdwellers would have better ranged weapons.

This eventually pushes the Drakes back to elevated, defensable terrain. But not high enough it starts getting too cold. A volcano might be nice.

So, the Drakes start to learn from their enemies, Pierce their wing at armpits and waist to belt equipment on, more aerial projectiles, perhaps some Spears and basic armor of their own.

Where does it go from there?
are drakes are mounts or legit monsters average joe needs to be scared of?
if mounts then who is the proverbial Stoick to make the first tame?
if they are monsters average joe needs to be scared then why nerigigante needs freaking admantaine full plate to defend himself from attacks? Houston we have a logic problem?

[Mendicant]

I mean, do we even assume they're necessarily in conflict most of the time? If I'm one of these creatures my preferred prey is probably not going to be the kind that whips darts and sling stones at me.

If there was conflict, it wouldn't be of the ambush predator type. Intelligent tool users would try to exterminate or drive out competing alpha predators.

[Rakaydos]

are drakes are mounts or legit monsters average joe needs to be scared of?
if mounts then who is the proverbial Stoick to make the first tame?
if they are monsters average joe needs to be scared then why nerigigante needs freaking admantaine full plate to defend himself from attacks? Houston we have a logic problem?

Playable race, not a mount.

[khadgar567]

Playable race, not a mount.
know that explains the logic.

[Rakaydos]

know that explains the logic.

Can you restate your question? Something is getting lost in translation here.

[khadgar567]

Can you restate your question? Something is getting lost in translation here.
them being playable races thus need armor to adventures instead of being mooks to be killed by players.

[Carl]

Can you restate your question? Something is getting lost in translation here.

I think he meant "Now that explains the logic"

[Rakaydos]

The goal I wish to jusify is a legitimate need for what is basically Drake heavy infantry, and what that would involve given their opposition.

Brestplate, gorget, helm, vambrace, a narrow whiplike blade along the leading edge of their wing (with a "hilt" protecting the wing-wrist), a Cuisse that entends past the knee far enough to protect a raptorlike leg, basic footgear, and enough metal on the tail to counterbalance everything up front. Shortsword and narrow kite shield or 2 hander.

But that may be skipping a few steps.

[Mr Beer]

Don't worry about skipping steps, start with the goal and work backwards. Drakes fight humans in dragonish plate, wielding swords and wing-enhancers, that's what you want? Well then drakes are in conflict with (some, all?) human lands. Probably drakes have mountainous areas which prevents the more numerous humans from swarming them. Drake and human technology evolved at the same time, presumably drakes and humans have troubled but not consistently genocidal relationships.

[wolflance]

Question again： How does Late Medieval - Thirty Years War (15 - 17th century) military training look like?

What was the scope like? Did soldiers train for indivial combat only? Or they trained for fighting in a unit (squad/company/regiment etc)? Or they organize military exercise that requires coordination between multiple units?

How often/long did they train? Daily? Weekly? Only during the preparation phase of a war? Or did soldiers participated in training "boot camp" on regular intervals (say, a one month training camp every year)?

Did knights/nobles trained with commoner troops?

Was there performance accessment? Did individual got promoted/demoted based on his training performance?

(I know this is an incredibly broad question as there's little to no standardization back then)

[Carl]

Don't worry about skipping steps, start with the goal and work backwards.

This, pick a point somwhere in your story and work as far forward or backward or both as you need to.

Most of my idea's work like this, often involving brief snapshot flashes of a major event or three in a dream and then building out from there.

All my EFGT setting basically grew out of dream snapshots of the Stonehenge incident, (current day) and the Vatican Reformation incident, (around 200 years later), and the Cultist Invasion of Earth, (another 100 years after that), with me then taking the info contained in those snapflashes and the limits they set on things like technology society, geopolitics and interstellar politics and building outward to fill in all the gaps. Yet you won't have heard much about those events when i've talked about said setting before because whilst their important to explaining why and how things got to where they are, their effect on the day to day is relevant only in so much as they shaped events that got things to the current point. They don't actually decide anything much on a day to day basis.

[Deepbluediver]

So I've got a question that's a little bit different from our usual fair.

I'm wondering about the real-world providence of this sword, where the design might have come from and how it might have been used (see picture in spoilers, if it goes down or doesn't work, message me):
https://preview.ibb.co/d7ZHfx/002.jpg

I didn't have any bananas, so I grabbed some other stuff from my kitchen to try and give a sense of scale. Overall it's about 45 inches long, with the sharpened part of the blade being 29.5. If I put the tip on the ground and stand next to it, the sword is about stomach-height.
Also, it weighs around 3.6 pounds.


I bought this off of one of the numerous websites selling cheap reproductions for the sole reason that I thought it looked cool, but now I'm kind of wondering if there's any realism to this sort of design at all. I'm not a trained swordsman in the slightest, but from my research (and this thread) the weapon seems a little heavy for a one-handed weapon, but to light for a two-hander. Also, three-and-a-half pounds might not be abnormally heavy, but the sword's length makes it feel a bit awkward, too.
I was wondering if it might be something like a cavarly-saber, where you could count on the horses momentum for movement instead of just your own swing, and the added length would be useful for reaching people, especially standing on the ground.

The closest match I've been able to find to anything else was the German knecht kriegmesser (https://albion-swords.com/swords/albion/nextgen/sword-kriegsmesser-knecht.htm) (translation: big knife), although all the pictures of that seem to have straight handles and wide hilts.

So help me out- have you ever seen anything like this from another source? Maybe in a museum? What would it's preferred method of usage have been? What sort of fighting style did it mess with? Is there anything at all to indicate that this is in fact not just a ludicrously oversived filleting knife and/or heavy wall-decoration?

[Socratov]

So I've got a question that's a little bit different from our usual fair.

I'm wondering about the real-world providence of this sword, where the design might have come from and how it might have been used (see picture in spoilers, if it goes down or doesn't work, message me):
https://preview.ibb.co/d7ZHfx/002.jpg

I didn't have any bananas, so I grabbed some other stuff from my kitchen to try and give a sense of scale. Overall it's about 45 inches long, with the sharpened part of the blade being 29.5. If I put the tip on the ground and stand next to it, the sword is about stomach-height.
Also, it weighs around 3.6 pounds.


I bought this off of one of the numerous websites selling cheap reproductions for the sole reason that I thought it looked cool, but now I'm kind of wondering if there's any realism to this sort of design at all. I'm not a trained swordsman in the slightest, but from my research (and this thread) the weapon seems a little heavy for a one-handed weapon, but to light for a two-hander. Also, three-and-a-half pounds might not be abnormally heavy, but the sword's length makes it feel a bit awkward, too.
I was wondering if it might be something like a cavarly-saber, where you could count on the horses momentum for movement instead of just your own swing, and the added length would be useful for reaching people, especially standing on the ground.

The closest match I've been able to find to anything else was the German knecht kriegmesser (https://albion-swords.com/swords/albion/nextgen/sword-kriegsmesser-knecht.htm) (translation: big knife), although all the pictures of that seem to have straight handles and wide hilts.

So help me out- have you ever seen anything like this from another source? Maybe in a museum? What would it's preferred method of usage have been? What sort of fighting style did it mess with? Is there anything at all to indicate that this is in fact not just a ludicrously oversived filleting knife and/or heavy wall-decoration?
The blade construction and handle really lead me to believe that it is in fact a messer. One problem though, as far as I recall messers usually have a hefty cross guard with either a pin (nagel) or ring sticking out. So as far as I'm concerned it's an incomplete messer.

[Spiryt]

So I've got a question that's a little bit different from our usual fair.

I'm wondering about the real-world providence of this sword, where the design might have come from and how it might have been used (see picture in spoilers, if it goes down or doesn't work, message me):
https://preview.ibb.co/d7ZHfx/002.jpg

I didn't have any bananas, so I grabbed some other stuff from my kitchen to try and give a sense of scale. Overall it's about 45 inches long, with the sharpened part of the blade being 29.5. If I put the tip on the ground and stand next to it, the sword is about stomach-height.
Also, it weighs around 3.6 pounds.


I bought this off of one of the numerous websites selling cheap reproductions for the sole reason that I thought it looked cool, but now I'm kind of wondering if there's any realism to this sort of design at all. I'm not a trained swordsman in the slightest, but from my research (and this thread) the weapon seems a little heavy for a one-handed weapon, but to light for a two-hander. Also, three-and-a-half pounds might not be abnormally heavy, but the sword's length makes it feel a bit awkward, too.
I was wondering if it might be something like a cavarly-saber, where you could count on the horses momentum for movement instead of just your own swing, and the added length would be useful for reaching people, especially standing on the ground.

The closest match I've been able to find to anything else was the German knecht kriegmesser (https://albion-swords.com/swords/albion/nextgen/sword-kriegsmesser-knecht.htm) (translation: big knife), although all the pictures of that seem to have straight handles and wide hilts.

So help me out- have you ever seen anything like this from another source? Maybe in a museum? What would it's preferred method of usage have been? What sort of fighting style did it mess with? Is there anything at all to indicate that this is in fact not just a ludicrously oversived filleting knife and/or heavy wall-decoration?

It looks like one of those 'tactical' swords many sword makers were/are making lately.

Basically some kind of sword/saber but with 'modern' design and feel look wise.

So it, of course, won't have any close historical analogies at all.

Looking bit like 'two handed dao' is probably closest.

There's nothing wrong with it's 'stats' at all, 3.6 pounds seems like very good weight sword.

Without actually handling it, or some very detailed stats, there's no way to tell whether it's well balanced/designed sword, of course.

So you have one completely non historical sword.

And whether it would be a good sword in some kind of swordy applications is something that's impossible to tell from pictures.

Fighting style would probably be similar to katana or any kind of long sword with very limited 'guard'.

[Deepbluediver]

The blade construction and handle really lead me to believe that it is in fact a messer. One problem though, as far as I recall messers usually have a hefty cross guard with either a pin (nagel) or ring sticking out. So as far as I'm concerned it's an incomplete messer.
Yeah, that's the only thing I've found so far that it seems to be very similar too, I was just under the impression that the hilt was kind of important. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjoWAg1HJKw) was fun to watch, but my sword cost nowhere near as much. Also the clips of actual cutting seem to be showing the sword used with 2 hands, and according to the stats his sword was around ~20% lighter than mine. I can get both my hands on the handle fairly easily, but I don't know what a comfortable sword-grip is supposed to feel like, and I'm slightly above-average in size. I've seen videos of zweihander techniques, and it seems like they allow you to choke up quite a bit, which this almost definitely wouldn't. If I spread my hands out to the point there they are wrapped around the metal bits of the handle, too, there is at most about 3 inches of clearance between them.

Anywho, thanks for your feedback!



It looks like one of those 'tactical' swords many sword makers were/are making lately.
I don't recall what, if anything, the description on the website said it was supposed to mimic or be designed for.


There's nothing wrong with it's 'stats' at all, 3.6 pounds seems like very good weight sword.
I'm an above-average sized person and it still felt heavy to me, but I admit I've never trained with a sword (or any other weapon) so maybe this is just one of those things you need to develop the muscles for.


Without actually handling it, or some very detailed stats, there's no way to tell whether it's well balanced/designed sword, of course.
And whether it would be a good sword in some kind of swordy applications is something that's impossible to tell from pictures.
Is there any additional information that I can provide you with that would be helpful?
At the sharpened part of the blade the sword is between 1.75 inches across near the hilt and 1.5 inches nearer the curling tip; it's also about 3/16ths of an inch thick along nearly the entire length. It seems to balance about an inch-and-a-half past where the sharpened part of the blade starts, and the handle has a circumference of ~5 inches.

It just FEELS big- I've got a few other reproduction pieces in my collection as well, and this is easily the largest.
Here it is next to a roman-gladius style sword, and a plain woodchopping axe.
https://image.ibb.co/ip85iH/20180225_201110.jpg

Fighting style would probably be similar to katana or any kind of long sword with very limited 'guard'.
I used to own a reproduction Katana as well, and it feels WAY heavier than that did.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I used to own a reproduction Katana as well, and it feels WAY heavier than that did.

Part of that may be the metal used--

I have two reproduction katanas. Both about the same size. One is super cheap and significantly heavier than the more expensive (and better made) sword. It's thicker through the blade (cross-section) and made out of lower-carbon steel than the "better" one.

Note: neither one is great, but the difference between the ~$75 one and the ~$300 one is enormous. And if it's balanced differently, it can feel heavier than it is, regardless of actual mass differentials.

[Deepbluediver]

Part of that may be the metal used--

I have two reproduction katanas. Both about the same size. One is super cheap and significantly heavier than the more expensive (and better made) sword. It's thicker through the blade (cross-section) and made out of lower-carbon steel than the "better" one.
That could certainly be part of it, I think. All the reproductions I bought were pretty cheap.
I stopped collecting for a while when I went back to school, and I kinda want to start buying again but since I don't really DO anything with them, I don't know how much I want to spend on what's essentially artwork.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Question again： How does Late Medieval - Thirty Years War (15 - 17th century) military training look like?

That period is called the military revolution, and it's named like that because pretty much everything you ask about changes during it. Standing national armies are introduced, formations and with them formation drills become really important, knights evolve into cavalry, and for a moment in the middle lancers and other horseback melee units are almost gone.

The middle of the revolution is basically the "pike and shot" era, and then just after the 30 years war the plug bayonet is invented which ends that period quickly.

So yeah, this question is even broader than you thought...

[wolflance]

That period is called the military revolution, and it's named like that because pretty much everything you ask about changes during it. Standing national armies are introduced, formations and with them formation drills become really important, knights evolve into cavalry, and for a moment in the middle lancers and other horseback melee units are almost gone.

The middle of the revolution is basically the "pike and shot" era, and then just after the 30 years war the plug bayonet is invented which ends that period quickly.

So yeah, this question is even broader than you thought...
Umm, I kind of expected this, but thanks for taking your time to answer me.

So, to narrow down my question, what were the training of the BEST units of the period look like? Units like Swiss mercenaries, French Gendarmes (and other elite cavalry that came after them), the most elite of the Spanish Tercios, Cromwell's Ironsides etc??


Most of the time, when I read about a renowned military unit, I only see vague descriptions like "well-drilled", "trained meticulously" etc. without elaboration on what or how they trained. The only exceptions are Roman Legionnaires (marching in full gear for 20 Roman miles), and English longbowmen (archery practice during weekends and holiday), and even that only present a very incomplete picture of the full scope of their training, I believe.

[Martin Greywolf]

So I've got a question that's a little bit different from our usual fair.

I'm wondering about the real-world providence of this sword, where the design might have come from and how it might have been used (see picture in spoilers, if it goes down or doesn't work, message me):
https://preview.ibb.co/d7ZHfx/002.jpg

...

The closest match I've been able to find to anything else was the German knecht kriegmesser (https://albion-swords.com/swords/albion/nextgen/sword-kriegsmesser-knecht.htm) (translation: big knife), although all the pictures of that seem to have straight handles and wide hilts.

So help me out- have you ever seen anything like this from another source? Maybe in a museum? What would it's preferred method of usage have been? What sort of fighting style did it mess with? Is there anything at all to indicate that this is in fact not just a ludicrously oversived filleting knife and/or heavy wall-decoration?

Well, the exact model of it is probably based on Arwen's sword from LotR, especially the metal knob near the base of the blade - only thing remotely similar to it is a Schilt on a Feder, but that's a training sword, and a two handed one at that.

Overall, it's a reasonable weapon, you see blades and hilts similar to this mostly in central Eurasia, usually with a little more crossguard, but not that much. Good points of comparision are shashka, yatagan or early magyar sabres. Some of the dao types, especially earlier ones with relatively slender blades, are also pretty similar. Thye closest weapon to this I can't find a good replica of, it's high medieval Slavic dussack, it looked a bit like this:


http://skrbekzbrane.cz/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/orient-Tes%C3%A1k-d%C5%AFstojn%C3%ADka-pandur%C5%AF.jpg


...but with simple, straight, knife handle without any fancy bits. They are found in modern Slovakia and parts of former HRE, especially Czech republic. Most of them are from 14th-15th cent., but some are from as far back as start of 13th. From 14th century up, they have a simple bar of iron going off at a right angle from the crossguard to protect side of your hand, called Nagel (nail) in German, but earlier ones don't have it.


http://www.imagehosting.cz/images/p4160175.jpg


As for the use, these are hybrid swords, meant for use both on foot an horseback, some are heavier and more choppy, better suited for horseback, others are lighter and more controllable, better suited for fencing on foot. The two types can look exactly the same as often as not.

Yours is almost certainly too heavy, all historical examples I'm aware of are under 1.5 kg, mostly being under 1.3 kg.

As for the longer hilt, that's a common thing on swords without a pommel, it acts both as a balance and is good for the blade not sliding out of your grip when you hit someone at a full gallop. The coinstruction of the hilt is not terribly historical, almost all swords have the metal pegs that hold the wood in place in one line at the centre of the hilt, and they are usually bigger.

[snowblizz]

The middle of the revolution is basically the "pike and shot" era, and then just after the 30 years war the plug bayonet is invented which ends that period quickly.

That's not entirely right. The 30YW ended in 1648 and pike was still the queen of the battlefield. The pike and shot period is generally considered ended around 1700, when some militaries were still fielding som pike blocks but where quickly phased out in the coming wars of the early 1700s. Yes the 1700 is kinda arbitary but it looks nicely bookendish if the 16-17th century is pike and shot and then the 18-19th are "horse and musket".


Umm, I kind of expected this, but thanks for taking your time to answer me.

So, to narrow down my question, what were the training of the BEST units of the period look like? Units like Swiss mercenaries, French Gendarmes (and other elite cavalry that came after them), the most elite of the Spanish Tercios, Cromwell's Ironsides etc??


Most of the time, when I read about a renowned military unit, I only see vague descriptions like "well-drilled", "trained meticulously" etc. without elaboration on what or how they trained. The only exceptions are Roman Legionnaires (marching in full gear for 20 Roman miles), and English longbowmen (archery practice during weekends and holiday), and even that only present a very incomplete picture of the full scope of their training, I believe.
That's because training tended to be kinda spotty and mostly personal. There are military manuals, and drill books but few armies or units were extensively drilled as units. In part because soldiers were often hired professionals on contracts who woudl move about if not paid (happened often enough) or contracts were up. Many suhc units considered well trained would in reality have a strong moral cohesiveness. The Ironsides weren't just trained they were of good moral composition so to say, putting the military objective before other considerations.

Promotion was usually based on competence/merit in action for common men and power/money/position for officers, though few retain higher command without actual ability or good counsel. For nobles/officers it was largely on the job training too, young nobles, particularly rojalty would work on an apprenticeship basically. Often visiting and trailing along armies in current wars on whatever side their family was (many great commanders and kings would have been present at well known battles of their youth). Then they'd be given a lower officer command under someone who could look after them and usually rather quickly rise in the ranks unless grossly incompetent. Though to aspire to actual unquestioned command of armies you did need to be rather qualified, part antural ability, part theoretical studies, part actual experience.

I'm gonna have a deeper poke in some Osprey books when at home. I will be back.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

So, to narrow down my question, what were the training of the BEST units of the period look like? Units like Swiss mercenaries, French Gendarmes (and other elite cavalry that came after them), the most elite of the Spanish Tercios, Cromwell's Ironsides etc??

What I know is that in the pike and shot era pikes and muskets/arquebuses were often mixed at the platoon level, where a platoon, depending on time, location, and just how deadly and/or profitable the last few engagements had been would usually be somewhere between 20 en 50 people. So a good captain or lieutenant running a platoon could drill his troops on cooperation, even though the main battlefield formations were much bigger, hundreds or even thousands of men in a single block. I don't think realistic exercises were that common, but drills were, and they were in at least some cases past down from higher up. The Dutch Maurice of Nassau implemented a three row system for pikes, the Swedish (I think) king distilled this into a two row system where the men could advance while holding the line. Maneuvers like that would have definitely been practiced, musketeers retreating between the pikes would be practiced, but I don't know if they were practiced in real formations or at a platoon level.

I think Snowblizz is probably right in that a lot of it came down to experience. There is no good way to practice not breaking the line when there are horses charging towards you. You can drill on staying in line no matter what, but it's never going to be like an actual life or death situation. So units consisting of a bunch of veterans all sticking together would have been good units, and higher officers would probably place them where they are useful, but not thrown away. Even the quality of the gear would probably be a lot better among groups of fighters with a few good pay days in their past and decent knowledge of what happens to gear on a battlefield between them.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

So I've got a question that's a little bit different from our usual fair.

I'm wondering about the real-world providence of this sword, where the design might have come from and how it might have been used (see picture in spoilers, if it goes down or doesn't work, message me):
https://preview.ibb.co/d7ZHfx/002.jpg

I bought this off of one of the numerous websites selling cheap reproductions for the sole reason that I thought it looked cool,

What did the site call it? What category did it fall in?

The hilt looks pretty traditional European/western, like a style you could still find on some of the more gentlemanly pocket knives. I think that kind of look started gaining track around 1600 or so? The complete lack of handguard suggests it might have been at least in part a tool, but it looks kind of thin for a European style machete. Plus 45 inches is way too long for that. That's more like a cavalry saber.

[snowblizz]

More on the training of pike and shot. In general I find as you did, there's not a lot of information about training. In part becasue it wasn't organized very effectively, unlike the Roman army, which as you note we have ample information about. Ultimately most of the training went back on Roman and Byzantine military texts anyway. It seems fair to assume most training was rather short and basic, few armies existed until they were raised and there was usually not a lot of time for extensive training (even the richest nations didn't really afford paying for standing armies, the ones who got close to having one it did so by virtue of just being at war more or less constantly). From what little I can dig up training falls on the fileleaders/corporals. Most regiments at the time were essentially the colonel's property as a military entrepeneur so training would also reside in the colonel's unit in part or whole. There's a number of military manuals from the period but the fact that msot of them are written/translated in reaction to perceived lack of training/information we can only assume there wasn't a lot of formal training going on. As was mentioned it was also a tranformational period throughout where as decades passed ideas and composition changed.

I will note for every nation, army, commander etc training could and would vary, though there were usually certain trends (and there's just not a lot pof things you do as pikeblock). After the Dutch reforms, and especially the Battle of Niewport where it was shown to be effective, the knowledge was disseminated and adopted. E.g. the Swedish model was so close to the Dutch system that the troops enlisted from disbanded "Danish" troops in 1629 could be quickly retrained into the Swedish model.

The Swedish army of the period had a coheisve set of regional regiments where conscripts were trained as a unit before being sent out (half to 1/3 was usually stationed at home for defence and presumably would form the basis for a training unit too). Unsurprisingly the Swedish army was able to function more cohesively and is often considered one of the first examples of a truly standing army.

Those who managed a standing army, like Maurice of Nassau could have an entire army practice battlefield deployment which the Ducth at least did on occasion. Not in the least for diplomatic purpsoes, ie impressing foreign dignitaries and rulers.

Now, you can trained most anyone into a passable pike company in a fairly short time, I forget how long it took them to do so with a rugby team in a tv show. It's not like some of this required years of study. But I also think as most armies were raised in times of need only, that morale/experience will have been a large factor in the "well trained" moniker.


I think we can broadly assume that training tended to go from indivudual weapon handling (which for many could be before they joined up) to small units of 10-20ish men who would be the closest working together, and then the regiment, to much less frequently brigades and armies as a whole. Varying a bit on role and entity. So a French Gendarme was probably expected to know his weapons and such and need only to work as a team while a Swedish peasant conscript had to learn everythign froms cratch. The latter had the benefit of an existing system to do just that.

Going back to the first post, I've not seen any mention of frequency or duration of training. I know it will vary a bit. Places who had militia traditions to fall back on (England in part, and Sweden) would have some regulariy to excercising but more likely at a minimum proving ownership of equipment. Though oversight was problematic as eg the practice where one horse might show up in different musters show. What I can say it would have been very rudimentary and spotty. There were no career soldiers with regular training camps. There existed part-timers or professional mercenaries only more or less. The former got most of their training in the short time leading up to war, if any (this is why morale is kinda important, the vast majority of troops tended to be green), while the later would be expected to have the necessary skills. Only in the absolutely last part of the period, the Swedish "Carolingian era" (1650ish and beyond), does a system of "part-time" (in the sense that they ahve off-duty time as soldiers and not unemployed) professional soldiers appear who would train regularly in between wars. These were farmer-soldiers with a plot of land and house tied to their job and were essentially supported by a number of farmers in whose stead they soldiered.

Nobles would not generally be training with troops (other than well by giving orders), since they would usually fill officer roles which required other skills.

[Deepbluediver]

Well, the exact model of it is probably based on Arwen's sword from LotR, especially the metal knob near the base of the blade - only thing remotely similar to it is a Schilt on a Feder, but that's a training sword, and a two handed one at that.
After someone else confirmed that it looks like a messer of some sort I went looking for videos and the sword Albion uses is of similar size (lighter in fact) and he seems to be using it two-handed. When I think "two handed sword" I normally picture something almost man-height, but maybe that's just fantasy tropes throwing off my sense of scale.


Overall, it's a reasonable weapon, you see blades and hilts similar to this mostly in central Eurasia, usually with a little more crossguard, but not that much. Good points of comparision are shashka, yatagan or early magyar sabres. Some of the dao types, especially earlier ones with relatively slender blades, are also pretty similar. Thye closest weapon to this I can't find a good replica of, it's high medieval Slavic dussack, it looked a bit like this:

http://skrbekzbrane.cz/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/orient-Tes%C3%A1k-d%C5%AFstojn%C3%ADka-pandur%C5%AF.jpg

...but with simple, straight, knife handle without any fancy bits. They are found in modern Slovakia and parts of former HRE, especially Czech republic. Most of them are from 14th-15th cent., but some are from as far back as start of 13th. From 14th century up, they have a simple bar of iron going off at a right angle from the crossguard to protect side of your hand, called Nagel (nail) in German, but earlier ones don't have it.
I will look all those up, thank you. Sometimes it's just a matter of knowing what to search for. Like that time I went nuts trying to recall what they called those giant two-handed shields with spikes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9VG4ClQcJk) :P
(skip to 1:50 for the craziness)



What did the site call it? What category did it fall in?
"I have no idea", and "swords", respectively.
This was several years ago, and I don't recall where I bought it from. In fact now that I think about it a bit more, it might even have been Ebay.


The hilt looks pretty traditional European/western, like a style you could still find on some of the more gentlemanly pocket knives.
That I didn't know- when I think "European" the default image is like the arming sword (http://www.darksword-armory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/archer-sword-arming-medieval-sword-1313-600x1271.jpg) you see in a lot of depictions.


That's more like a cavalry saber.
That was one of my thoughts, too, and I only hesitated because it seemed like it would be nightmare to draw and sheathe this thing while on horseback. I guess rather than carrying it yourself though, you could strap it to your saddle and that might alleviate the issue.

[Mike_G]

It's pretty big and heavy for a one handed sword. You'd have a hard time defending yourself with it one handed, just because of the effort of moving that mass and the lack of hand protection. It would lose out to a traditional sabre if you tried to use it like a sabre. Maybe use it with a shield, but it still seem on the big side for a one hander. It's reasonable for a two handed sword, but it's not exactly like any historical sword I've ever seen.

I think it's probably functional, and I'd guess you could use it like a big-ish katana. Not really suitable for longsword with no crossguard, and it's a bit short and just single edged, so there are a lot of longsword techniques that wouldn't work well with it.

[wolflance]

Snip
Thanks for the answer, it is a lot clearer to me now.

It seems like the spotty/ad-hoc? military training of that period run counter to everything we know about modern military training (or maybe I should say they were replaced by more modern practices precisely because they were deemed not effective enough).

I am under the impression that most armies of the period were multinationals (i.e French cavalry + Swiss infantry). So if most soldiers only underwent short and basic training shortly before the war, and mostly only trained with 10-20s of their fellow comrades under the same colonel/captain, then

a) How did a supreme commander of an army maneuver his many units around during a battle? Especially during the later part of 30 yrs war where everyone liked to field many, many smaller blocks.

https://i.imgur.com/jUljicW.jpg

Or did he simply laid out the deployment plan, and let each unit do its own things once the battle started?

b) How did two units from the same side communicate with each other (when they likely didn't even speak the same language?)

c) Since soldiers mostly trained in smaller 20ish men groups, won't that cause confusion for the commander of a large pike block? What if certain trumpet signal mean advance for one group and retreat for another group (within the same pike block)?

d) Wouldn't that cause a lot of conflicts when a multinational army marched & camped together? (Especially when some of the units may had fought with each others in the past)


You mentioned "trend/model" and the rapid dissemination of effective tactics/training, which suggest that at least the top commanders and thinkers did realize the shortcomings of military training practices of the period. Ditto for the drill manuals and later reforms and Swedish "part-time soldiers".

[Incanur]

That's not entirely right. The 30YW ended in 1648 and pike was still the queen of the battlefield.

Well, not according to Donald Lupton. His 1642 A Warlike Treatise of the Pike declared the pike rubbish for the warfare of the time for a variety of reasons. He was a bit premature, perhaps, but the writing was on the wall even at that point.

[Galloglaich]

I think snowblizz did a fairly reasonable job of conveying what training (and command and control) was like in the latter part of the time range mentioned; i.e. the Early Modern period and specifically the 17th Century. It's something recognizable to us in that it at least somewhat resembles modern basic infantry training - modern military marching is at least in part based on on 17th Century pike drill. Recruits show up and the assumption is they don't know anything about anything. They are broken down in order to have discipline imposed on them. They are taught techniques of fighting from the individual level to command and control regimes for units in systematic, simplified, step by step processes.

This is also similar to how at least some Classical armies (i.e. later period Roman and Byzantine) were trained and deployed.

In the 15th Century war-training is much more in the medieval mentality which is totally different and much harder for modern people to get their head around. I have done two academic papers and a handful of lectures on this subject and I can only say I am starting to get my head around it. It's a complex subject, as most things Late Medieval are. But the short answer is as follows:

TL : DR Medieval military training in general was done in the form of 'play' activities including warlike games, martial sports, hunting, and more or less continuous low-intensity warfare - both on the personal and unit / factional level. These activities were also done for other social, political, religious and ideological reasons which overlapped closely with military training.

Education at the time also emphasized things like war (and many, many other activities) in a very different way from later in the Early Modern Period - systems for how to do things were taught, including how to change a given strategic or tactical approach, as opposed to simply the steps for how to do things. More like learning Sun Tsu, or Machiavelli, than memorizing an infantry manual.

It's all very complex and far too much so to do justice here but I'll touch on a few points.


Medieval military units were based on affinity groups typically deeply rooted in the lifestyles of their constituents.

Knightly banners and lances of heavy cavalry were comprised of allied noble families and their henchmen - often people who worked together managing estates (think of like a ranch in a Western) or as courtiers or in some other capacity. Often they were part of Knightly Orders and leagues and had fought together many times.

Infantry armies like pikemen and halberdiers were often made up of either alliances of rural people - farmers, hunters, fishermen and so on, who had close family links (think Scottish clans) had the same patron saint and who had fought together many times before.

Marksmen (handgunners, crossbowmen, archers and so on) were typically derived from Urban militia who were organized according to craft guilds and patrician households. Streets and neighborhoods were made up of people who did the same business and were part of the same confraternities, brotherhoods and guilds which were also the basis of the organization of things like Carnival processions and parties, saints processions, and various charaties (think Freemason lodges). These people too shared the same patron saints and had fought together many times before.




Hunting big game at least was often done in such a complex and heavily organized manner that is much more militaristic than hunting today. Multiple types of dogs and horses were used in specific ways, dozens of mounted men and footmen in many different roles coordinated their activities so that the game could be systematically rounded up. Dangerous game like Aurochs, bears, wolves, bison, boars, European red deer and other large animals were intentionally hunted when they were at their most dangerous (for example when mother bears had cubs with them) and often in the most dangerous ways possible (like killing bears or boars on foot). For smaller game birds were used (i.e. falconry) also in a very sophisticated, though obviously less warlike manner

https://mydailyartdisplay.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/hunt-in-the-forest-by-paolo-uuccello-c-1470.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Hausbuchmeister_Hochwildjagd.jpg

http://www.codexmartialis.com/download/file.php?id=143




Warlike sports and games included everything from bear baiting and prize fighting (which went on in England well into the 19th Century) to bullfighting and events like the running of the bulls at pamplona, to complex organized warlike sports such as the palio of Siena, the famous bridge-fights in Venice such as at the Ponte dei Pugni (which are only a famous example of a widespread practice), and the famous knightly tournaments were far more wild, complicated and dangeorus than the basic jousting or fighting at the barriers that you see typically depicted.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/1673_Heintz_Wettstreit_auf_der_Ponte_dei_Pugni_in_ Venedig_anagoria.JPG/640px-1673_Heintz_Wettstreit_auf_der_Ponte_dei_Pugni_in_ Venedig_anagoria.JPG
Neighborhood brawl on the Ponte dei Pugni in Venice (this is actually a 17th Century depiction)

https://www.mensjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/mj-618_348_frances-floating-tournament.jpg
bizarre sports lke water jousting, as they do it here in France today

and shooting contests especially hosted by the towns and cities, notably in what are now Belgium, Italy, Germany and much of Central Europe;

http://www.dsb.de/media/historie/mittelalter/mittelalter2.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Schilling_konstanz.jpg/220px-Schilling_konstanz.jpg

http://static.zoonar.de/img/www_repository5/b5/f3/06/10_d5a66987f7f0f5d2d53c493ae10a39bb.jpg
16th Century Schutzenfest at Zwichau depicting all the other ancillary activities.

Shooting the popinjay (as done in Europe but also by the Mongols and Turks and many others)

https://milliethom.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/tir_c3a0_larc_au_papegai.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/5f/fb/25/5ffb25d0902611a5a82523d87c67c6bc.jpg

games like Polo of course, the infamous Fox hunt in England, are all remnants of these types of games and warlike sports.


http://hroarr.com/wp-content/oqey_gallery/galleries/fechtschulen/galimg/fechtschule-1541-virgil-solis.jpg

http://hroarr.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/schwertertanz-und-fechtspiel-der-nurnberger-messerschmiede-02-1600-small.jpg
fencing masters duel for sport as part of the Carnival 'sword dance' in Nuremberg

The cities in Central Europe also sponsored fencing contests (called fechtschuler) and in rural areas grappling tournaments were very popular (in some cases surviving to this day, notably in Switzerland as Schwingen, in Brittany as Gouren, and in Iceland as Glima)


This kind of stuff also existed long before the medieval period of course.


https://lottolax.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/catlin490x300.jpg

http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/pix/ballgame_illustration.gif

The Celts had games like hurling (sort of a more violent form of lacrosse- also a warlike game practiced by the Native Americans) and the Vikings had a nearly identical game called Knattleikr. It was essentially a limited form of warfare - it wasn't uncommon for people to die. But it was a much better way for different communities to settle disputes, and hone warlike skills, than actually killing each other en-masse.


None of the medieval (or pre-medieval) types of warlike games and sports were completely gone by the 17th Century, it's just that they were in sharp decline while the other way, the way to train recruits from scratch in 'best practices' were sharply on the rise. This also coincides with armies getting much larger, if not necessarily more effective. The change was largely for social and political reasons rather than purely military.

It's worth pointing out that late medieval armies were both much smaller and more expensive, but also typically more skilled than equivalent armies of the 17th Century. For example Swiss or Bohemian pikemen (or German or Spanish) in the 15th Century could maneuver in the field, change tactics suddenly, retreat in good order when under fire and after taking heavy losses, and so on. Pikemen in the 17th Century were often expected (or able) to do little more than march out to a spot near the artillery or the banner and stand their with their pikes out as a largely passive defense against cavalry.

G

[snowblizz]

Well, not according to Donald Lupton. His 1642 A Warlike Treatise of the Pike declared the pike rubbish for the warfare of the time for a variety of reasons. He was a bit premature, perhaps, but the writing was on the wall even at that point.He may have thought so, but the war that broke out 1642 was fouhgt largely with pike in "poor" old England. In truth the number of pike to shot was steadily declining since the 1500s but an army without pike in 1642 would have been rolled over completely since you couldn't guarantee to stop a cavalry charge with fire alone.


Thanks for the answer, it is a lot clearer to me now.You sure? I could swear I got more confused the more I wrote.:smallbiggrin:
The problem largely being that what is true in one par tmay not be true in another.


It seems like the spotty/ad-hoc? military training of that period run counter to everything we know about modern military training (or maybe I should say they were replaced by more modern practices precisely because they were deemed not effective enough). Well that's why it's not modern military training is it? As Galloglaich wrote about medieaval training it was part of society in a very different way. It's only when we get into the 1600s that a need for masstraining materialises. Somethign noted in the sources I was looking at was that earlier Roman and Byzantine military knowledge existed but there was no way to apply it in the medieaval context. With pike based armies we get closer to ancient forces and greater effort is done to take advantage of famous historical military theory.

As I mentioned armies were temporary things back then. Very few institutions could afford to maintain standing forces (it's no accident even astoundingly rich Spanish empire default like every 5 years). So there wasn't the same continuity in forces. In fact the English New Model Army was oen of the best force sof it's day precisely becaus eit ahd bene a standing army made up from units experienced from the first part of the ECW. It's not an accident we tend to call the period early-modern too.


I am under the impression that most armies of the period were multinationals (i.e French cavalry + Swiss infantry). So if most soldiers only underwent short and basic training shortly before the war, and mostly only trained with 10-20s of their fellow comrades under the same colonel/captain, then Yes and no. It's important to realise nations didn't exist in the same way as today. People didn't even considered themselves French necessarily, you were Gascon, Norman and so on. Germany even more so. But it was also accepted standard practice, you were the Potentate's man, not your nationality. For all of a religions war the 30YW was many career soldiers even changed religion as opportunity knocked. The French cavalry e.g. would contain many other nationalities. Some units, like the Swiss were more cohesive it's true. Nationality wasn't as big a problem. Also one German might not understand another German's language, this was a given and usually worked around in that officers usually spoke several languages as par for course. The Swedihs king could speak with most soldiers in his army IIRC, able to give a speach in German, Swedish, French and maybe some Finnish. Mostly one would strive to form units so people were similar though to facilitate getting along. So the Swedish Brigades had majorily Britihs one, a German one and a Swedish one for example.


a) How did a supreme commander of an army maneuver his many units around during a battle? Especially during the later part of 30 yrs war where everyone liked to field many, many smaller blocks.

Or did he simply laid out the deployment plan, and let each unit do its own things once the battle started?
Basically you had a battle plan draw up in advance. The major unit commanders would know where they were supposed to be in the line of battle and could even flex a bit.
Otherwise you had messengers that would ride back and forth with orders, and yes this was in part clunky and many a battle lost due to C&C issues.


b) How did two units from the same side communicate with each other (when they likely didn't even speak the same language?)
Officers would usually be proficient in several languages and career soldiers would likely pick up basics of other languages. Then as now there were some languages that were Lingua Francas, like unsuprisingly French. And you'd try and group ppl together who coudl understand each other. But it would happen there was communications problems. But then you might not be able to control even the men whose language you spoke...*cough*English Royalist cavalry*cough*


c) Since soldiers mostly trained in smaller 20ish men groups, won't that cause confusion for the commander of a large pike block? What if certain trumpet signal mean advance for one group and retreat for another group (within the same pike block)?That would not happen. While basic training probably was in smaller groups they'd also train as larger bodies, just not as often. Same with even bigger forces. A good commander would of course make sure signalling was as uniform as possible. In cases where disparate groups were brought together they would try and keep smaller units together, so the "coloured brigades" of the Swedihs army were untis that had long worked together. But C&C was always problematic and forces would usually agree on a field-sign and password/battle cry for the army. Most training would be similar and based on largely the same training manuals. How broadly similar would depend on whose army it was. The Swedish king was able to impsoe a rigorously similar trainign system more or less, which was then abandoned after his death as his force of personality didn't guide them anymore.


d) Wouldn't that cause a lot of conflicts when a multinational army marched & camped together? (Especially when some of the units may had fought with each others in the past) Well, yes. But probably no more conflict than existed *in* some units. Again the multinationality just wasn't as much of a problem. And e.g. common religion would smooth over a lot so Italians, Spanish, Wallons e.g. would all share Catholicism as a unifying force. Similarly the Protestant forces was brought together by "us vs the Papist scum".



You mentioned "trend/model" and the rapid dissemination of effective tactics/training, which suggest that at least the top commanders and thinkers did realize the shortcomings of military training practices of the period. Ditto for the drill manuals and later reforms and Swedish "part-time soldiers".Well yes and no. There were plenty of ideas going around. What I speak of is larger "systems". There was the Spanish system, i.e. older Tercios, a reformed Ducth system with smaller units and more firepower with same numbers of troops. The Swedish system was again a more complex and developed verison of the Dutch. Which tended to develop into what was called the German system that is basically the pike and shot tactics of the 30YW as we now know them. But these are essentially systems of battlefield organisation and deployment.

[Max_Killjoy]

It's worth pointing out that late medieval armies were both much smaller and more expensive, but also typically more skilled than equivalent armies of the 17th Century. For example Swiss or Bohemian pikemen (or German or Spanish) in the 15th Century could maneuver in the field, change tactics suddenly, retreat in good order when under fire and after taking heavy losses, and so on. Pikemen in the 17th Century were often expected (or able) to do little more than march out to a spot near the artillery or the banner and stand their with their pikes out as a largely passive defense against cavalry.


Which would also seem to have contributed to the view in following eras that warfare for centuries between the Roman empire and the Napoleonic era must have been an awful ignorant uncoordinated mess. After all, if the guys in the 17th century were capable of nothing more than marching and holding a location with pikes sticking out, or firing in mass volleys, then the guys before them must have been just atrocious.

[Socratov]

Yeah, that's the only thing I've found so far that it seems to be very similar too, I was just under the impression that the hilt was kind of important. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjoWAg1HJKw) was fun to watch, but my sword cost nowhere near as much. Also the clips of actual cutting seem to be showing the sword used with 2 hands, and according to the stats his sword was around ~20% lighter than mine. I can get both my hands on the handle fairly easily, but I don't know what a comfortable sword-grip is supposed to feel like, and I'm slightly above-average in size. I've seen videos of zweihander techniques, and it seems like they allow you to choke up quite a bit, which this almost definitely wouldn't. If I spread my hands out to the point there they are wrapped around the metal bits of the handle, too, there is at most about 3 inches of clearance between them.

Anywho, thanks for your feedback!



I don't recall what, if anything, the description on the website said it was supposed to mimic or be designed for.


I'm an above-average sized person and it still felt heavy to me, but I admit I've never trained with a sword (or any other weapon) so maybe this is just one of those things you need to develop the muscles for.
snip

Well, as someone who is very much in the process of discovering tastes and preferences to buy his first sparring/re-enactment sword somewhere this year I have been told, expressly and multiple times in fact, that a good sword is whatever feels as a good sword at the time. I have been made to understand that weight is something you can train for, but shouldn't have to hit the gym for (if it's slightly heavier that's fine, but you need to not be completely worn out after 10 minutes with arms burning like Asmodeus' ring after a night on the vindaloo). A good test is wether you can maintain the guard positions (of which Fulltach and Langenord are great examples to try and maintain) for a few moments.

Next is control, or wobble (https://youtu.be/G2DCExerOsA?t=32s) (not sorry, couldn't resist). If you can't stop your sword mid swing or find yourself wobbling around a lot, its centre of mass is not balanced for you (or your handling of the sword at least). If you find that it moves excellent, but you couldn't swat a fly with it (i.e. it feels weightless), the sword, again, is not balanced for you (or your handling of the sword). You want the sword to have some momentum (or when you hit stuff: impact), but not too much where you are going out of control at every swing. Generally speaking, if you have a routine, try it out in the shop where you try out the weapon and see wether it works for you.

Next is handling (or the non wobbly part of it). Try, while moving the blade, to orient the sword's false and long edges, try to align it mid swing (or as some try it out: try altering the angle while keeping the tip up as some sort of reverse pendulum). Again, too light for your is bad, but don't overshoot for too heavy.

For each of these categories goes the same: if it feels good, you will know. If you don't know, don't buy it, it won't be the sword for you (yet, who knows in the future?).

[Incanur]

For example Swiss or Bohemian pikemen (or German or Spanish) in the 15th Century could maneuver in the field, change tactics suddenly, retreat in good order when under fire and after taking heavy losses, and so on.

Thanks for that post! Nitpick: Spanish armies had few or no pikers in the 15th century. This began to change at the very end of it, after Seminara 1495. It took Spanish armies a while to develop potent units of pikers. They relied heavily on German mercenaries well into the 16th century.

[Galloglaich]

Thanks for that post! Nitpick: Spanish armies had few or no pikers in the 15th century. This began to change at the very end of it, after Seminara 1495. It took Spanish armies a while to develop potent units of pikers. They relied heavily on German mercenaries well into the 16th century.

I hesitated on the Spanish - I knew they had good pikemen in the mid 16th Century in Flanders but I wasn't sure when and where that came together precisely. The Tercio's had some pikemen too?


I wanted to add - a lot of the low intensity warfare going on in Continental Europe, particularly in Central Europe and Italy, was of a kind of 'catch and release' variety; i.e. one clan steals 30 cows from a neighboring clan, and then later the other clan steals 100 sheep - with minimal casualties, and captives who are sometimes traded back for livestock. Robber knights would capture 3 merchants from Cologne, who would in turn capture a brother or uncle from their family, and a hostage exchange would then be made. Members of one noble family would capture a castle belonging to another, who would in turn seize a ship from the first family... and again an exchange would be arranged. There was a surprisingly low death rate in other words at least in some battles and skirmishes, even sometimes in quite large battles - the Poles released 14,000 mostly German prisoners 'on parole' after the Battle of Grunwald.

Not that this was always the case, there were certainly massacres and atrocities, but these were much more rare than in later eras. Also armies which were more ruthless toward prisoners etc. sometimes paid the price (as the French learned during the Italian Wars, and as Germans and everybody else learned in the Hussite Crusades).

The result was, I think, in part that people could learn from their military experiences perhaps a bit more. Knights were often repeatedly captured and later released. Some common soldiers in the 100 Years War were captured and ransomed as many as 10 times.

This all changed to some extent in the 16th and 17th Century, with the religious wars in particular being much nastier. It became more common to kill prisoners and civilians, what previously had been considered a shocking atrocity became routine, for example in the really nasty Livonian Wars, but also in the Huegonot Wars, the religious-tinged 80 Years War and to some extent in the Schmaldic war etc..

G

[PhoenixPhyre]

Question--

Are there significant differences in the tech base needed to reasonably make different types of arms and armor? Not overall tech level (discoveries and metallurgy), but more in tooling and skill levels? Are some weapons harder to make than others (at the level of comparing swords to axes or different types of polearms)?

I assume spears are dirt simple, while a longsword is harder.
Same goes for a gambeson vs a full suit of articulated plate.

Are there trends?

[Galloglaich]

A little bit more on command and control.

Language
As snowblizz mentioned, commanders, especially mercenary "military contractors" (Condottiere in Italy) often spoke multiple languages and also at least some Latin - Latin being a kind of international language among nobles in most, if not all of Europe and also understood by Burghers and most Church officials - Churchmen being the most educated were often filling the roles of ambassadors, military advisors, diplomats, and sometimes spys.

There were also regional trade dialects. While everyone in every town spoke (and for burghers or Churchmen, could usually read and write) their own local vernacular dialect, nobody more than 20 miles away necessarily knew it. So they had these regional trade languages, like Creole in the Caribbean, which were often a hybrid of multiple local dialects. Low German was a mixture of Saxon and other German dialects, Frisian, and Danish with some loan words from Swedish, Polish, Finnish and even Cuman - which itself was a trade language for Central Asia promoted by the Mongol Hordes - adopted by the Hanseatic League and thus in use from London to Livonia (~1400 miles). High German was the equivalent, more or less, used in Southern Germany and all the way from Austria and Hungary to the Rhine, and codified by the Imperial Court scribes. The Rhine itself had a trade language (Rhennish) which was a combination of all the dialects spoken along it's course.

There was a trade language in the Med called 'Sabir' which was used well into the 19th Century, it was a mixture of Latin, French Italian dialects (especially Veneto), Spanish and Portuguese, Greek, Turkish Arabic and Berber! So if you were for example a naval commander from Venice or Barcelona operating in the Med you probably knew some Sabir.

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

Leadership
Command of infantry forces under control of city states broke two ways; North of the Alps it often fell to city councilors or burgomeisters (basically mayors, more or less) who had a combined civil leadership / military leadership role. They also typically commanded warships and fleets. Smaller scale units would be commanded by patrician family members, often unmarried 'journeymen' from the merchant families or younger guild aldermen from the craft guilds. In Italy town militias would more often be led by Condottieri, who sometimes acted in their own interests as Machiavelli noted. The big exception there being Venice who still relied on their own leadership strata at least for the more important missions. So again you might have an alderman in charge of 100 gunners who were all butchers that lived in a certain street in a given town, and another alderman in charge of 60 crossbowmen who were joiners or carpenters. A banner of cavalry would be lead by a patrician from a great house, often in a group that were part of the same cavalry club or confraternity, such as the Lillienvelt of Bremen.

Some Condottiero specialized in dealing with certain types of troops. There was for example a Moravian Captain in North Hungary (today Slovakia) who specialized in dealing with troublesome and unruly Hussite mercenaries. Hussites were heretics and kind of ... populist?, almost like communists, who tended to trash churches and abbeys that they were near and didn't respect noble rank. They would even dig up and loot graveyards of wealthy areas. Few could deal with them, but they were sought out because among other reasons, they could defeat Turkish armies. Jiskra made a career out of being able to win their respect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jiskra_of_Brand%C3%BDs

Generally the towns conferred leadership by vote from below rather than appointment from above and selection was based on merit; for example if the guilds didn't have a capable military leader in their ranks they would get one from the merchants, and sometimes vice versa. Same for the free clans like the Swiss, Frisians, Bohemians, Swedes, Scottish Highlanders and so on. These leaders ruled on the basis of the force of their own personality but also at the suffrance of their own armies and if they acted against the interests of their men they could be (and were) swiftly deposed.

Sergeants and other lower ranks
The Swiss invented the rank of Sergeant, feldweibel, which was then introduced to German Landsknecht companies. As best as i can tell so far it seems to have originated with the Swiss as a way for urban (Zurich, Bern or one of the smaller cities) polities to control their rural troops. They even had a 'whores sergeant' whose job was to wrangle the camp followers. The Landsknechts were one of the first examples of a military system that developed organically (Swiss Reislauffer) being transferred to untrained troops (mostly Swabian peasants) - as Swiss instructors established the methods of training, command and control on behalf of Emperor Maximillian I in the late 15th / early 16th Centuries. It spread from there around Europe. Part of what made it work was giving the Landsknecht companies special legal immunities and their own courts and magistrates, to kind of mimic the autonomy of a Swiss militia company.

Command difficulties
Medieval armies while extremely effective whenever they were properly aligned, were notoriously difficult to control. Not everyone had the skill to deal with foreign troops for example. The French were notoriously bad at it, even literally running down their own Genoese mercenaries in at least two cases. Nobles could change sides on a whim and ride away; or alternatively they could decide that honor dictated a charge at the worst possible moment. Armies made up of a lot of high nobility from different countries often fell into confusion and made drastic mistakes leading to catastrophies (see Nicopolis or Hattin).

Urban militias were often the best gunners or marksmen (i.e. those same Genoese crossbowmen were militia who hired on as muscle around the world) but could be the most troublesome to wrangle. When deployed as regular troops (as opposed to being deployed as mercenaries as they often also were) they would routinely make all kinds of stipulations about food, lodging, how far they would go from their home city walls, and so on. They too, could turn around and march home if they didn't like how they were being treated, and would even imprison or execute leaders who they thought were irresponsible or disrespectful to them.

On the other hand, units which were accustomed to working together, even with very diverse langauges and religions and so on, could in fact be extremely effective, note for example the Fekete Sereg (Hungarian Black Army) made up of German, Bohemian, Hungarian, Serbian, Italian, Greek etc. etc. soldiers, of Catholic, Hussite, and Orthodox religion, but who routinely defeated much larger armies including the fearsome Ottomans.

Mercenaries
Many if not most medieval armies were based on mercenaries, partly because of the problems controlling knights and urban miliitia in particular. But mercenaries could have their own agendas, as so often was the case in Italy. Many would fight so long as they were paid, but once they weren't, trouble started. The French had a saying about Swiss mercenaries - "Pas d'argent, pas de Suisse"; no money, no Swiss. The Swiss famously would literally about face and march home the first day their payment went in arrears. Other mercenaries would wait around a lot longer - pay for mercenaries which was very high would often be months or even years in arrears, but if they weren't paid they felt the right to seize whatever they wanted for themselves, sometimes including villages, castles, abbeys or churches and even entire cities. This obviously could cause major problems. Bohemian mercenaries fighting for the Teutonic Knights in the 13 Years War captured three Prussian towns, but the Knights ran out of money to pay them, so after three months the Bohemian mercenaries sold the three towns to Poland for a huge sum on money) and marched back home to Prague, presumably to retire as rich men.

Religious Orders
The only armies that had true modern type command and control systems were the religious Orders, like the Hospitalers and the Teutonic Knights. But even within these organizations they held elections for leadership (at least the Teutonic Knights and Livonian Knights did, I'm not certain about the Hospitalers) and unpopular leaders could be deposed. In terms of military organization they were usually a hybrid of a hard core of the actual full brother knights, (Ritterbruden to the Teutonic Order) plus half-brothers who together formed the spine or skeleton of command and control (including logistics management which they were surprisingly good at) holding together much larger forces of levies, militia, Crusaders and mercenaries.

G

[Vinyadan]

As a side note, hunting was a very important activity for socialization. I remember reading a text in which the writer explained his son how he had become a friend of the King of Naples during a hunt. The King had separated himself from the main group, and the writer just happened to be there when a bear came up to him. That's a big bonding experience.

[Galloglaich]

Question--

Are there significant differences in the tech base needed to reasonably make different types of arms and armor? Not overall tech level (discoveries and metallurgy), but more in tooling and skill levels? Are some weapons harder to make than others (at the level of comparing swords to axes or different types of polearms)?

I assume spears are dirt simple, while a longsword is harder.
Same goes for a gambeson vs a full suit of articulated plate.

Are there trends?

yes, basically the size of the continuous pieces of ferrous metal (i.e. iron or steel) in a weapon was dependent on the size of their bloomery forges or later on, blast furnaces, and the sophistication of their weapon making industries. Same for armor. You can make mail for example at a fairly low level of iron tech, since you only need small bits of iron wire. But plate armor or say, helmets, requires much more sophisticated industry (this is part of the reason why Roman armies made a lot of helmets out of brass, which could be cast or riveted together out of smaller cast sheets).

So a society which makes iron this way

http://homesteadingandprepping.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/pQG5MDM1.jpg


...can make daggers and spear heads and javelin and arrowheads out of iron, but not too much more. No pieces of iron longer than say 1' - 2' (and those would be fairly rare and expensive) and metalurgy limited to wrought iron and maybe a little bit of crude forge-welding.

Whereas a society which makes iron like this

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Germany_First_Coke_Blast_Furnace_Miniature_DM.jpg/640px-Germany_First_Coke_Blast_Furnace_Miniature_DM.jpg

...can crank out swords cheap enough for ordinary people to afford them, make five or six foot long swords out of good, flexible high-carbon steel, head to toe plate armor, and all kinds of spring steel parts, drill bits, gears for clocks and machines and so on.

The more complex uses of course also require a level of social development which not all polities can manage. The Ottomans had to kind of borrow or import a lot of ferrous technology (like making large cannon) from European origin before adapting their own industries to it.

G

[Galloglaich]

As a side note, hunting was a very important activity for socialization. I remember reading a text in which the writer explained his son how he had become a friend of the King of Naples during a hunt. The King had separated himself from the main group, and the writer just happened to be there when a bear came up to him. That's a big bonding experience.

yes there are a lot of stories like that. And hunting could be very dangerous, they may have been hunting that bear in a season when it was more likely to be aggressive. They even hunted them on foot, using special techniques:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Tschachtlan-Chronik%2C_Berner_B%C3%A4renjagd.jpg/405px-Tschachtlan-Chronik%2C_Berner_B%C3%A4renjagd.jpg

Cesare Borgia apparently used to decapitate wild boar on foot with his sword during hunts partly to intimidate people he brought hunting with him.

G

[PhoenixPhyre]

yes, basically the size of the continuous pieces of ferrous metal (i.e. iron or steel) in a weapon was dependent on the size of their bloomery forges or later on, blast furnaces, and the sophistication of their weapon making industries. Same for armor. You can make mail for example at a fairly low level of iron tech, since you only need small bits of iron wire. But plate armor or say, helmets, requires much more sophisticated industry (this is part of the reason why Roman armies made a lot of helmets out of brass, which could be cast or riveted together out of smaller cast sheets).

So a society which makes iron this way

http://homesteadingandprepping.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/pQG5MDM1.jpg


...can make daggers and spear heads and javelin and arrowheads out of iron, but not too much more. No pieces of iron longer than say 1' - 2' (and those would be fairly rare and expensive) and metalurgy limited to wrought iron and maybe a little bit of crude forge-welding.

Whereas a society which makes iron like this

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Germany_First_Coke_Blast_Furnace_Miniature_DM.jpg/640px-Germany_First_Coke_Blast_Furnace_Miniature_DM.jpg

...can crank out swords cheap enough for ordinary people to afford them, make five or six foot long swords out of good, flexible high-carbon steel, head to toe plate armor, and all kinds of spring steel parts, drill bits, gears for clocks and machines and so on.

The more complex uses of course also require a level of social development which not all polities can manage. The Ottomans had to kind of borrow or import a lot of ferrous technology (like making large cannon) from European origin before adapting their own industries to it.

G

Thanks.

What about at the more local level? Assuming that the refining and production of the semi-refined materials (ingot, bar, and sheet stock) is relatively high quality, what could a local village blacksmith reasonably turn out using that material? Mail is labor intensive, but not technically demanding. Do the larger pieces require different forges/tools/skills?

The background is I'm trying to rationalize some kind of rough quality tiers for what would be available in various smaller settlements, based on the specialties of the local large cities. The quality of the metallurgy varies tremendously, and I know that large amounts of metal (sheets, bars, etc) are heavy and difficult to transport very far. In this particular area anything above a sidearm would be pretty low demand (no armies, just warding off hostile wildlife and occasional bandit/tribal raids), so I can't imagine them stocking ready-made weapons or armor very much anywhere except in the largest cities. But I could be very wrong.

[Galloglaich]

Thanks.

What about at the more local level? Assuming that the refining and production of the semi-refined materials (ingot, bar, and sheet stock) is relatively high quality, what could a local village blacksmith reasonably turn out using that material? Mail is labor intensive, but not technically demanding. Do the larger pieces require different forges/tools/skills?

The background is I'm trying to rationalize some kind of rough quality tiers for what would be available in various smaller settlements, based on the specialties of the local large cities. The quality of the metallurgy varies tremendously, and I know that large amounts of metal (sheets, bars, etc) are heavy and difficult to transport very far. In this particular area anything above a sidearm would be pretty low demand (no armies, just warding off hostile wildlife and occasional bandit/tribal raids), so I can't imagine them stocking ready-made weapons or armor very much anywhere except in the largest cities. But I could be very wrong.

If you look closely at that model of a 15th (? I think) Century German blast furnace I posted upthread, you'll notice that they are using shallow canals to transport the charcoal, ore, and I'm sure also the finished products to and from that complex.

Canals and rivers were sort of like the railroads of the medieval world and were the main way heavy stuff like iron billets were transported. Even way back in the migration era or Viking Age for example - fairly big iron (or wootz steel) billets did get around.

So they could get the iron or steel they needed, probably, so long as they were near a waterway or on some trade road.

However to make a long sword or a breastplate you do need a fairly large forge. You can't do it around a camp fire or in some half-assed horsehoe forge like they typically show you in fantasy genre films. Most likely you would have a building with a water (or sometimes wind) powered forge, and a water or wind-powered trip hammer. Like this 18th Century one

http://www.brhoward.com/phto_gal/hammer/TH.7.jpg

So you could have setups like this in some villages or small towns (down to ~500 people), but unless they were making weapons for export, or for a local Lord somewhere nearby, i.e. if sword making or some other metalworking wasn't an established local industry, they probably would just import their swords on that same barge that might bring the billets.

Depending on the regional tech level swords might be fairly cheap (as they were say, in the 15th Century), but even when swords were espensive, for example in the late Migration Era, Vikings used to import most of their swords from manufacturing centers in Frankish territory, like the region around modern day Sollingen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solingen#History) where the famous 'Ulfberht' swords come from and which has been a major center of blade making for at least 1000 years- these days they make chef knives.

in the medieval world, in Europe anyway, metal work tended to be specialized, with various places getting highly expert at making certain things. So one town might make ships and another clocks and another glass and another... guns. By the late medieval period most towns, even small ones, had the capacity to make swords bu the best armor came from a handful of international and regional centers - in the 15th Century Augsburg, Nuremberg, Milan, Brescia, and it you were equipping even a local army then it probably made more sense to buy armor from them than make it yourself.


Getting back to your game context, unless you had say, a visiting journeyman from one of these places who knew the tricks of the trade and for some reason wanted to set up your own armor making industry, access to high quality weapons and armor would probably be more related to access to markets than to blacksmiths or forges. A local smith might make arrowheads or caltrops, or even wire for mail, but if you wanted the good stuff it just made more sense to get it from places where they had centuries of local knowledge and sophisticated craft industries built up.

G

[PhoenixPhyre]

If you look closely at that model of a 15th (? I think) Century German blast furnace I posted upthread, you'll notice that they are using shallow canals to transport the charcoal, ore, and I'm sure also the finished products to and from that complex.

Canals and rivers were sort of like the railroads of the medieval world and were the main way heavy stuff like iron billets were transported. Even way back in the migration era or Viking Age for example - fairly big iron (or wootz steel) billets did get around.

So they could get the iron or steel they needed, probably, so long as they were near a waterway or on some trade road.

However to make a long sword or a breastplate you do need a fairly large forge. You can't do it around a camp fire or in some half-assed horsehoe forge like they typically show you in fantasy genre films. Most likely you would have a building with a water (or sometimes wind) powered forge, and a water or wind-powered trip hammer. Like this 18th Century one

http://www.brhoward.com/phto_gal/hammer/TH.7.jpg

So you could have setups like this in some villages or small towns (down to ~500 people), but unless they were making weapons for export, or for a local Lord somewhere nearby, i.e. if sword making or some other metalworking wasn't an established local industry, they probably would just import their swords on that same barge that might bring the billets.

Depending on the regional tech level swords might be fairly cheap (as they were say, in the 15th Century), but even when swords were espensive, for example in the late Migration Era, Vikings used to import most of their swords from manufacturing centers in Frankish territory, like the region around modern day Sollingen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solingen#History) where the famous 'Ulfberht' swords come from and which has been a major center of blade making for at least 1000 years- these days they make chef knives.

in the medieval world, in Europe anyway, metal work tended to be specialized, with various places getting highly expert at making certain things. So one town might make ships and another clocks and another glass and another... guns. By the late medieval period most towns, even small ones, had the capacity to make swords bu the best armor came from a handful of international and regional centers - in the 15th Century Augsburg, Nuremberg, Milan, Brescia, and it you were equipping even a local army then it probably made more sense to buy armor from them than make it yourself.


Getting back to your game context, unless you had say, a visiting journeyman from one of these places who knew the tricks of the trade and for some reason wanted to set up your own armor making industry, access to high quality weapons and armor would probably be more related to access to markets than to blacksmiths or forges. A local smith might make arrowheads or caltrops, or even wire for mail, but if you wanted the good stuff it just made more sense to get it from places where they had centuries of local knowledge and sophisticated craft industries built up.

G

Thanks. I guess I'll figure it out based on locations then--different nations have different economic systems and internal trade, so it'll depend. One has tight control over metal work through a pseudo-guild system (more like hierarchical trade unions that run the government), so they'd probably transport finished goods where they're needed. Another is more local, but only has decent mines/metal-working in one region.

Thanks again. I learn a lot from reading these threads.

[Galloglaich]

In this particular area anything above a sidearm would be pretty low demand (no armies, just warding off hostile wildlife and occasional bandit/tribal raids), so I can't imagine them stocking ready-made weapons or armor very much anywhere except in the largest cities. But I could be very wrong.

One other comment because I didn't really address this -

I don't know about your game setting obviously but in the medieval world there really wasn't anywhere I know of that people felt so safe that they didn't stockpile arms for defense. And also take fairly elaborate defensive precautions. Even small villages would usually have a church or granary that was made out of brick or stone and reinforced for use as a refuge in the event of a raid. Some also had nearby hideouts in the forest or in caves they could run to of course, but that was risky because trouble could arrive on horseback pretty quickly in most places.

Certainly every medieval town I ever heard of had a militia of some kind. I know there is a lot of very fraught politics around the very concept these days but historically, at least in the middle ages, it was pretty universal. Even convents and monasteries had arms.

Markets would take place in towns, including very small towns, or in abbeys or castles controlled by lords. There was also such a thing as a 'market village' which had a special hybrid status. Normally though a local town was where villagers from a few days ride around would gather say once a week or twice a month to buy and sell whatever they needed. In the scenario you described the distinction on availability of resources would be limited by frequency of markets, and by the availability of a substantial town. A very small town might be specialized for one industry (butchering local cattle for example) whereas a medium or larger-sized town could be either oriented toward manufacturing (particularly if far inland) or oriented toward trade (if near the coasts) or a mixture of both (places in between, especially on big waterways)

However, if you are specifically thinking of a need to make stuff because you can't buy, because trade is interrupted or something, the scenario with the journeyman should work. Medieval artisans were very good at putting things together in a hurry - a few master artisans could supervise a mob of peasants to build a castle in a few weeks for example. So I don't doubt, assuming you had people with expertise, and access to say, the right kind of clay to make fire proof bricks, a fast moving stream or a windy hill where you could generate power, there is no reason why you couldn't make a large forge and setup a trip hammer and so on. They also had ways of powering these things with oxen and so on in a pinch, though water wheel was the most common method by far.


You really do need the trip hammer because otherwise it's just too much work to crank out weapons and armor. and you need a mechanically augmented (i.e. 'Catalan') forge to keep the forge hot. You also need access to a lot of fuel, somebodies forest is going to get cut down to make charcoal, probably, unless you have coal or some other fuel source. This often caused problems by the way for example in England where metal making industries sprang up in large forests, only to be shut down again as they started using up too much lumber.

G

[PhoenixPhyre]

One other comment because I didn't really address this -

I don't know about your game setting obviously but in the medieval world there really wasn't anywhere I know of that people felt so safe that they didn't stockpile arms for defense. And also take fairly elaborate defensive precautions. Even small villages would usually have a church or granary that was made out of brick or stone and reinforced for use as a refuge in the event of a raid. Some also had nearby hideouts in the forest or in caves they could run to of course, but that was risky because trouble could arrive on horseback pretty quickly in most places.

Certainly every medieval town I ever heard of had a militia of some kind. I know there is a lot of very fraught politics around the very concept these days but historically, at least in the middle ages, it was pretty universal. Even convents and monasteries had arms.

Markets would take place in towns, including very small towns, or in abbeys or castles controlled by lords. There was also such a thing as a 'market village' which had a special hybrid status. Normally though a local town was where villagers from a few days ride around would gather say once a week or twice a month to buy and sell whatever they needed. In the scenario you described the distinction on availability of resources would be limited by frequency of markets, and by the availability of a substantial town. A very small town might be specialized for one industry (butchering local cattle for example) whereas a medium or larger-sized town could be either oriented toward manufacturing (particularly if far inland) or oriented toward trade (if near the coasts) or a mixture of both (places in between, especially on big waterways)

However, if you are specifically thinking of a need to make stuff because you can't buy, because trade is interrupted or something, the scenario with the journeyman should work. Medieval artisans were very good at putting things together in a hurry - a few master artisans could supervise a mob of peasants to build a castle in a few weeks for example. So I don't doubt, assuming you had people with expertise, and access to say, the right kind of clay to make fire proof bricks, a fast moving stream or a windy hill where you could generate power, there is no reason why you couldn't make a large forge and setup a trip hammer and so on. They also had ways of powering these things with oxen and so on in a pinch, though water wheel was the most common method by far.


You really do need the trip hammer because otherwise it's just too much work to crank out weapons and armor. and you need a mechanically augmented (i.e. 'Catalan') forge to keep the forge hot. You also need access to a lot of fuel, somebodies forest is going to get cut down to make charcoal, probably, unless you have coal or some other fuel source. This often caused problems by the way for example in England where metal making industries sprang up in large forests, only to be shut down again as they started using up too much lumber.

G

I'm assuming that the major areas use coal (or the equivalent), as the ones with the stranglehold over metalwork are dwarves with access to and expertise using large quantities of such things. The tech generally is kinda schizo, as it's the aftermath of a massive cataclysm. They had moderate magitech, but lost 99% of it. Since the dwarves are staunch traditionalists (to the point of deeming too many changes as heresy with fatal consequences), they kept a bunch of their tech (that didn't depend on supply chains or tons of intermediate steps) but have been going on rote memorization (instead of trying to innovate). That's changing, but...

That brings up a good point. I hadn't thought about things like wind/water power. I'll have to consider how those fit in. I assume that decent gearing (enough to use a water wheel) can be made out of wood, as casting something that big seems difficult to do on the fly.

[rrgg]

@Gallogliach

I think you're exaggerating a bit here. The quality of early modern soldiers could vary quite a bit, but in general I don't really think that they were worse than medieval soldiers. It's just that they tended to be more familiar with the use of muskets, pikes, and pistols than bows or lances. Even during the 17th century the pike remained a fairly high-status weapon and the pikemen themselves continued to be more often comprised of a company's gentlemen or veterans than raw recruits.

The prevalence of skirmishing, raiding, ambushes etc. never really went away during early modern wars. But I think the main idea behind the new "scientific" approach to warfare was to figure out how to make the outcome more consistent. Some medieval knights certainly did take their training very seriously, study historical battles, and converse with experienced soldiers or may have even been a veteran themselves. But many of them definitely didn't, and as a result just because someone owned weapons was not a guarantee that they knew how to use them.

There's also the fact that even if a man was an expert hunter or an expert marksman with a musket, there was no guarantee that they would be able to shoot nearly as accurately when people were shooting back at them, and especially not when surrounded by thousands of other musketeers all shooting at the same time. In battles, skill itself typically didn't really count for much unless you had the bravery and discipline to remain calm under extreme pressure, or at least appear calm under pressure.

[Galloglaich]

@Gallogliach

I think you're exaggerating a bit here. The quality of early modern soldiers could vary quite a bit, but in general I don't really think that they were worse than medieval soldiers. It's just that they tended to be more familiar with the use of muskets, pikes, and pistols than bows or lances. Even during the 17th century the pike remained a fairly high-status weapon and the pikemen themselves continued to be more often comprised of a company's gentlemen or veterans than raw recruits.

They may have had high status, but I think I'm on firm ground when i say that it was far more common for pikemen to be limited to a 'static' role in the 17th Century whereas in the 15th (and through at least the middle of the 16th) I can cite numerous occasions when they played a highly dynamic role, the Swiss in particular of course were famous for their sudden decisions and decisive attacks, but there are many others.

There is also evidence that medieval gunners, and those again in the early to mid 16th Century, were expected to do a little more with their weapons, even though these were typically simpler and less powerful weapons, than later 'regular' musketeers were in the 17th.

I am not making the argument that all fighters in the 1630's were less capable in the 1430's, there were extraordinarily skilled warriors in the 17th Century, but certainly for some troop types it's quite clear that on average, the level of capability for independent action, the morale, and the overall flexibility had declined, while simultaneously these troops had become easier to control for a princely commander and thanks to improved weaponry, I cannot say for sure that they would be less effective. I suspect it would depend on the type of fight.

It would be really interesting to pit say, a mixed force of 10,000 from Venice, Bern or Bohemia circa 1480 vs. 10,000 soldiers from say the army of Louis XIV in 1680. I wonder which side would win. The French army would have better guns, the earlier army much better (and more ubiquitous) armor and every other kind of weapon.



The prevalence of skirmishing, raiding, ambushes etc. never really went away during early modern wars. But I think the main idea behind the new "scientific" approach to warfare was to figure out how to make the outcome more consistent. Some medieval knights certainly did take their training very seriously, study historical battles, and converse with experienced soldiers or may have even been a veteran themselves. But many of them definitely didn't, and as a result just because someone owned weapons was not a guarantee that they knew how to use them.

This is absolutely true - Feudal musters were often notoriously unreliable. In Poland the general rule of thumb was that nobles living near the border areas tended to be good fighters but the ones in peaceful areas not so much. This led to the Polish king reorganizing the army along more professional lines in the middle of the 13 Years War.

But the Late Medieval war machine didn't depend on a feudal levy the way an army did in say, the 13th Century. It's far more complex. A little too much to get into here in a lot of detail, but the complex mixture of mercenaries, militia, and proven noble cavalry that combined arms forces such as ultimately won the 13 Years War proved to be pretty formidable. It's basically why we are communicating in English right now instead of Turkish.



There's also the fact that even if a man was an expert hunter or an expert marksman with a musket, there was no guarantee that they would be able to shoot nearly as accurately when people were shooting back at them, and especially not when surrounded by thousands of other musketeers all shooting at the same time. In battles, skill itself typically didn't really count for much unless you had the bravery and discipline to remain calm under extreme pressure, or at least appear calm under pressure.

yes of course. But they did more than individual training in the middle ages.

Warfare changed and the armies of the 17th Century were what worked for the Absolute Monarchs of that era. For the most part, it was the best they could come up with. Observing the 80 Years War perhaps gives us a hint of what a desperate struggle between late medieval vs. Early Modern armies might look like. In spite of all the silver in Peru and the wealth of the Philippines, ultimately the Spanish lost control of what we call today the Netherlands, but they did retain the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium etc.) and it took 80 years for the Dutch to break free.

The advent of military "Science" may or may not represent a steady march from primitive to more sophisticated, I think it's more accurate to say it was a system which worked for the political world it was part of - the Musketeers of Louis XIV were very much his musketeers, and could be counted on to do what they were told in a way that a King in the 15th Century could never have dreamed of. But that army in the 15th Century may have proven more tricky to deal with and had more 'weapons' in it's arsenal of a less obvious nature.

But not necessarily. It's a very general trend I'm talking about. There were excellent soldiers in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries as well. In all eras. It's just the nature of warfare that changed. I'm just suggesting that change didn't (and doesn't) automatically improvement. Sometimes it's just that - change. Different but not necessarily better.

G

[Mendicant]

How was mining a medieval wall actually conducted, and with what sorts of tools? I understand the basic idea, but the specifics of what pre-gunpowder engineers were capable of are well out of my wheelhouse. Were they working through bedrock, or primarily digging through clay and soil and only encountering stone when they hit the wall's foundations?

I'm designing an adventure location and assuming a wall or tower on top of a rocky cliff would be extremely hard or impossible to mine. (Thus making a secret escape tunnel that opens sort of midway down the cliff less of a liability.) Is that a fair assumption to make?

[Max_Killjoy]

How was mining a medieval wall actually conducted, and with what sorts of tools? I understand the basic idea, but the specifics of what pre-gunpowder engineers were capable of are well out of my wheelhouse. Were they working through bedrock, or primarily digging through clay and soil and only encountering stone when they hit the wall's foundations?

I'm designing an adventure location and assuming a wall or tower on top of a rocky cliff would be extremely hard or impossible to mine. (Thus making a secret escape tunnel that opens sort of midway down the cliff less of a liability.) Is that a fair assumption to make?

Whether a wall could be undermined, and how easily if it could, does have a lot to do with what the wall is built on, etc. A wall built directly on rock, or at the top of a steep natural embankment that will hold it, is going to be functionally impossible to mine I'd think. For a wall built on softer material, it would likely depend a great deal on how far down the foundation goes and what's directly in front of the wall.

A castle or wall at the top of a rock cliff, where the defenders can see you down there? I'd forget mining it and look for another approach.

[wolflance]

You sure? I could swear I got more confused the more I wrote.:smallbiggrin:
The problem largely being that what is true in one par tmay not be true in another.

Well, clearer in the sense that I now understood "the training wasn't very good", by later era standard, and perhaps by contemporary and even earlier (15th century Swiss/Bohemian) standard. :biggrin:

Although I can also see a constant dynamic strive for improvement during this era.

[Galloglaich]

Whether a wall could be undermined, and how easily if it could, does have a lot to do with what the wall is built on, etc. A wall built directly on rock, or at the top of a steep natural embankment that will hold it, is going to be functionally impossible to mine I'd think. For a wall built on softer material, it would likely depend a great deal on how far down the foundation goes and what's directly in front of the wall.

A castle or wall at the top of a rock cliff, where the defenders can see you down there? I'd forget mining it and look for another approach.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Krak_des_Chevaliers_01.jpg

Basically true I agree - though it depends on the rock it's built on. The famous and extremely impressive Crusader castle Krak des Chevaliers in Syria was defeated in short order by an Arab army in the 13th Century, by tunneling through the bedrock of the hill it was built on, which turned out to be soft unfortunately for the Hospitalers.

When the Krak was built on the site of an existing Kurdish fort in 1170, it was state of the art - Saladin gave up on besieging it when he approached with his army in 1188. By the time Baibers attacked it a century after it was built - in 1271 - siege warfare had advanced sufficiently that the weakness of the castle (especially defended by a small garrison) became more obvious and led to it's fairly rapid surrender.

http://uniquetimes.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/lii.jpg
This 14th Century Lithuanian castle for example is built on a lake

http://i.imgur.com/n4sa8f1.jpg
This 14th Century one in Bohemia was built on very hard stone, and defended with cannon!

By the 14th and 15th Centuries any castle meant to be permanent (many were not) would be built on challenging ground. Many in fact were built in lakes, in swamps or on islands in rivers, which made mining operations virtually impossible. Failing that a serious castle would be put on hard bedrock like granite if possible.

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-8c5fcb5fd43fe6835456c8bff2d59246

Mining itself was done by digging, as much as could be dug, lighting a big fire, exiting from the tunnel or hole, then coming back when the fire was out and fitting chisels into the resuilting cracks and hammering away. Rinse and repeat, basically it was that simple. It did help to have experienced miners to do it, which armies started intentionally bringing with them (this was one of the advantages of having an army that had skilled artisans in it). As the tunnel progressed it would be shored up, and once it was actually under a wall or a tower (which could take weeks or even months) they would fill the whole thing with flammable material and burn it, the supports would burn and the whole thing would collapse, bringing down part of the fort.

They did have gunpowder, or it's highly flammable antecedents, and were using it in siege warfare in the middle East by the 1230's or 1240's, in Europe as early as the 1260's and in China going back to the 9th Century. But gunpowder was pretty expensive in the middle ages, too expensive to use to make big bombs inside tunnels probably at least until the mid 15th Century.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/Hawthorn_Ridge_Redoubt_mine_%281_July_1916%29_1.jp g/603px-Hawthorn_Ridge_Redoubt_mine_%281_July_1916%29_1.jp g

Once you have large quantities of high explosives mining gets very nasty indeed. This same basic mining method was used for example at the Somme in 1916 to plant massive explosive charges under a German fortified position

Counter-tunneling operations could be very effective and sneaky too of course. Tunnels would be flooded, counter tunnels would be dug to trap and attack the tunnelers - resulting in brutal fights down in the dark. Tunnels were burned by the besieged - filled with naptha and lit on fire. The Romans routinely used what amounted to chemical warfare, by burning noxious substances and using bellows etc. to fan them into tunnels to kill enemy soldiers. During the 16th Century siege of Malta, diggers were detected in the basement of one of the forts. The besieged Hospitaliers brought up a huge cannon and broke a hole through the wall, and blasted the tunneling party with it. On another occasion they flooded a tunnel with waste from a cesspit then threw flaming 'hoops' made of willow soaked in linseed oil and sprinkled with saltpeter on to the emerging tunnel party.

Siege warfare is wacky as hell.

G

[Haighus]

Chalk in particular seems to be a poor rock to build castles on- it is hard enough to easily support tunnels, but soft enough to dig through. Dover still has an example of a counter-mine dug to block an undermining attempt (Dover is on chalk bedrock). Chateau Gaillard was captured by Phillip II in part by the weakness of chalk to undermining.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I never really considered that, but that's a good reason to favor a moat over a hill.

[Deepbluediver]

Well, as someone who is very much in the process of discovering tastes and preferences to buy his first sparring/re-enactment sword somewhere this year I have been told, expressly and multiple times in fact, that a good sword is whatever feels as a good sword at the time.
Thank you for all the feedback- I'll have to find some space and test out some of those moves. I have enough room in my apartment to stand still with it in hand, but with a sword this size I don't think I want to try swinging it around indoors much. That's how I lose my security deposit right-quick.
:smallbiggrin:

[Galloglaich]

I never really considered that, but that's a good reason to favor a moat over a hill.

These paintings of Zurich help illustrate that point:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/Zurych_Turicum.jpg/1012px-Zurych_Turicum.jpg
Map of Zurich by Braun and Hogenburg circa 1580

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/Altartafeln_von_Hans_Leu_d.%C3%84._%28Haus_zum_Rec h%29_-_rechtes_Limmatufer_2011-08-17_15-25-28_ShiftN.jpg/1280px-Altartafeln_von_Hans_Leu_d.%C3%84._%28Haus_zum_Rec h%29_-_rechtes_Limmatufer_2011-08-17_15-25-28_ShiftN.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Altartafeln_von_Hans_Leu_d.%C3%84._%28Haus_zum_Rec h%29_-_rechtes_Limmatufer_-_Wasserkirche_-_Wasserm%C3%BChle_2013-04-08_15-32-05.jpg/640px-Altartafeln_von_Hans_Leu_d.%C3%84._%28Haus_zum_Rec h%29_-_rechtes_Limmatufer_-_Wasserkirche_-_Wasserm%C3%BChle_2013-04-08_15-32-05.jpg
Paintings of Zurich (detail) from a triptych by Hans Leu circa 1490

This is why rivers, and islands on rivers, made for ideal settlements:



Water for partial protection from sieges (along with walls and guns)
water for power (water wheels)
water for transportation of goods



G

[Lvl 2 Expert]

This is why rivers, and islands on rivers, made for ideal settlements:



Water for partial protection from sieges (along with walls and guns)
water for power (water wheels)
water for transportation of goods


O yeah, rivers for transportation, sure. I just always figured the best castles sit on the highest hill within charging distance of the river, like in Budapest or Prague, and that moat-castles like we have in the Netherlands (yes, my location says something different, short story) are a second best option for lack of any hills. A moat slows an incoming enemy like a hill does, but it doesn't provide extra range or speed for your own troops. But the mining thing turns that upside down. A nice mixed sand/rock hill a few dozen meters high and several acres in surface area provides some good places for the enemy to start digging just outside of quick strike range, while in peat lands with a several meters deep moat in the most crucial part of the approach, yeah, good luck. Even if you manage to mostly drain the moat by cutting an exit any tunneling you'll do sits well below ground water level, in an already unstable terrain. Too bad peet is such a lousy type of ground to build castles on, or it would be a great type of ground to build castles on.

[Mike_G]

O yeah, rivers for transportation, sure. I just always figured the best castles sit on the highest hill within charging distance of the river, like in Budapest or Prague, and that moat-castles like we have in the Netherlands (yes, my location says something different, short story) are a second best option for lack of any hills. A moat slows an incoming enemy like a hill does, but it doesn't provide extra range or speed for your own troops. But the mining thing turns that upside down. A nice mixed sand/rock hill a few dozen meters high and several acres in surface area provides some good places for the enemy to start digging just outside of quick strike range, while in peat lands with a several meters deep moat in the most crucial part of the approach, yeah, good luck. Even if you manage to mostly drain the moat by cutting an exit any tunneling you'll do sits well below ground water level, in an already unstable terrain. To bad peet is such a lousy type of ground to build castles on, or it would be a great type of ground to build castles on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNaXdLWt17A

[Kiero]

As a side note, hunting was a very important activity for socialization. I remember reading a text in which the writer explained his son how he had become a friend of the King of Naples during a hunt. The King had separated himself from the main group, and the writer just happened to be there when a bear came up to him. That's a big bonding experience.

This was true in antiquity too. The aristocracy of many societies considered hunting a noble endeavour (and part of training for war); for Makedonian aristocrats, a boy's right of passage into manhood required him to kill a boar on the hunt.

[snowblizz]

They may have had high status, but I think I'm on firm ground when i say that it was far more common for pikemen to be limited to a 'static' role in the 17th Century whereas in the 15th (and through at least the middle of the 16th) I can cite numerous occasions when they played a highly dynamic role, the Swiss in particular of course were famous for their sudden decisions and decisive attacks, but there are many others. I think you are undervaluing the later pike and shot armies, and dare I say overcompensating for the aspersions normally cast on the medieval period. There are fair few examples of pike manuevering around, e.g. The Swedish army at Breiftenfeld swinging part of the army to establish a new front when their Saxon allies collapsed, that's not dumb static pike compared to trained super medieval pike. In fact the Dutch reforms and the Swedish brigading system derived from it was in fact a much more manouvre friendly system for individual units than any medieval system. That is the basic idea they worked to after all. To copy the Roman manipular system to weigh up their comparative troop deficiencies compared to massive Spanish tercios. They also wanted to more effectively bring firepower to bear. The Spanish Tercios were more "wasteful" of their shot than later developments which increased firepower downrange by bringing fewer troops to fire more often.

The older Spanish Tercios were in that sense much closer to the medieval way of fighting in more massive bodies. The Swiss may have been mroe dynamic but they were also utterly defeated by increased firepower. 17th century pikeblocks were not static because they weren't so highly trained, they were static because the main fighting was shooting (artillery and muskets) and no longer hand-to-hand. How exactly do you define a highly dynamic role? Sure moving en masse to attack with pikes may be highly dynamic but when you get moved down with cannon was it dynamic or dumb? Isn't that basically what defeated the invincible Swiss phalanx?


It would be really interesting to pit say, a mixed force of 10,000 from Venice, Bern or Bohemia circa 1480 vs. 10,000 soldiers from say the army of Louis XIV in 1680. I wonder which side would win. The French army would have better guns, the earlier army much better (and more ubiquitous) armor and every other kind of weapon.
First problem I see is that you are in part making a "1000 modern US Marines in an open battle defeat 1000 insurgents", because ofc they do, they represent about a million times more resources. You say yourself you consider the medieval army per capita more costly than a later pike and shot force (and I agree with that), which means it's not entirely an equal fight. We should get more of the cheaper troops who through tehcnological progress may be less trained, but pack more punch troop for troop. Same as a modern infantry platoon has the firepower of a WW2 company or however it goes.
My money is probably on the French though. Better guns (muskets *will* punch through plate) and artillery means armour is much less significant a factor. I would expect the French cavalry to be better able maintain themselves as part of the army. But I've liked the idea of putting tens of thousands of arrows into the air and hitting large blocks of barely armoured men before. And they are definitely more capable in close combat. I guess it boils down to, can they get there?
Going to come down to who gets the more suited terrain I guess and doesn't do something stupid.


It's basically why we are communicating in English right now instead of Turkish.
I'm sorry but that's massively hyperbolic. You can't just pick one battle (or war) hundreds of years ago "hey this saved XXX". I hate it when they do that in books, because invariably whatever the authors period of choice is tends to have the most important battles. An observation I've made over the years reading books on "most influential battles" "biggest battles" and so on.




Warfare changed and the armies of the 17th Century were what worked for the Absolute Monarchs of that era.
Or Absolute Monarchies shaped warfare and armies to fit their goals.


For the most part, it was the best they could come up with. Observing the 80 Years War perhaps gives us a hint of what a desperate struggle between late medieval vs. Early Modern armies might look like. In spite of all the silver in Peru and the wealth of the Philippines, ultimately the Spanish lost control of what we call today the Netherlands, but they did retain the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium etc.) and it took 80 years for the Dutch to break free.
To be fair, they had long spells of inaction. The 100YW wasn't a 100 years of war either. The de facto independence was realised more quickly it's just that the Spanish had no incentive to accept de jure what was de facto true by 1609 and the 12 Year Truce. Bit like that Korean war that's currently on hold. So they kept spending even more financial resources on a lost cause hoping later to recoup territory. I've seen it argued somewhere the Spanish crown rather stupidly spent vast resources trying to hold things together because Deus Vult! and they felt obliged to as the premier Catholic power. After all they had interests all over the globe they were trying to manage.


The advent of military "Science" may or may not represent a steady march from primitive to more sophisticated, I think it's more accurate to say it was a system which worked for the political world it was part of - the Musketeers of Louis XIV were very much his musketeers, and could be counted on to do what they were told in a way that a King in the 15th Century could never have dreamed of. But that army in the 15th Century may have proven more tricky to deal with and had more 'weapons' in it's arsenal of a less obvious nature.I don't quite agree with the idea that having more different kinds of poelarms necessarily means you are more effective compared those only using pikes (just to use an silly example). I do agree that military science wasn't always very scientific. Or shall we say overly scientific. Because some of the earlier pike and shot tactics were deeply invested into the mathematics and geometry of formations, e.g. by imitating the new scientific military engineering principels used in fortifications. Things like being hugely obsessived with number of troops and frontages.


But not necessarily. It's a very general trend I'm talking about. There were excellent soldiers in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries as well. In all eras. It's just the nature of warfare that changed. I'm just suggesting that change didn't (and doesn't) automatically improvement. Sometimes it's just that - change. Different but not necessarily better.

GRemember that change also doesn't mean things got worse either...
Because the way you aruge quite often it seems civilization peaked in the middle ages.:smallamused:

[Martin Greywolf]

O yeah, rivers for transportation, sure. I just always figured the best castles sit on the highest hill within charging distance of the river, like in Budapest or Prague, and that moat-castles like we have in the Netherlands (yes, my location says something different, short story) are a second best option for lack of any hills.

Well, what's a best castle? If it's the most unconquerable, then I think the prize of those I've visited goes to Ostry Kamen (Sharp Stone), it sits in the middle of a mountain range above an old pass through the Carpathians. It's not the most impressive looking one perhaps, but the trek to get there is a massive pain, and it was used strictly as a border fortress, mostly because none of the nobles wanted to live there - control it for massive taxes yes, actually live there, not so much.


http://cestovinky.sk/wpdemo/database/wp-content/uploads/515.jpg


The thing about river castles, natural moat aside, is that they look very impressive if you have the right terrain - river tends to wash away anything that isn't rock, leaving these massive boulders on top of which you can build. Problem is, they are often near fords, and with river right there, you have a lot of ways a besieging force can get supplies quickly.


http://oravaregion.ozviac.sk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/SAM_4015.jpg



https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KQIjjLGf1Ek/maxresdefault.jpg



http://www.ubytujemsa.sk/images/atrakcie/spissky-hrad/1d6fb3f0285.jpg


In the end, the presence of castles is dictated by having a military of certain tech level and little else. Once you have such a society, you build castles wherever they are needed strategically, and do your best to fortify them with what terrain types and materials you have.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Osaka_Castle_02bs3200.jpg/1920px-Osaka_Castle_02bs3200.jpg



https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Mehrangarh_Fort.jpg/1280px-Mehrangarh_Fort.jpg



https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/Gyantse_Fortress.jpg/1280px-Gyantse_Fortress.jpg


We could go and argue semantics, but if we take the simplest definition of castle, primarily a fortified building complex that also serves as a daily home for soldiers and (optionally) other people, then the non-European examples certainly can't be overlooked. Hell, some of the American pueblos probably qualify.

Edit: One sneaky castle was present twice

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Well, what's a best castle? If it's the most unconquerable, then I think the prize of those I've visited goes to Ostry Kamen (Sharp Stone), it sits in the middle of a mountain range above an old pass through the Carpathians. It's not the most impressive looking one perhaps, but the trek to get there is a massive pain, and it was used strictly as a border fortress, mostly because none of the nobles wanted to live there - control it for massive taxes yes, actually live there, not so much.

And at least as a border fortress it serves some purpose, but generally the point of a castle is to defend something. Take the difference between those Saris and Spis examples. I'm sure Saris is extremely unconquerable, but why would I even want to conquer it? Maybe to prevent them from following me when I leave and attacking me in the rear. Spis on the other hand sits in what looks like a fertile valley, probably near what was in that time a main road, definitely near a village, a bunch of farmlands and a forest you could conceivably cut for wood that you can then actually transport out of there.

You see this even more in later defensive lines, Naarden-vesting is a good example: (Zoom in a bit on "Naarden", you'll see the six pointed star shape.) (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Naarden,+Netherlands/@52.3027096,5.1282211,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x47c613855ca1cf47:0xe9228 4db2cf48fbe!8m2!3d52.2952549!4d5.1604238).
That lake to the north was a sea back then, the land to the north of that lake was sea as well. The land to the south of the "vesting" was an inundation, in wartime it would be flooded and become a big muddy landscape too deep to wade at any decent speed, too shallow for halfway decent boats, with no cover at all. Between the "vesting"/fortified city and the then sea to the north you'll notice a road. A highway in fact, today. Even now that's pretty much the main road towards Amsterdam from anywhere further inland. In wartime it would have been the only way. The fortress guards that road like a madderfakker. That's a strategic position. That's why I was considering a hill next to a river versus a moated castle near a river, because I was thinking of castles build to guard something (other than the people inside, which to be fair could often use guarding, so out of the way on top of a mountain castles have their function, but I was thinking of the other kind of castle.)

I saw a video by I think Shadiversity who was raving about the castles in Game of Thrones, and the very best in his opinion was one build up as a giant tower far out in the sea connected to land by one tiny bridge. Unconquerable! Sure, but if I blow the bridge up and leave a platoon of archers to shoot anyone coming out to fix it I can go and conquer the rest of their lands while they starve to death. They don't even have a decent harbor in there by the looks of it. In fact, I can just go and conquer the rest of their lands without blowing up the bridge if that suits me. I'll have to fight their armies, but the castle itself will never bother me. It sits out in the sea, guarding nothing at all. So yeah, I like castles build to project power, rather than just to have it. That's why I like the castles in Budapest and Prague, those castles are definitely guarding something.

I'd still say a lot of castled hills, especially the nice solid granite places people would carve later fortifications out of, rather than building anything weaker on top, are better than flat land with a moat. But for tunneling at least there's a very good argument for that last setup, and I simply never considered that.

[Lapak]

And at least as a border fortress it serves some purpose, but generally the point of a castle is to defend something.
Often, but not always. Sometimes it is just power projection rather than active defense. As I understand it, a lot of castles in Wales were built by the English not as strong points to defend a particular town or road but to serve as a safe base of operations for a garrison that projected power beyond the walls. You weren’t worrying about a foreign army as much as an insurrection by a not-quite-conquered population, so it was more a matter of potentially surviving an attack until the main army came in to put down the resistance. A smallish garrison could more-or-less safely hold down a much larger region than they otherwise could because of their fortified home base.

[rrgg]

They may have had high status, but I think I'm on firm ground when i say that it was far more common for pikemen to be limited to a 'static' role in the 17th Century whereas in the 15th (and through at least the middle of the 16th) I can cite numerous occasions when they played a highly dynamic role, the Swiss in particular of course were famous for their sudden decisions and decisive attacks, but there are many others.

There is also evidence that medieval gunners, and those again in the early to mid 16th Century, were expected to do a little more with their weapons, even though these were typically simpler and less powerful weapons, than later 'regular' musketeers were in the 17th.

Pikes were still used as very mobile and aggressive weapons occasionally, most famously by the swedish. They were also still considered very important for attacking or defending a fortified position and even get mentioned being used in skirmishes, raids, and ambushes quite a bit. George Silver excluded, the pike also seems to start being seen as a very effective weapon for single combat as well. In some ways later europeans seem to have held the pike in a higher esteem than even the medieval Swiss did, who always included large numbers of halberds or two-handed swords in their ranks.

It is true that pikemen by the late 16th century had become much more defensive. Even when they did charge, they weren't considered agile enough to pursue and execute fleeing enemies. By this point most pike and shot armies had lots of musketeers and cavalry to carry out the killing though, so even then I'd argue that it was less a case of pikemen becoming worse as it was them adapting more towards their new role. Commanders and military writers at the time were well aware that pikes rarely ever actually killed anyone anymore, but they continued to emphasize their importance and continued to see quality pikemen as a key deciding factor in battles.

Pikemen were seen as essentially an army's "anchor", If pikemen wanted to take ground, then unarmored musketeers and cavalry would be forced to run away as long as the pikes advanced bravely. Similarly, if the pikemen remained brave then no attack by cavalry or light infantry could force them to give ground without slowly killing them all from a distance, and as a result the unarmored musketeers fighting alongside them wouldn't have to retreat either. The pikemen also made their bravery readily apparent to others on the field, both friend and foe alike. If they kept their stand of pikes upright, and in good order without flinching even under fire then it helped convince the enemy to keep his distance while emboldening allies. Conversely, writers mention that when the pikes and standards in the middle of a formation started to sway back and forth, becoming "tangled" amongst one another it was a signal to everyone else on the field that the pike square was nearly broken and became a sign for the enemy that now was the time to charge, whether on foot or on horse.

The first thing to go was most of the short weapons, since a dense forest of uniform Training also soon focused extensively, or almost entirely on formations and marching drills. Doubling files, doubling ranks, countermarching, wheeling about during a march or quickly turning a column into a ring or an S shape. But it became more important to learn to do this as smoothly as possible without breaking ranks or "cohesion" than to simply focus on speed.

You might argue that all this sounds more like form over function, but people at the time certainly felt that it was very important and it definitely took a lot of work to try and achieve this. The late medieval Swiss were certainly valiant and had a lot of ingrained instinct, like you said. But while they were the primary inventors of modern pike tactics, the popularization seems to have had a lot to do with the Landsknecht mercenaries, who could demonstrate their skill to prospective clients by gliding across parade grounds in large, colorful bodies of men, swinging about to create various geometric shapes with each component appearing to be a solid mass.

Anyways, I just realized that I spent way too responding to your first section so I'm going to try to just touch on a couple of main points from here.

On military "Science"

I agree that any "military revolution" during this period tends to be way overstated. This sort of military thinking certainly didn't appear out of nowhere in the 16th century, instead it seems to be the continuance of a conversation which was taking place among various military minds throughout the middle ages alongside frequent experiments. That we know more about the 16th century probably just has more to do with the spread of the printing press and the fact any random mercenary or armchair general was now more likely publish their thoughts in book form and leave surviving copies for us to read.

There's also aspects that early military books tend to just leave out. In particular I've got sort of an axe to grind with certain authors who conclude that volley fire wasn't invented until 1595 or so despite a mountain of evidence suggesting that various forms of volley fire drills were developed very early on, probably even before guns, but no one bothered to write them down in detail because they seemed like common sense at the time.

There's also the question of how complete any sort of "revolution" actually was. Military writers themselves certainly complain a lot about "many of our captains" who outright rejected the idea that book learning could teach them anything about fighting, or conversely they complained about those who claimed that the ancient Romans or "our forefathers" had already figured everything out about the art of war and that there was nothing new to discover. Secondly, you can still find a lot in these military treatises that most authors all seemed to agree on, but remained very disconnected from real world due to social realities and limitations on how much monarchs were actually willing to pay.

Many writers actually did propose major social changes from the ground up, with young people from an early age being taught military history, respect for the military profession, and to favor games that promoted athleticism and martial skills. They wanted a professional standing army where troops could gain experience over a long period of time and then pass that expertise onto new recruits. They agreed that the soldiers themselves should be strong, brave, obedient, and perfect Christians who never drank, never gambled, and instead spent all of their leisure time exercising, studying, or training with every kind of weapon. There was even a fairly broad agreement that officers should be promoted through the ranks based on merit and experience rather than wealth and social status (lol).

In practice though most monarchs during the early modern period didn't want to pay the great cost to maintain these large professional armies. Many wanted to be able to quickly raise and train large armies in just a few days for cheap and then dismiss them just as quickly. When standing armies were created, rather than model citizens the typical soldier was more often drawn from the dregs of society, or even literal criminals and given just enough pay and food to get by. The appointment of captains also continued to be a rampant problem in many countries. It wasn't uncommon for a captain to buy his commission, and then attempt to recoup his "investment" by stealing as much of his soldiers' pay as he possibly could. And then Monarchs in turn would do everything they could to avoid paying their captains.

Some armies managed to get closer to the ideal than others, and they would frequently pick and choose certain elements of the ideal military that could be adopted more easily while ignoring others. But there was always a major gap between the theory and reality.

Late medieval gunmen vs early modern gunmen

So this is an interesting subject. And I honestly don't think it's the case that people over the course of the early modern period just forgot how to make accurate muskets or forgot how to shoot accurately. The best explanation seems to be that handguns during this period suffered from a literal version of "conservation of ninjutsu."

1 on 1 against a charging knight or other attacker, a perfect handgunner should always have a major advantage. If you have two handgunners working together, one firing while the other is almost done reloading, they can keep up a constant fire at extreme distances while at the same time being extremely dangerous to approach without heavy casualties. As a result, mobile firearms were a fantastic weapon for loose skirmishes, or in the hands of a few skilled sharpshooters to pick off import targets and demoralize the enemy. The hard part was figuring out how to use large numbers of them in pitched battles. La Noue wound up summing this up pretty well:

"It is as if a man should say, that because in the field one harquebuzier may kill a pike man armed with his corcelet, it followeth that in pitcht fieldes the harquebuziers should ouerthrow the battailes of pikes: which neuerthelesse falleth out cōtrarie, for it is certaine that for the most part those battailes do giue the victorie."

If you have thousands of musketeers standing in a dense formation only those in front can actually fire at any one time. Even those who are good shots get distracted and frightened by the smoke, noise and screaming of those around them. Men bump into each other while trying to perform their complicated reloading process, and if the initial volley does fail to stop a charging mass of enemies, the musketeers' great numbers and tight order makes it difficult for them to retreat even in the face of heavily armored footmen without turning into a chaotic panic. On the other hand, a smaller number of loose skirmishers or a handful of sharpshooters with their slow-firing weapons simply couldn't do enough damage to actually slow or stop the advance of a determined army.

So while arquebusiers quickly became seen as fantastic light infantry, and we start to see parties of skirmishers or mounted infantry armed entirely with arquebuses more and more during the Italian Wars, if not earlier. But with armies hiring more and more shot due to their effectiveness in "small war" the quest was on to figure out how to make large numbers of them effective in pitched battles.

This is where volley fire drills come in, which in general allow the front rank to fire and then retreat to the rear of the formation to reload while making way for the second rank to fire with as little confusion as possible. These were probably initially developed as early as the 15th century as a way to maintain a continuous fire during skirmishes when skirmishers started arming themselves with firearms almost exclusively. And were likely practiced at a small community or company level while slowly being altered to better suit larger numbers of men and deeper formations.

Their adoption was neither consistent nor linear however, and there were many different methods of conducting volley fire floating around. Some required more practice and discipline to conduct than others, some allowed for better accuracy, some allowed a better rate of fire, some were stronger, some were more flexible, etc. Exactly which type was practiced during the 16th century was probably left up to the judgment of individual captains or experienced sergeants, who were also responsible for teaching new recruits the method they thought best for loading and aiming their weapons prior to the introduction of "official" drill manuals.

Even with volleys however, late 16th century authors noted that it was still typical to see 10,000 arquebusiers fire into an enemy formation at short range and inflict only 30 casualties. There were multiple explanations for this given but in general writers attributed it to human error. Either the soldiers weren't trained well enough, they didn't trust in their weapons, they didn't take the time to aim or fired their weapons into the air out of fear, they were using bullets much to small for their barrel or didn't take the time to ram them home with a patch allowing them to roll back out, their weapons misfired because they either loaded incorrectly, didn't keep them clean, or allowed their powder to get damp. One problem in particular which gets mentioned is that when common soldiers were expected to pay for their own powder and bullets for target practice, they often just wouldn't practice. (Really, how anyone managed to conclude that the musket was somehow the perfect weapon for arming untrained peasants I have no idea.)

Some, like Robert Barret at the end of the 16th century, continued to reject the typical fire-by-rank drill as inefficient, claiming that it was more effective to instead divide your shot into many small troupes of skirmishers so that you could send just a few of them forward at a time to skirmish in a loose formation, and then replace them with new troupes of skirmishers as they grew tired or ran low on ammunition.

While improvements to the musket and the socket bayonet eventually did phase out the pike completely, there seems to have continued to be some back and fourth among military thinkers even into the 19th century between "Accuracy in combat becomes impossible, we need to instead focus on teaching soldiers to put as much lead downrange as they can" and "Our soldiers are firing hundreds of rounds for every casualty they inflict, if we can at least teach them to hit the broad side of a barn we would be unstoppable." For example, in the mid 18th century the Prussian army focused almost exclusively on rate of fire, with their musketeers supposedly achieving up to 6 shots per minute, Britian on the other hand, especially after the French and Indian war began investing heavily to teach their regulars marskmanship and light infantry tactics as well.

Then of course Napoleon ruined everything again and found that with poorly supplied conscripts given only a day or two of drill, good esprit de corps, and some brilliant maneuvering he could completely surround and destroy the far more expensive and better trained professional armies of France's neighbors. :\

[Spiryt]

Proven and experienced commanders recommending some 'Ye olde time' warfare methods, and explaining their points well seems to be very common trope.

Yet pretty much always none of such ideas had seen any serious realization.

It seems that the case is that what is most cost efficient, most easily organized and what actually exists as lively training tradition - wins.

Here are some interesting points about Maurice de Saxe recommending 'Polish style' heavy lancers return as decisive means of breaking enemy formations in necessary spots.


http://dariocaballeros.blogspot.com

Needless to say, nothing like that seen use.

[Martin Greywolf]

And at least as a border fortress it serves some purpose, but generally the point of a castle is to defend something. Take the difference between those Saris and Spis examples. I'm sure Saris is extremely unconquerable, but why would I even want to conquer it? Maybe to prevent them from following me when I leave and attacking me in the rear. Spis on the other hand sits in what looks like a fertile valley, probably near what was in that time a main road, definitely near a village, a bunch of farmlands and a forest you could conceivably cut for wood that you can then actually transport out of there.

These are both the same type ofr castle, actually, provincial centre castle. They served as a seat of king-appointed duke, and were usually fairly large, since they also served as a refuge for the surrounding villages. They are both located in the way you describe with Spis - fertile valley, road, villages etc etc. Orava is also of this type, but a bit smaller, as the region wasn't well settled.

Ostry Kamen, on the other hand, was almost pourely a border fortress, extremely hard to get to and once the kingdom was invaded, its purpose was pretty much to be a pain in the neck by blocking the pass it sits in unless you manage to siege it.

Hungarian western border had a defensive line some 80km deep, with first line being Ostry Kamen-like fortresses and second line usually being the provincial centre castles and fortified towns. There were exceptions, mostly towns right on the border (and they tended to change hands fast once a war started), but not many. Once you got past that, you had mostly provincial castles or castles of nobility, but there was a sort of internal defensive system of - the translation here is a bit wonky - natural/country gates, natural obstacles or choke points, that sometimes had a fortress castle built near it.



That's why I was considering a hill next to a river versus a moated castle near a river, because I was thinking of castles build to guard something (other than the people inside, which to be fair could often use guarding, so out of the way on top of a mountain castles have their function, but I was thinking of the other kind of castle.)

If you happen to have any rock nearby, you usually see any human settlements near or on top of it, and therefore, you have little reason for moving the castle (well, not until renaissance is over, anyway). One of the reasons, apart from defense, is that rivers in pre-modern times aren't exactly locked into a single riverbed, and can create a maze of streams, marshes and islands that changes so rapidly only locals can keep track. A rock like this offers a solid point and a place that doesn't get flooded.

If you don't have anything of the sort, then you start to see moat castles - Malbork/Marienburg is a pretty good example of one.



I saw a video by I think Shadiversity who was raving about the castles in Game of Thrones, and the very best in his opinion was one build up as a giant tower far out in the sea connected to land by one tiny bridge. Unconquerable!

Honestly, bigger problem is that the lords in GoT explicitly refuse to offer refuge to their paesants - everyone would die of starvation by season 3.



Sure, but if I blow the bridge up and leave a platoon of archers to shoot anyone coming out to fix it I can go and conquer the rest of their lands while they starve to death. They don't even have a decent harbor in there by the looks of it. In fact, I can just go and conquer the rest of their lands without blowing up the bridge if that suits me. I'll have to fight their armies, but the castle itself will never bother me. It sits out in the sea, guarding nothing at all. So yeah, I like castles build to project power, rather than just to have it. That's why I like the castles in Budapest and Prague, those castles are definitely guarding something.

Only thing is, those castles, especially the Budapest one, were designed to work with a system of border fortresses (e.g. Ostry Kamen) that stopped invaders from freely marching up to them. Sometimes a fortress castle and a provincial castle like these are really close together - Bratislava and Devin castles are 10 km apart. Mongol invasion of Hungary and battle of Rozhanovce are a good example of how this works, Mongol invasion was actually an impetus to start building castles like this on a national scale.

Rozhanovce are a pretty interesting in how the castles were used - royal armies used Saris castle to use as a staging ground to come to the aid of besieged town of Kosice, and various fortress castles stopped besiegers of Kosice from simply blocking off the roads and passes, resulting in them deciding to stop the siege of Kosice and meet royal army in the field near Rozhanovce. They left a small force to keep defenders of Kosice inside town, but the defenders made a counterattack, routed the small besieging force and managed to make it in time to battle itself and attack besiegers in the rear.

Fortress castles in besieger's hands also played a role in stopping the royal forces from intercepting their reinforcements, but the besiegers simply ran out of time and only a small forward force of their reinforcements made it in time for battle. The rest of the reinforcements withdrew behind the safety of their castles, and royal forces couldn't pursue.

This battle really showcases how a castle systems works on a strategic - rather than tactical - level, if you boither to look into army movements before the battle itself.

[rrgg]

Proven and experienced commanders recommending some 'Ye olde time' warfare methods, and explaining their points well seems to be very common trope.

Yet pretty much always none of such ideas had seen any serious realization.

It seems that the case is that what is most cost efficient, most easily organized and what actually exists as lively training tradition - wins.

Here are some interesting points about Maurice de Saxe recommending 'Polish style' heavy lancers return as decisive means of breaking enemy formations in necessary spots.


http://dariocaballeros.blogspot.com

Needless to say, nothing like that seen use.

You definitely see quite a bit of that, especially among the more hardcore classicists. By the second half of the 16th century they seem to have started recommending that musketeers and arquebusiers wear no armor at all in order to make them even better light infantry, but most continue to want pikemen and cavalry to have far more complete armor that it seems even the soldiers themselves were willing to wear, even if it wasn't musket-proof.

The subject of the lance in the 16th century is an interesting one and has two main elements to it. The first has to do with the shift from charging "in haie" to charging "in squadron", where it seems to have been generally concluded that 300 horsemen charging as a dense "squadron" with multiple ranks would easily be able to rout the same number charging as a single rank or as a swarm of small companies 15-30 men each, even if the former were slightly less well armored and slightly less well horsed. The second has to do with the advantages of the lance vs the pistol. When charging in squadrons only the first rank of horsemen would actually be able to use their lances, but this didn't matter so much if the lancers started carrying pistols as well in saddle holsters and were trained how to use them. Generally well-ordered squadrons of lancers continued to be able to beat squadrons of reiters, however Huguenot captain La Noue and Sir Roger Williams argued that this was only when the reiters were improperly trained and tried to caracole and retreat in the face of an enemy cavalry charge. If the reiters charged home as a solid mass like they were supposed to, they claimed, then the lances wouldn't actually make any difference since pistols were better at penetrating armor anyways. Additionally, the lance was heavy and difficult to carry around while being a very situational weapon. It could only be used on very hard, open ground, and could only be used when charging in a straight line at full speed, while a pistol was just as powerful when fired at a trot, to the side or rear, and could be reloaded.

King Henry IV reportedly started ordering his cuirassers to charge sword in hand while saving their pistols for the melee or pursuit in order to insure that they charged home. By 1600 the lance had almost disappeared completely from western Europe. In the 17th century King Gustavus came to a similar conclusion after his experiences with the Polish lancers. When his horsemen attempted to perform a caracole they were easily routed, but if he trained his horsemen to save their pistols and charge home instead then they could stand toe to toe with the polish cavalry or even come out ahead.

During the 18th century however armor had largely fallen out use completely and you tend to see more and more interest in readopting the lance, and by the Napoleonic wars lancers were pretty highly regarded. But because the lance tradition in western europe had died out it had become an extremely difficult weapon to learn how to use, especially in dense formations. Christopher Duffy mentions one Prussian attempt during the 18th century to imitate the Polish lancers which ended in disaster after they charged into a squadron of sword-armed hussars and reportedly impaled more of each other than the enemy.

[Yora]

I came across this really good examination of the oil situation in the German-Soviet war (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVo5I0xNRhg). Nothing really amazingly new that people familiar with the subject would never have heard before, but it does a really great job of putting it into context.
(And it also points out why this aspect is not part of the American-Western European narrative of the war.)

[Metahuman1]

So, I have a friend who's writing a story, and she mentioned needing to know about some weapons, particularly Chinese and European in origin, that were designed, and historically used, to smash through armor, similar to how the Japanese Kanabo was used.




Anyone know some sites that have lists and explanations on them I can point her too?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

So, I have a friend who's writing a story, and she mentioned needing to know about some weapons, particularly Chinese and European in origin, that were designed, and historically used, to smash through armor, similar to how the Japanese Kanabo was used.




Anyone know some sites that have lists and explanations on them I can point her too?

In the European tradition those would be maces and war hammers, and various pole arms, either war hammer derived or using back spikes, a bit later on. The general term war club might also yield some good results.

In general the more spiky versions aimed more to punch through the armor while the ones with larger surface areas, blunt force impact weapons (just throwing some extra searchable terms in there) were maybe more geared towards breaking bones and damaging organs despite armor.

[Kiero]

You definitely see quite a bit of that, especially among the more hardcore classicists. By the second half of the 16th century they seem to have started recommending that musketeers and arquebusiers wear no armor at all in order to make them even better light infantry, but most continue to want pikemen and cavalry to have far more complete armor that it seems even the soldiers themselves were willing to wear, even if it wasn't musket-proof.

The subject of the lance in the 16th century is an interesting one and has two main elements to it. The first has to do with the shift from charging "in haie" to charging "in squadron", where it seems to have been generally concluded that 300 horsemen charging as a dense "squadron" with multiple ranks would easily be able to rout the same number charging as a single rank or as a swarm of small companies 15-30 men each, even if the former were slightly less well armored and slightly less well horsed. The second has to do with the advantages of the lance vs the pistol. When charging in squadrons only the first rank of horsemen would actually be able to use their lances, but this didn't matter so much if the lancers started carrying pistols as well in saddle holsters and were trained how to use them. Generally well-ordered squadrons of lancers continued to be able to beat squadrons of reiters, however Huguenot captain La Noue and Sir Roger Williams argued that this was only when the reiters were improperly trained and tried to caracole and retreat in the face of an enemy cavalry charge. If the reiters charged home as a solid mass like they were supposed to, they claimed, then the lances wouldn't actually make any difference since pistols were better at penetrating armor anyways. Additionally, the lance was heavy and difficult to carry around while being a very situational weapon. It could only be used on very hard, open ground, and could only be used when charging in a straight line at full speed, while a pistol was just as powerful when fired at a trot, to the side or rear, and could be reloaded.

King Henry IV reportedly started ordering his cuirassers to charge sword in hand while saving their pistols for the melee or pursuit in order to insure that they charged home. By 1600 the lance had almost disappeared completely from western Europe. In the 17th century King Gustavus came to a similar conclusion after his experiences with the Polish lancers. When his horsemen attempted to perform a caracole they were easily routed, but if he trained his horsemen to save their pistols and charge home instead then they could stand toe to toe with the polish cavalry or even come out ahead.

During the 18th century however armor had largely fallen out use completely and you tend to see more and more interest in readopting the lance, and by the Napoleonic wars lancers were pretty highly regarded. But because the lance tradition in western europe had died out it had become an extremely difficult weapon to learn how to use, especially in dense formations. Christopher Duffy mentions one Prussian attempt during the 18th century to imitate the Polish lancers which ended in disaster after they charged into a squadron of sword-armed hussars and reportedly impaled more of each other than the enemy.

There's a powerful psychological element to the whole business as well. Relying solely on your pistols means you never have to really engage and risk both yourself and your mount in melee. This was an advantage Cromwell's Ironsides enjoyed over Royalist cavalry in the English Civil War - they were prepared to commit to melee and charge home with their swords, whereas their opponents weren't.

[Brother Oni]

So, I have a friend who's writing a story, and she mentioned needing to know about some weapons, particularly Chinese and European in origin, that were designed, and historically used, to smash through armor, similar to how the Japanese Kanabo was used.

Further to Lvl 2 Expert, the pollaxe was pretty much the default anti-armour weapon of foot knights in the late medieval period.

While I'm not aware of any dedicated anti-armour Chinese weapons (I suspect the relative lack of plate harness in Chinese warfare didn't require the development of specialist anti-armour weapons to the extent of European tradition), they did have a very nice range of polearms as well. Using the pollaxe as the 'ideal' shape, you have the Ge (dagger axe) and to a lesser extent, the Ji (halberd).

Going towards things that just hit very hard, you have the pudao, which was intended as an anti-cavalry weapon, but would probably do nasty things to enemy infantry, regardless of armour.

Is there a particular period of history your friend is interested in? The Ge was obsoleted by the Ji around about the Han dynasty (2nd century BC to 3rd century AD) and later Song dynasty (10th-13th Century) Ji are becoming more like western halberds rather than pollaxes.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

and to a lesser extent, the Ji (halberd).

That's always an awesome weapon. It's basically a halberd after ditching the weight of the large primary axe head, leaving you with a lighter more controllable weapon that serves both as a braceable spear with "stop the dead horse from falling all the way over your weapon" guard and a spike for hooking (shields and horse legs) and puncturing.

I don't know how tough the blades were in practice, because they really are blades rather than rounder, more solid spikes. But the design always looks very good to me.

[Metahuman1]

Further to Lvl 2 Expert, the pollaxe was pretty much the default anti-armour weapon of foot knights in the late medieval period.

While I'm not aware of any dedicated anti-armour Chinese weapons (I suspect the relative lack of plate harness in Chinese warfare didn't require the development of specialist anti-armour weapons to the extent of European tradition), they did have a very nice range of polearms as well. Using the pollaxe as the 'ideal' shape, you have the Ge (dagger axe) and to a lesser extent, the Ji (halberd).

Going towards things that just hit very hard, you have the pudao, which was intended as an anti-cavalry weapon, but would probably do nasty things to enemy infantry, regardless of armour.

Is there a particular period of history your friend is interested in? The Ge was obsoleted by the Ji around about the Han dynasty (2nd century BC to 3rd century AD) and later Song dynasty (10th-13th Century) Ji are becoming more like western halberds rather than pollaxes.

I think were mostly looking at "Anything before gunpoweder was dominating Warfare is fair game.".

That said, she's definably looking more for blunt for approach to armor rather then penetrating spikes for her purposes.

[Brother Oni]

I think were mostly looking at "Anything before gunpoweder was dominating Warfare is fair game.".

That said, she's definably looking more for blunt for approach to armor rather then penetrating spikes for her purposes.

There's the Chui or bonbori, which is essentially a mace, but from looking at various designs, it's not intended to be an anti-armour weapon (no ridges to focus the force from a blow to defeat armour).

http://www.china-watching.com/1303304211.jpg

I think it's a round bar mace that's used by Shu Lien against Jen in the semi-climatic fight of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (https://youtu.be/mClOxgyWLs8?t=157) (a nice detail is that the weapon appears to be made of brass to make it heavier than an equivalent iron or steel weapon, which was known to happen).

http://www.ashokaarts.com/img/product_images/image/detail/chinese-sword-or-bar-mace-weapon-3-3844.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/P8t5f.jpg

That said, I am dubious of the battlefield use of the weapons, or whether they were solely used by kung fu martial artists.

It sounds like your friend is using the typical RPG inaccuracy of 'blunt weapons beats armour' or is more interested in duelling - if that's the level of detail she wants, then just pick any of the blunt 18 weapons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighteen_Arms_of_Wushu).

Edit: A bit more digging has found that the bar mace was also a 14th Century Italian weapon, although it never spread beyond the period or area:

http://therionarms.com/reenact/therionarms_c1189_original3.jpg
http://therionarms.com/reenact/therionarms_c1189_original1.jpg

It looks like hitting people with what is effectively a glorified fence post has a long and illustrious history with broad cross cultural appeal. :smallbiggrin:

[Vinyadan]

Honourable mention of anti-armour weapon: the estoc, although I doubt that's what the poster is looking for.

[Brother Oni]

Honourable mention of anti-armour weapon: the estoc, although I doubt that's what the poster is looking for.

There's also the rondel dagger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rondel_dagger) which technically doesn't count as a penetrating spike as it goes through gaps in armour, rather than through armour like the beak of a warhammer.

[Socratov]

There's also the rondel dagger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rondel_dagger) which technically doesn't count as a penetrating spike as it goes through gaps in armour, rather than through armour like the beak of a warhammer.

Ehm, to be fair, once plate armour could be heat treated the gaps are pretty much the way to damage anything underneath short of crushing them or by hitting the joints with blunt force.

so, in armour fighting a rondel dagger is pretty much THE way to actually get to do some damage to armoured opponents.

Plate armour was expensive as hell, but all that money invested was ultimately worth it as a well made suit of armour really protected you against anything that did not get in between the gaps.

That is, until the invention of gunpowder and rifling made sure that even plate wasn't enough protection anymore.

hardened and tempered steel is simultaneously hard enough to counter piercing weapons and tough enough to not shatter in the impact of a club or hammer. One of the best inventions of man in (post-) medieval warfare.

[Jormengand]

This is a really open-ended question, but...

I need to know what the commonly-used weapons and armour were, everywhere, over the past... oh, let's say 2500 years, what was common when, and how much the prices of these items changed. Does anyone have any links to good explanations of how weapon and armour technology has changed over time (since I doubt anyone can tell me about how weapons have changed and developed over the entire world on their own, but you're welcome to try)

Also, I'm writing a game, and need to make some essentially-arbitrary technology levels. I don't mind having large numbers of them, nor do I mind having them irregularly-spaced, but suggestions on where to put the breakpoints would be great.

[Brother Oni]

Also, I'm writing a game, and need to make some essentially-arbitrary technology levels. I don't mind having large numbers of them, nor do I mind having them irregularly-spaced, but suggestions on where to put the breakpoints would be great.

It's a ridiculously broad question and non-military inventions have an equally important effect (writing for example or development of a dedicated warrior caste) on cultural and societal development.

I think going to the level of granularity that is typical for this thread would be impractical for a playable game. Have you considered borrowing from existing systems like GURPS (http://gurps.wikia.com/wiki/Tech_Level) or the Civilisation franchise tech tree?

[PhoenixPhyre]

On a related question about categorizing weapons:

What are the basic "simple verbs" of weapons? I'm talking about the ways that any particular weapon might deal damage to an opponent summarized in very simple verb forms: "I <Verb> with my <Weapon>."

Is the list (speaking here of melee weapons, and any weapon might be capable of several of these) anywhere near reasonable? Complete? Different enough to be separate things? For right now I'm only concerned about causing damage, not the defensive properties that different weapons might have.

Bash: Use concussive force to cause injury without worrying as much about penetration.
Stab: A thrusting motion designed to cause a (comparatively) small but deep wound
Slash: Cuts designed to sever limbs, open wide/long but (comparatively) shallow wounds
Chop: More stab-like than slashes but with a wider blade like an axe.

[wolflance]

There's the Chui or bonbori, which is essentially a mace, but from looking at various designs, it's not intended to be an anti-armour weapon (no ridges to focus the force from a blow to defeat armour).

http://www.china-watching.com/1303304211.jpg

I think it's a round bar mace that's used by Shu Lien against Jen in the semi-climatic fight of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (https://youtu.be/mClOxgyWLs8?t=157) (a nice detail is that the weapon appears to be made of brass to make it heavier than an equivalent iron or steel weapon, which was known to happen).

http://www.ashokaarts.com/img/product_images/image/detail/chinese-sword-or-bar-mace-weapon-3-3844.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/P8t5f.jpg

That said, I am dubious of the battlefield use of the weapons, or whether they were solely used by kung fu martial artists.

It sounds like your friend is using the typical RPG inaccuracy of 'blunt weapons beats armour' or is more interested in duelling - if that's the level of detail she wants, then just pick any of the blunt 18 weapons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighteen_Arms_of_Wushu).

Edit: A bit more digging has found that the bar mace was also a 14th Century Italian weapon, although it never spread beyond the period or area:

http://therionarms.com/reenact/therionarms_c1189_original3.jpg
http://therionarms.com/reenact/therionarms_c1189_original1.jpg

It looks like hitting people with what is effectively a glorified fence post has a long and illustrious history with broad cross cultural appeal. :smallbiggrin:
Although Chinese mace does not (usually) have flanges/ridges etc, it is definitely intended to be a anti-armor weapon. (They don't have plate armor anyway).

There are two versions of so-called Chinese "bar mace". Late Qing Dynasty bar maces are essentially souped-up police batons, while earlier, military-grade bar maces are beefier anti-armor weapons (but not as insane as the Crouching Tiger movie depiction).

Unlike the "Italian" bar mace, these are balanced more like a sword (i.e. center of balance closer to the grip) and thus are considerably more agile. It can be used like a clumsier estoc as well.

Both weapons (mace and bar mace) are common military weapons in the past.

[Brother Oni]

What are the basic "simple verbs" of weapons? I'm talking about the ways that any particular weapon might deal damage to an opponent summarized in very simple verb forms: "I <Verb> with my <Weapon>."

How much granularity do you want? Sabres can be designed to draw-cut (causing slashes by placing the weapon next to the target and pulling towards the wielder) or push-cut (the same, except pushing away the wielder), but both fall under 'slash'. I think it's also a bit of a stretch to put reverse sword techniques under 'bash' as that's your sole anti-armour technique (I'm not sure you can really bash with the anti-armour spike of warhammers and the like).

I'd also take dismemberment out of 'slash' and put it into 'chop' - both butchers and headsmen use the same sort of motion to remove body parts.

I'd add 'impale' - this differs from 'stab' as you intend to leave your weapon in the target to either restrain or cause additional damage (boar spears for example); it also covers typical use of anti-cavalry pikes/spears, javelins and other thrown spears.

How modern do you want it? Non-projectile electroshock weapons (hand held tasers) are technically melee weapons and don't fall into any of the suggested categories.


Although Chinese mace does not (usually) have flanges/ridges etc, it is definitely intended to be a anti-armor weapon. (They don't have plate armor anyway).

Interesting - do you have any examples or information on its performance against lamellar or mountain pattern armour?

Outside of video games (Dynasty Warriors mainly) and fictional media (one of the gods in Uproar in Heaven, Shampoo from Ranma 1/2), I've not seen any mention of Chinese maces - do you have any examples of its historical use?

[Carl]

Not strictly a weapons or armour question, but like a number of other things it falls into those odd side history things this thread often deals in.

I suspect Mike_G will be best able to answer it since as i recall he's the resident thread medic.

It relates specifically to human branding and burns. The problem is like many of my "big" details in worldbuilding it came from snap flashes of a dream. Dreams can be great inspiration but somtimes they can fall way of reality.

The specific problem here is the way the dream displayed the results dosen;t really match up at all with any image i've ever seen of a burn, but of course the human body can heal in a lot of ways and it may be that the human body can heal burns differently to what i've seen.

The specific broad details of the scenario are related to slavery in my white wizard setting. Whilst it's pretty much one of the most reviled thing a mage can do, they can using magic place markings on someone that can be used to turn them effectively into a slave as it allows the creator to inflict intense pain or kill the slave at a whim. Normally a small tattoo is used, though anything that leaves a permanent mark on the body will do, but a much larger more intricate design that completely surrounds a body part can allow the creator to literally take control of that body part.

In the case in question the person creating it is being particularly nasty and burned the necessary symbology over most of his victims body, both for the extremely painful method of applying, and because if somthing should happen to him and she survived the burns unlike a tattoo cannot be removed. The problem is as noted i'm not sure it would really work for such a detailed intricate design, or that it would discolour or texture in the way the snapflash displayed it, which was as a blackened depression, (sort of like shallow etching), in the skin. But just about every burn i've ever seen imagery of has healed as a randomly lumpy flesh coloured plastic looking mess. The colour may be subject to contaminants as i know it's possible with some art objects to burn a dye into the object, but i've no idea if that even works with human skin and flesh.

Given the use of magic you can assume infection wouldn't be the issue it usually is.

[wolflance]

Interesting - do you have any examples or information on its performance against lamellar or mountain pattern armour?

Outside of video games (Dynasty Warriors mainly) and fictional media (one of the gods in Uproar in Heaven, Shampoo from Ranma 1/2), I've not seen any mention of Chinese maces - do you have any examples of its historical use?
No one appear to be testing a mace against lamellar armor, except maybe this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi35vJVQrRc) (no a serious test in any way) so I don't know how well the armor protects against blunt strikes. Given that lamellar armor is usually semi-rigid, I'd say better than mail, but worse than plate.

Mentions/depictions of mace can be found in many Chinese sources - most visual depictions tend to be either ceremonial or fictional, but archaeological finds (there are many) point to actual usage as serious weapon. Many military treatises (Tang to Qing) mention them, particularly as cavalry weapon, and some military reformers opted to replace mace with other weapons, indicating that it was quite common.

The Later Jin (predecessor of Manchu Qing) had a special division that's entirely made up of mace-wielding troops (literally called "iron mace army"), and mace was one of the standard issue 18th century Green Standard Army equipment.


Chinese "bar mace" was considered a symbol of justice and impartiality, so it was a weapon of high status (bonus point for being similar to a sword). While even less common than the ordinary mace, it was nevertheless fielded in some numbers (particularly by generals). Quite a lot of "bar maces" are modified into a handcannon as well.

One Korean source mentions that Ming cavalry armed with "bar mace" defeated the Japanese at Battle of Jiksan (1597), although it's unknown whether they described the event in a literal sense, or figuratively.

I personally think very highly of the Chinese "bar mace" as a weapon. It may not hit as hard as a normal mace (probably), but it swings much faster, has a reach advantage over normal mace, and fairly newbie-friendly.




======UNRELATED QUESTION======
For these questions, let's assume a plate armored knight with heavy, couched charge-optimized lance.

1) Why knights never parry each other's lances in (modern?) jousting match?
2) Did they parry (smash aside etc) other knight's charging lance during a real battle?
3) Did infantrymen attempted to parry a charging knight's lance?
4) Did knights poked at other knight's mount instead of the rider, during a charge?

[Jormengand]

It's a ridiculously broad question and non-military inventions have an equally important effect (writing for example or development of a dedicated warrior caste) on cultural and societal development.

I think going to the level of granularity that is typical for this thread would be impractical for a playable game. Have you considered borrowing from existing systems like GURPS (http://gurps.wikia.com/wiki/Tech_Level) or the Civilisation franchise tech tree?

The trouble with the GURPS tech levels is that even I know that they're conflating a lot of technology (from 600-1450 is quite a lot of technological advancement), but I don't really know how to do the breakpoints more sensibly. There must be some detailed explanations of how military technology has evolved; this seemed like the obvious place to see if anyone knew of any.

[Deepbluediver]

There must be some detailed explanations of how military technology has evolved; this seemed like the obvious place to see if anyone knew of any.
From what I've read, there's not precise linear progression, at least not one that can be condensed into a reasonable length for a forum post. Military tactics evolved in fits and starts, particularly since some groups kept invading others and you got a lot of cultural mixing. In the time periods you mentioned, you had large groups that were still in the stone age, those that had learned to refine soft metals (gold & copper), iron-age cultures, and groups that were producing decent steal.

If you really care about being real-world accurate in your game (personally, I wouldn't) then I think you're going to have to do your own historical research and decide at what level of detail you want to stop.


Edit: We've discussed pricing before because I asked a question related to that, and the short answer is that it's really hard to translate old-timey currency into modern equivalents. The best you can really do is looking up how long it might have taken to forge certain types of weapons, and then making some estimates about what a skilled laborer/artisan might have earned for working for that length of time. Think of where certain crafts fit into society today and extrapolate backwards from there.

Edit2: One thing these threads have helped me realize is that gunpowder came into play much earlier than I had thought. Europeans might have gotten their first taste of it during the Mongolian invasions of the 1200's, and it played a large part in the conflicts between the Ottoman empire and various Christian groups in and around the Mediterranean for much of the second millennia. So you need to throw in a breakdown of firearms technology as well, adding yet another layer of complexity to any analysis.

[snowblizz]

Ehm, to be fair, once plate armour could be heat treated the gaps are pretty much the way to damage anything underneath short of crushing them or by hitting the joints with blunt force.
Not at all. Blunt force is the worst you cantry really. Though it should be noted a very good suit of armour is liable to become restrictive to movement or restrict you if you get dents in the armourplates, e.g. in the segemented parts.


so, in armour fighting a rondel dagger is pretty much THE way to actually get to do some damage to armoured opponents.
No, no it isn't. THE way to damage armoured opponents (excluding gunpowder and powerful crossbows) is really with a pollaxe or similar beaked weapon. A rondel dagger is a coupe de grace weapon, not a main "armour piercer".


Plate armour was expensive as hell, but all that money invested was ultimately worth it as a well made suit of armour really protected you against anything that did not get in between the gaps. Again, no it wasn't. Plate armour wasn't necessarily cheap but it was well within the reach of anyone who was geniunely expected to do serious fighting. A weeks-months pay for a farmer/craftman about. An example usually brought out is the Milanese being able to re-equip an army of 3000 in full whiteplate in a week. The numbers aren't precisely accurate but the ratio of units to time is. The centres of armourproduction could churn out thousands of sets in an astonishingly short period of time to very competitive prices.


That is, until the invention of gunpowder and rifling made sure that even plate wasn't enough protection anymore.
That's not really correct either. Plenty of weapons could pierce plate. Genuinely it's mainly a matter of how close you needed to be. Arguably artillery may have been the eventual deciding factor because now no armour at any range helped you anymore, G certainly think so. I'm willing to share the blame on other factors too. Fact is plate didn't even become common until gunpowder weapons (including cannons) was getting widely deployed. Obviously without clear breakpoints it's hard to say that one thing or another caused the decline of a third.
There's a solid argument to be made that gunpowder pushed the development of plate instead of the former invalidating the latter. Similarly rifling is pretty incidental in the whole matter. It co-existed with plate for centuries (mostly in one of custom weapons) before being widely adopted due to improved ability to mass manufacture with greater precision and new types of ammo helping with the windage problem. By this time plate armour had been out of fashion for centuries.


hardened and tempered steel is simultaneously hard enough to counter piercing weapons and tough enough to not shatter in the impact of a club or hammer. One of the best inventions of man in (post-) medieval warfare.It may be great but it's not as magical as you make it be. Fact is hardened tempered steel could and was shot, bashed and pierced through plenty enough. But it was effective enough in most cases. Not all cases of platearmour was created equally either, there were better or worse instances. For every instance of the lord whose name I can't recall who was killed in the English Civil War in a battle after falling of his horse and could only be dispatched by a pointblank pistolshot under the visor* there are those where masses perished from cannon or melee, armour be damned. That platearmour could only be gone around and not through is as much a myth as just how easy armour in movies tend to be to part.

*Going to go look up that quote because Charles I made a great quip about the invulnerability of said lord.





======UNRELATED QUESTION======
For these questions, let's assume a plate armored knight with heavy, couched charge-optimized lance.

1) Why knights never parry each other's lances in (modern?) jousting match?
2) Did they parry (smash aside etc) other knight's charging lance during a real battle?
3) Did infantrymen attempted to parry a charging knight's lance?
4) Did knights poked at other knight's mount instead of the rider, during a charge?
1) It's not very easy to do. Also, how do you imagine you parry a lance? Though I could swear I've read about people twithcing an opposing lance just a bit so it doesn't get a solid hit. But the lance is a long unwieldy thing, anything you do might mean your own lance isn't properly aligned either. And you're not supposed to. Jousting is a sport with oodles of rules to make it safe-ish for both sides as you clearly want to survive the match. In fact you get points for breaking your lance on the enemy (it looks cool). You absolutely do not want lances going uncontrollably somewhere.
2) I honestly don't think they did. In battle a knight wouldn't charge each other with lances as they do in jousting anyway. Knights with lances are there to scatter infantry formations.
3) That be a very very bad idea I suspect. Because how exactly do you parry it and not get run over by the horse and knight? It's not a conincidence anti-cavalry usually meant poke them from so far they can't get at you.
4) Not to my knowldge no, could probably be done, but I'm not sure you survive putting the lance into the chest of an opponents horse, assuming it's unarmoured, means you are risking getting you arm wrenched off in the process. Again, knights didn't fight on the battlefield in the same ways as in jousts. I'm not even sure to what extent you'd try and kill the opponent's horse. Horses were super expensive even for knights and same as you wanted everyone to respect the idea of ransoming you'd want people not to randomly kill your horse.

Hoping someone more knowledgeable in such matters chime in though.:smallsmile:
I'm just a placeholder for a real expert.:smallwink:

[Haighus]

Not strictly a weapons or armour question, but like a number of other things it falls into those odd side history things this thread often deals in.

I suspect Mike_G will be best able to answer it since as i recall he's the resident thread medic.

It relates specifically to human branding and burns. The problem is like many of my "big" details in worldbuilding it came from snap flashes of a dream. Dreams can be great inspiration but somtimes they can fall way of reality.

The specific problem here is the way the dream displayed the results dosen;t really match up at all with any image i've ever seen of a burn, but of course the human body can heal in a lot of ways and it may be that the human body can heal burns differently to what i've seen.

The specific broad details of the scenario are related to slavery in my white wizard setting. Whilst it's pretty much one of the most reviled thing a mage can do, they can using magic place markings on someone that can be used to turn them effectively into a slave as it allows the creator to inflict intense pain or kill the slave at a whim. Normally a small tattoo is used, though anything that leaves a permanent mark on the body will do, but a much larger more intricate design that completely surrounds a body part can allow the creator to literally take control of that body part.

In the case in question the person creating it is being particularly nasty and burned the necessary symbology over most of his victims body, both for the extremely painful method of applying, and because if somthing should happen to him and she survived the burns unlike a tattoo cannot be removed. The problem is as noted i'm not sure it would really work for such a detailed intricate design, or that it would discolour or texture in the way the snapflash displayed it, which was as a blackened depression, (sort of like shallow etching), in the skin. But just about every burn i've ever seen imagery of has healed as a randomly lumpy flesh coloured plastic looking mess. The colour may be subject to contaminants as i know it's possible with some art objects to burn a dye into the object, but i've no idea if that even works with human skin and flesh.

Given the use of magic you can assume infection wouldn't be the issue it usually is.
The biggest short term issue is that burns over more than about 30% of the body have systemic effects, not just local ones. Infection is a risk, but the most immediate risk is that such widespread burns cause a massive release of inflammatory mediators into systemic circulation that the victim goes into distributive shock*. This is similar to anaphylactic shock- both are caused by systemic inflammation. In a pre-modern medicine setting, shock is essentially fatal without adrenaline, IV fluids and blood transfusions.

If they somehow survive that, dehydration is also a major issue. Fresh burns lose fluid rapidly as the skin loses its barrier function, and even healed burns are usually very dry due to the loss of glands in the skin. Dry skin is a worse barrier and prone go fluid loss and infection.

In terms of how the skin looks after healing, I am not sure. However, scar tissue usually contracts as it heals, which leads to a lot of the deformity in large wounds and burns. Good physio can reduce this, and also procedures to keep the skin open and prevent contraction. We are into the realms of plastic surgery now though.

Of course, depending on the capabilities of the available magic, you could handwave any of this.


*For clarity, shock in this case refers to hypovolaemic shock, essentially low circulating blood volume for a variety of reasons. Not the common term of shock to refer to psychological shock

[Berenger]

======UNRELATED QUESTION======
For these questions, let's assume a plate armored knight with heavy, couched charge-optimized lance.

1) Why knights never parry each other's lances in (modern?) jousting match?
2) Did they parry (smash aside etc) other knight's charging lance during a real battle?

I understand that the shield in the left hand is used to "parry" (deflect) the enemy lance. If you are willing to sacrifice your whole offensive capability for a slightly better defense, why do you charge the enemy in the first place?

[Vinyadan]

Talking anti-armour, there also are the goedendag and the plançon à picot.

[Mike_G]

Not strictly a weapons or armour question, but like a number of other things it falls into those odd side history things this thread often deals in.

I suspect Mike_G will be best able to answer it since as i recall he's the resident thread medic.

It relates specifically to human branding and burns. The problem is like many of my "big" details in worldbuilding it came from snap flashes of a dream. Dreams can be great inspiration but somtimes they can fall way of reality.

The specific problem here is the way the dream displayed the results dosen;t really match up at all with any image i've ever seen of a burn, but of course the human body can heal in a lot of ways and it may be that the human body can heal burns differently to what i've seen.

The specific broad details of the scenario are related to slavery in my white wizard setting. Whilst it's pretty much one of the most reviled thing a mage can do, they can using magic place markings on someone that can be used to turn them effectively into a slave as it allows the creator to inflict intense pain or kill the slave at a whim. Normally a small tattoo is used, though anything that leaves a permanent mark on the body will do, but a much larger more intricate design that completely surrounds a body part can allow the creator to literally take control of that body part.

In the case in question the person creating it is being particularly nasty and burned the necessary symbology over most of his victims body, both for the extremely painful method of applying, and because if somthing should happen to him and she survived the burns unlike a tattoo cannot be removed. The problem is as noted i'm not sure it would really work for such a detailed intricate design, or that it would discolour or texture in the way the snapflash displayed it, which was as a blackened depression, (sort of like shallow etching), in the skin. But just about every burn i've ever seen imagery of has healed as a randomly lumpy flesh coloured plastic looking mess. The colour may be subject to contaminants as i know it's possible with some art objects to burn a dye into the object, but i've no idea if that even works with human skin and flesh.

Given the use of magic you can assume infection wouldn't be the issue it usually is.

Haighus covered it pretty well.

Significant burns are very very serious, because they destroy big areas of skin, which is a much more important organ than most people think. Losing the ability to keep your tissue from drying out, to keep out bacteria, and to keep you from dying of hypothermia are serious and life threatening. So large areas of full thickness burns are very often fatal. They also heal oddly. You probably can;t control a brun like yiou coudl a tattoo. Brands are a thing, but tend to be small (relatively)m and suimple designs.

Burned skin also loses its elasticity, so swelling beneath the burn puts pressure on the tissues inside as the skin can't stretch. This often requires an escharotomy, which is cutting the burned skin to allow swelling to go somewhere. And it's nasty.

The other thing is that full thickness burns don't hurt any more since the sensory nerves are destroyed. Which is bad because you don't know when you re-injure it, but deson't work well for a punishment type spell.

The idea of a magic symbol that works like a brand but can be "re-activated" to burn you more is interesting for an evil mage. I'd say rely on Rule of Cool and don't try to get too close to reality, because burns don't really work the way you want them to.

[Mike_G]

The trouble with the GURPS tech levels is that even I know that they're conflating a lot of technology (from 600-1450 is quite a lot of technological advancement), but I don't really know how to do the breakpoints more sensibly. There must be some detailed explanations of how military technology has evolved; this seemed like the obvious place to see if anyone knew of any.

Everybody used spears and clubs for ever. Pretty much everybody used bows. Everybody had daggers, and everybody who could work metal had swords.

Big tech breakthroughs would be

Stone age -wooden and stone weapons, some hide or feathered armor. Think Aztecs as the pinnacle

Bronze age - bronze weapons and armor give a big advantage over stone age stuff, and the civilization required to smelt bronze means you need an organized society.

Iron age- more widespread availibility of metal weapons and armor. This morphs into the invention of steel, where you can get better weapons, and longer swords that are still strong and flexible enough to use.

Later medieval Armor becomes cheaper and easier to make during this period. You may want to break this up to a few categories like swords are rare and mail is a thing to swords are common and cheap and plate is a thing, and more powerful crossbows are a thing.

Early gunpowder. Things like handgonnes, up to matchlocks. Slow to load, the complexity of keeping a lit match and so on. How fine you want to slice the gun tech is up to you, but more reliable ignition systems from wheel locks to flintlocks to percussion locks all were used with basic muzzle loading guns, so rate of fire remains pretty low. Artillery develops along the same lines, and armor gradually becomes less common, but doesn't really go away.

Then you get to metallic cartridge firearms in the second half of the 19th century, which is a big leap forward. Guns are much more reliable, and breech loaders followed by magazine weapons make loading and firing a lot faster. This trend continues through the early 20th century when you get actual machine guns and submachineguns. Gun tech beyond that is just baby steps really. A Colt M1911 or Tommy gun from a century ago is still competitive with modern firearms. This period starts with almost no armor and then we have the re-introduction of body armor as balistic cloth becomes a thing.

This is a very very basic idea of how I'd break stuff up.

You have long periods of slow advances and short periods of huge leaps, so going by centuries isn't as good as identifying specific advances and pegging tech level to those.

[Deepbluediver]

Big tech breakthroughs would be
To throw one more in there- the transition from using chariots to mounted cavalry. Prior to the Bronze Age Collapse (https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_collapse), most of the dominant middle eastern and Mediterranean empires used large chariot detachments in battle. A chariot isn't as simple as most people think either- there were some pictures and discussion in the last iteration of this thread about super light-weight war chariots that looked more like a modern sulky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harness_racing) than than the big, heavy things you see in most movies. They were technologically advanced, tough to build and required lots of training to use right, in other words, they were the major super-weapon of their day.

Post collapse, the civilizations that took the place of the Babylonians and Assyrians lived in more mountainous terrain and didn't use chariots as much, and by the time you got around to empires of sufficient size to support advanced weaponry, horse-breeding had created animals more suited to carrying a fully-armored soldier, rendering chariots more and more obsolete.*

In this case the advance in military technology was more biological than metallurgical- keep stuff like that in mind, too.



*that's the 5-minute version; I could be misinformed about some facts or the exact timing

[rrgg]

======UNRELATED QUESTION======
For these questions, let's assume a plate armored knight with heavy, couched charge-optimized lance.

1) Why knights never parry each other's lances in (modern?) jousting match?
2) Did they parry (smash aside etc) other knight's charging lance during a real battle?
3) Did infantrymen attempted to parry a charging knight's lance?
4) Did knights poked at other knight's mount instead of the rider, during a charge?

by the 15th century or so jousting was seen as more or less entirely a matter of skill and technique, where the rider had to know the exact moments to spur his horse, how to place his lance accurately and strongly, and how to keep his posture and balance so that he isn't knocked off his horse.

If you're interested, here's the link to the translation of a book on jousting and horsemanship by a portugese king.

https://archive.org/stream/77154910TheRoyalBookOfJoustingHorsemanshipKnightly Combat/77154910-The-Royal-Book-of-Jousting-Horsemanship-Knightly-Combat#page/n55/mode/2up

He claims that even in combat, the most common reason riders were knocked from their horses was due to poor technique. It is curious that he doesn't seem to cover what to do if your horse gets killed or wounded however.

[Vinyadan]

To make a comparison: the Egyptian chariot in Florence weighs around 24 kg; a modern replica built by a modern engineering company (Stola) with similar materials weighed around 90 kg. The original is made up of at least six different woods, some of which may not come from Egypt, and had to be imported. It was built around 1500-1300 BC, and, like other Egyptian chariots, could carry around 100 kg.

A more sophisticated model was found in Tutankhamon's tomb.


King Tut chariots appear to be the first mechanical systems which combine kinematics, dynamics and lubrication principles. "The bearings are built exploiting the modern principle of a hard material against a soft material, and by applying animal fat between the surfaces. The grease reduces friction and increases running duration," said Rovetta When set in motion, immediately after initial start-up, the friction between the wood of the bearing, the grease and the wood of the wheel pivot heat the grease. The grease then becomes partially fluid and ensures a dynamic support. Sandor also noted the importance of the axle being located at the back of the body and D-bar "The construction provides for the softest ride. Not all chariot makers understood this concept," Sandor said. Indeed, Greek, Roman and Celtic chariots normally had the axle at about the center of the body, making for a harsher ride. "On the whole, the Tut chariot is a marvel of optimized design," Sandor said.

More here: https://www.seeker.com/king-tuts-chariots-ferraris-of-ancient-egypt-1766183355.html

In general, there are many poems exalting the skill of chariot makers. There is one in Vedic literature, and, much later, there is one by Hesiod, who observes that only a fool could think of personally building something as complex as a chariot, since it is made by hundreds of different parts. There also is a part in the Iliad in which Diomedes thinks of carrying his own chariot over his head; apparently, this was really occasionally done, as it can be seen in bronze age representations that I have personally not seen.

[Mr Beer]

To make a comparison: the Egyptian chariot in Florence weighs around 24 kg; a modern replica built by a modern engineering company (Stola) with similar materials weighed around 90 kg.

<snip>

There also is a part in the Iliad in which Diomedes thinks of carrying his own chariot over his head; apparently, this was really occasionally done, as it can be seen in bronze age representations that I have personally not seen.

With a weight of 24kg this could reasonably be achieved for short distances as well...it passes a common sense litmus test. In fact anyone who owned such a fabulous device might well be tempted to lift it overhead at least once just because they can.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Not all chariot makers understood this concept," Sandor said. Indeed, Greek, Roman and Celtic chariots normally had the axle at about the center of the body, making for a harsher ride. "On the whole, the Tut chariot is a marvel of optimized design," Sandor said.

As a counterpoint: placing the axles at the center of the body allowed for larger loads, since the horses doing less lifting can do more pulling instead. This is why the Hittites had three man chariots while the Egyptians had two people on theirs. Both have their pros and cons.

[Carl]

Thanks to both of you for the answers, whilst given certain factors your answers boil down to "doesn't work", (which i suspected TBH), i'll fll in some questions/thoughts that were in your answers.

I haven't decided if the magic can outright speed up a metabolism beyond the normal peak physical limits. But it is able to fully replace the normal nutrient/oxygen/produced byproduct purging/e.t.c. needs which may amount to virtually the same thing. As an example when magic users need to travel long distances quickly they can infuse magic into the horses allowing the horse to operate at anaerobic exercise levels of exertion indefinitely by replacing the need for glucose, oxygen, CO2 removal, e.t.c. with magical energy to replace the energy consumption and chemical reactions of the muscles, (whilst i have not gone into that depth previously the simplest answer is that the magic is reversing the chemical processes involved and feeding the result back into the muscles without the waste products every leaving).

However, they can also do advanced healing which if i'm looking at this as some kind of direct enhancement of the bodies natural healing and/or infection fighting abilities probably does require beyond even theoretical maximum healing rates. At the same time the magic is explicitly grounded so to speak. A healer can't make someone who's had an arm cut off grow a new one, but they could make it heal to a typical amputee style stump right there on the battlefield or possibly under the right circumstances push the bodies healing processes such that they can reattach the limb just by properly lining the thing up, (somthing the magic will also help them with).

The most common biological application, (and probably the biggest culturally), is using this to give crops the equivalent of perfect 224 hour nutrition and sunlight with pest, disease and predator factors eliminated allowing the crops to be grown at an extreme rate, which has major effects on their crop yields and crop growth times leading to hugely improved food production and consequential large increases in sustainable population.

On the other hand the person doing the branding since he's male is a gold wizard and healing isn't a natural gold wizard ability, (everyone gains one instinct method of applying their amgic when they come into their power, anything else has to be learnt and certain types of magic are specific to either gold or white wizards, (male an female magic users respectively)). Whilst learnt magic isn't necessarily worse, it requires active concentration and focus which makes it very difficult to be as good as a natural, so only those who really put the effort in get to be that good.

The main thing to bear in mind is that whilst the magic functions as a completely seperate from of energy source that can be projected and manipulated by magic users, it;s effects in the real world are rooted in using the energy to manipulate the laws of physics and the energy conversion is consistent. As a series of examples.

Whilst even the weakest gold wizard has more power potential than this if the wizard can heat 500 liters, (=500kg), of water by 10 degrees kelvin before exhausting his magic, he could also cool it by 10 degrees kelvin, and if he projected a shield against arrows the maximum kinetic energy of arrows he could stop would be the same as the energy involved in cooling or heating the water, (assuming no phase state changes approx 21 megajoules, (equivalent to roughly 6355 M80 FMJ 7.62mm NATO rounds at muzzle velocity)).

However magic can directly negate magic in an equivalent energy exchange, negating the energy of the spell before the effect occurs.

Also the tattoos don't work by burning later-on on-command, i hadn't thought about the specifics, but since it allows the creator to inflict nonspecific extreme pain it's probably working as a mass stimulation of the pain nerve endings. And the larger scale direct control form would therefore work by replacing the persons naturally generated nerve impulses with whatever the creator wants. But because of the complexity of precisely controlling an entire nervous system it needs a pre created form to work with, sort of like a mold for the power, but one that can be modified to some degree by intent transmitted with the power. I'd assume the need to cover the entire body part in question with this patterning comes from the complexity involved and possibly proximity required. Note when i say patterning i was thinking somthing more like these tattoos (https://images.tenplay.com.au/~/media/TV%20Shows/NCIS%20LA/Episodics/Season%205%20Episode%2015%20and%2016/NCISLA_Tuhon_0.jpg). Not solid inking as on many tattoos.

Hope that answers all the questions you seemed to be raising about what the magic could do. But as i said the answer was pretty much "doesn't work". Which as i said i suspected, thats the issue with dream snap flashes, translating them to reality doesn't allways work well.

[wolflance]

I understand that the shield in the left hand is used to "parry" (deflect) the enemy lance. If you are willing to sacrifice your whole offensive capability for a slightly better defense, why do you charge the enemy in the first place?
I can sort of understand if it is jousting, but, AFAIK knights stopped using shield during this period.

[Brother Oni]

How fine you want to slice the gun tech is up to you, but more reliable ignition systems from wheel locks to flintlocks to percussion locks all were used with basic muzzle loading guns, so rate of fire remains pretty low. Artillery develops along the same lines, and armor gradually becomes less common, but doesn't really go away.

Then you get to metallic cartridge firearms in the second half of the 19th century, which is a big leap forward. Guns are much more reliable, and breech loaders followed by magazine weapons make loading and firing a lot faster.

If we're cutting it even finer, the advent of pre-measured charges of powder dramatically improved the rate of fire and performance consistency of firearms. This started with simple wooden pots (known as the 12 Apostles during the ECW, since musketeers typically carried 12 of them in a bandolier when they went into battle) but further developed into paper cartridges (which relies on the development of paper production to make it sufficiently cheap enough for such a disposable use).

Separately, you also have the development of corned powder improving the consistency of gunpowder burn rate and performance.

After that it's the development of the contact explosive mercury fulminate which lead to percussion caps and the later development of metallic cartridges as Mike_G mentioned.

During the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, traditional gunpowder (black powder) was replaced by smokeless powders, which can be single base (mainly nitrocellulose), dual base (nitrocellulose/nitroglycerin) or triple base for artillery shells (nitrocellulose/nitroglycerin/nitroguanidine). These days, the main propellant is a nitroguanidine/RDX type explosive.

These powders all have different performance characteristics, but I'm not sure whether you want to model down to that level of detail.

[Carl]

If we're cutting it even finer, the advent of pre-measured charges of powder dramatically improved the rate of fire and performance consistency of firearms. This started with simple wooden pots (known as the 12 Apostles during the ECW, since musketeers typically carried 12 of them in a bandolier when they went into battle) but further developed into paper cartridges (which relies on the development of paper production to make it sufficiently cheap enough for such a disposable use).

Separately, you also have the development of corned powder improving the consistency of gunpowder burn rate and performance.

After that it's the development of the contact explosive mercury fulminate which lead to percussion caps and the later development of metallic cartridges as Mike_G mentioned.

During the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, traditional gunpowder (black powder) was replaced by smokeless powders, which can be single base (mainly nitrocellulose), dual base (nitrocellulose/nitroglycerin) or triple base for artillery shells (nitrocellulose/nitroglycerin/nitroguanidine). These days, the main propellant is a nitroguanidine/RDX type explosive.

These powders all have different performance characteristics, but I'm not sure whether you want to model down to that level of detail.


Also how the stuff is cast, (if it's a cast propellent), has a serious effect too. During WW1 the british 18" naval gun Mk I had serious issues with production of appropriate propellants due to an inability to cast a sufficiently slow burning cordite cast.

[Deepbluediver]

As a counterpoint: placing the axles at the center of the body allowed for larger loads, since the horses doing less lifting can do more pulling instead. This is why the Hittites had three man chariots while the Egyptians had two people on theirs. Both have their pros and cons.
Interesting- I hadn't considered that.

Most of the depictions I see of chariots show them being drawn by a pair (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/66/08/b4/6608b44b87ac37969dc0b7a2d56283b6.jpg) of horses (http://www.ancientegyptianfacts.com/AncientEgyptianPictures/Ancient-Egyptian-Chariots-2.jpg), except for maybe certain Roman chariot races (http://www.italymagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/624xauto/public/feature-story/leader/benhur.jpg?itok=t3lFZmjs).

Do you happen to know if it's worth it to add more horses to a chariot during a battle to increase speed/endurance/carrying-capacity/etc or do the diminishing returns discourage that sort of thing?

[ExLibrisMortis]

Do you happen to know if it's worth it to add more horses to a chariot during a battle to increase speed/endurance/carrying-capacity/etc or do the diminishing returns discourage that sort of thing?
I'm taking a guess here, but I think the balance between the complexity of steering and transferring that pulling power into the chariot becomes much greater as you add additional horses, whereas your top speed doesn't increase too much. Four horses side-by-side probably don't corner too well, and limit forward sight; if you put them behind one another, you need some really kick-ass reins to control the front pair. Switching in some fresh horses, though, is probably a good idea during longer engagements.

[Martin Greywolf]

On jousting

Parrying a lance with your own lance when you're both charging is a very, very bad idea. Lances are long and hard to move around once you remove them from that very small cone right in front of you, and something that happens to people even without trying to parry is the lance going sideways (at the right angle with the direction you're going) and basically giving themselves a lariat. This can do any number of things, from just wrenching the lance out of your hand, throwing you off the saddle all the way up to breaking your arm.

Then there's the problem of timing. Let's say both horses are going 40 km/h (~11 m/s), and you have 4 metres of lance to work with before you get hit. That means you have to parry in the space of 180 milliseconds. Not just make a hit, make a hit and move the lance. For comparision, a longsword strike takes about 250 ms.

So, provided you don't have a shield, your best defence is to find good purchase with your own lance, that way your opponent will get unhorsed and it will throw off his lance point. Especially since hitting a specific spot without late plate armors deflecting the lance point is really, really hard.

To sum up, trying to parry a lance with a lance will likely get you hurt and will probably not work, while landing a good hit with your own lance will maybe work and you have your armor if it doesn't.

That's not to say parrying lances was never done, it was, but the techniques described for it assume you have a shorter weapon (sword, short lance) nad that you're not moving. Fiore has some of these described at the end of Fior di Battaglia:


http://wiktenauer.com/images/thumb/9/9e/Pisani-Dossi_MS_29a-b.png/400px-Pisani-Dossi_MS_29a-b.png


I carry my lance in the guard Boar’s Tooth, because I am well-armoured and have a shorter lance than my opponent. My intention is to beat his lance offline as I raise mine diagonally. And this will result in our lances crossing each other at about an arm’s length from the point. My lance however will then run into his body, while his will pass offline far from me. And that is how this is done.



This only applies to Euroean jousting, situation may have been different e.g. in Iran/Persia, where lances were held in two hands, but I'm only beginning to research that part of the world.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Interesting- I hadn't considered that.

Most of the depictions I see of chariots show them being drawn by a pair (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/66/08/b4/6608b44b87ac37969dc0b7a2d56283b6.jpg) of horses (http://www.ancientegyptianfacts.com/AncientEgyptianPictures/Ancient-Egyptian-Chariots-2.jpg), except for maybe certain Roman chariot races (http://www.italymagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/624xauto/public/feature-story/leader/benhur.jpg?itok=t3lFZmjs).

Do you happen to know if it's worth it to add more horses to a chariot during a battle to increase speed/endurance/carrying-capacity/etc or do the diminishing returns discourage that sort of thing?

I agree with ExLibrisMortis on this one. As far as I know all battlefield chariots used two horses, even with the smaller horses of the bronze age that made chariots a better option for heavy cavalry than riding a horse to begin with. 4 horses was the standard in many of the later Greek/Roman/Byzantine races, but that seems to have been more of a matter of creating spectacle and athletes showing off their skills. In the closed environment of a race track, with few obstacles and no weapons firing around you it's quite possibly even faster than two horses as well. (If it was slower it would be kind of a lame way of adding spectacle.) On occasions these athletes would even ride with 8 or some other ridiculously large number of horses as a demonstration or during special races. But for battles the consensus seems to have been that two horses is the right amount. A single horse is not strong enough, and if you have four you're better off just making two chariots or maybe keeping some horses as fresh spares. As far as I'm aware this is even true for the chariots of the kings and generals and such themselves: they all or at least mostly used two horses.



And as for the difference between two and three man chariots. They fought at least ones, during the battle of Kadesh.
(I made a bit of an infographic about it to win a game some time back, so I'm just going to show it off:
https://us.v-cdn.net/6029970/uploads/editor/rc/pe2cii8g2dwq.jpg)

The battle was mostly a draw, as far as we can tell (it doesn't help that we're mostly going by Egyptian sources, and those are biased enough to make the press of present day dictatorial states blush). But as far as the chariots go it does seem like the Egyptian ones survived that battle in (much) greater numbers. That doesn't necessarily say a lot, as the Hittite chariots engaged the Egyptian infantry before the Egyptian chariots arrived, so they had a longer battle. But the two man setup definitely wasn't completely outclassed by the three man teams. And the loss of much of their chariot force was one of the main reasons why the Hittites couldn't chase after the retreating Egyptian army or go for a good counter campaign in the years after the battle.

[Deepbluediver]

I'm taking a guess here, but I think the balance between the complexity of steering and transferring that pulling power into the chariot becomes much greater as you add additional horses, whereas your top speed doesn't increase too much. Four horses side-by-side probably don't corner too well, and limit forward sight; if you put them behind one another, you need some really kick-ass reins to control the front pair. Switching in some fresh horses, though, is probably a good idea during longer engagements.
Sounds reasonable- I've been horseback riding once or twice and getting even one horse to turn it's head when it doesn't want to can be a challenge.



I made a bit of an infographic about it to win a game some time back, so I'm just going to show it off:
https://us.v-cdn.net/6029970/uploads/editor/rc/pe2cii8g2dwq.jpg
OH SURE, the Egyptians could steer with their waist and fight at the same time, but when I steer with my knees while drinking coffee and eating my McMuffinTM the cops call it "dangerous" and "reckless driving"! :smalltongue:

[Lvl 2 Expert]

OH SURE, the Egyptians could steer with their waist and fight at the same time, but when I steer with my knees while drinking coffee and eating my McMuffinTM the cops call it "dangerous" and "reckless driving"! :smalltongue:
.....
:biggrin:

[Mendicant]

How long did pitched battles typically take prior to the advent of massive Napoleonic-era armies with significant artillery?

I'm specifically thinking about decent-sized to major battles involving at least 1000 soldiers per side, and specifically wondering about the duration of intense combat rather than the entirety of deployment, maneuvering, skirmishing and retreating that might bookend the physical combat.

[Socratov]

This is a really open-ended question, but...

I need to know what the commonly-used weapons and armour were, everywhere, over the past... oh, let's say 2500 years, what was common when, and how much the prices of these items changed. Does anyone have any links to good explanations of how weapon and armour technology has changed over time (since I doubt anyone can tell me about how weapons have changed and developed over the entire world on their own, but you're welcome to try)

Also, I'm writing a game, and need to make some essentially-arbitrary technology levels. I don't mind having large numbers of them, nor do I mind having them irregularly-spaced, but suggestions on where to put the breakpoints would be great.

So, ehm, replying a bit late, but I'm sure that for between about 1000 AD and 1700 AD you could at least reference the Wiktenhauer wiki (http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Main_Page) and reference the manuscript dates as instances of when weapons were fashionable, en vogue and actually widely used... And yes, that includes Paulus Hektor Mair's instruction in the warfare use of farming implements (really fun to learn and extremely great workouts for your core muscles!).

as for costs try to imagine that farming implements should be able to be bought by peasants, that spears are dirt cheap (little metal, easy to make) that a sword is expensive (and gets more expensive as it gets more intricate and frankly, longer) and that a dagger (or long knife) is an essential tool to have.

[Galloglaich]

I'm sorry it took me a while to reply to this, I was on vacation in Italy for a week... hanging around with some medieval ghosts!


I think you are undervaluing the later pike and shot armies, and dare I say overcompensating for the aspersions normally cast on the medieval period. There are fair few examples of pike manuevering around, e.g. The Swedish army at Breiftenfeld swinging part of the army to establish a new front when their Saxon allies collapsed, that's not dumb static pike compared to trained super medieval pike.

I think you are the one overstating here. I was careful in what I wrote, specifically that in the 17th Century it was considered normal for pikes to operate in a static manner, i.e. to be marched out to a particular spot for example next to the cannon, and then to wait to be attacked. I am not an expert on 17th Century warfare but I believe this is the widely acknowledged reality of the use of pikes in that period (though I'm sure there were exceptions), whereas in the Late Medieval it was much more common for pikes and other infantry to be used on the attack and to perform complex maneuvers in the open field. I can definitely prove the latter if need be.



The older Spanish Tercios were in that sense much closer to the medieval way of fighting in more massive bodies.

Medieval fighting wasn't necessarily done in massive bodies, that is characteristic of just a few specific battles.



The Swiss may have been mroe dynamic but they were also utterly defeated by increased firepower.... How exactly do you define a highly dynamic role? Sure moving en masse to attack with pikes may be highly dynamic but when you get moved down with cannon was it dynamic or dumb? Isn't that basically what defeated the invincible Swiss phalanx?

You seem disturbed by the Swiss phalanx, did they attack you? ;) I guess you are referring to Swiss defeats while fighting as mercenaries like at Biocca where they charged into an entrenched line of cannon. However Swiss mercenaries did not disappear after Pavia, to the contrary they remained successful and highly paid in French and Papal service for centuries after. They didn't always win but they were hardly pushovers and often still contributed to victories, even in the 17th Century.

However when I refer to dynamic Swiss maneuvering in the field, I'm referring less to their employment as mercenaries in the Italian Wars (though they were quite dynamic there as well, they tended to fight in a much simpler and less sophisticated manner) but more to their use in wars directly involving the Confederacy or the city-states within it. Notably the Old Zurich War, the Burgundian wars, the Swabian War and other wars against the Hapsburgs, the wars of the Grey League and the various small wars against France.

I hope you will forgive me if I assume you are unfamiliar with these battles, so I'm going to describe a few of them and what I think is their significance. I could just say "well look at the battles in the wars I mentioned above", but I have the impression you might not believe me. Anyway some of these battles are not that well known in the Western cultural context these days and I think it's more helpful for the thread in general to provide data rather than just argue. I'll stick mostly to the late 14th - 15th Century for a greater emphasis on pike warfare for sake of discussion.

Battle of Sempach, 9 July 1382
Hapsburg - Swiss Wars
1,500 Swiss, mostly from Lucerne, as well as the forest Cantons Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, vs. 4,000 German and Austrians including ~1,500 heavy cavalry plus pikemen led by Duke Leopold (Hapsburg) of Austria. Considered one of the first medieval pike battles.

Annoyed by increasing Swiss alliances, King Leopold sent an army first to threaten Zurich, then toward Lucerne near lake Sempach. A knight from the Hapsburg army taunted the Lucerne garrison by riding around the town walls with a noose, as an implied threat of no quarter. The Swiss - probably a mix of halberdiers, crossbowmen and spear / pikemen, swiftly marched on the imperial army hoping to catch them against the lake. The Swiss column made contact and immediately seized high ground in a forested hill overlooking the Austrian / German forces. The terrain prohibited cavalry attack so the knights were forced to fight on foot, cutting off the tips of their armored sabotons. They still apparently expected an easy victory and the nobles crowded to the front of the line. The Swiss then made a sweeping circular maneuver and attacked the Austrian army in the flank, and after sustained fighting eventually broke their line, it's been debated how (Swiss claim a guy called Arnold von Winkelried threw himself on the German pikes or lances but that is probably a legend). The Duke himself was killed.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Sempach_Schilling.jpg
This is an early 16th Century depiction of the battle so probably not accurate.

The Hapsburg forces lost ~1,500 men including 400 nobles killed. Plus the Duke.

This is a good example of how the Swiss infantry instantly deployed making the best possible use of terrain, decisively attacked their enemy in the ideal spot and maintained pressure until they broke the enemy force, in spite of 1-3 odds against them numerically (as well as facing supposedly superior knights).

Battle of Hericourt November 4, 1474
Burgundian Wars
Allied forces ~4,000,(Swiss - mostly from Bern, plus various German city militia and some Alsatian knights) mostly pikemen, marksmen and halberdiers with some cavalry; vs. Burgundian ~ 3,000 mostly cavalry and some English longbowmen. Both sides had some handgunners and crossbowmen.

(There isn't a good wiki on this one in English so here is a link to an article I found (http://www3.telus.net/public/kenbla/heric.htm).)

Count Henry of Neuenberg-Blamont was sent to relieve a siege of Hericourt while Charles the Bold was busy himself besieging Nuess with the main Burgundian forces. Henry approached the Swiss / Allied camp with the intent to make an encirclement of the Swiss forces, however Allied scouts found the Burgundian camp and the Swiss / Allied forces moved out toward it, using forested hills to conceal their movement. Learning of the threat to his camp Henry turned his forces around and headed back, but when he got there he was attacked simultaneously from two directions by Swiss / Allied columns. The Burgundian forces buckled under the combined assault and started to flee, leading to a rout.


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/00/92/64/0092645f4e1085a8b6d6171967e174ad.jpg
Battle of Heircourt from the Burgundian Chronicle

The Burgundian forces lost 1,617 dead which was considered high casualty rate, the Swiss and Allied forces lost ~50 according to the Bern chronicle, including a City Counselor of Strasbourg.

This is a good example of the Swiss making an instant decision to counterattack, using terrain (wooded hills) to maneuver through for cover, and coordinating well with allies (German urban militia and Alsatian knights) and performing a double-flanking attack.

Battle of Murten 1476
Circa 25,000 Swiss (mostly from Bern and Zurich), German militia marksmen and knights from Lorainne; vs. 20,000 Burgundians including a substantial number of English longbowmen, ~ 5,000 Italian mercenaries and a large number of knights, plus numerous light and medium cannon.

This was a big battle, the Swiss were pissed because of the slaughter of their garrison at the previous battle of Grandson, Charles the Bold was also pissed because of all the treasure and artillery he lost at that defeat.

As was typical in the Burgundian wars, the Swiss skirmishers and gunners emerged suddenly from the forest and caught the Burgundians by surprise at the worst possible moment (the Burgundians were in the process of receiving their pay). However Charles had taken the wise precaution of building a heavy fortification (Called a Grunhag) and the Swiss initially got hung up on this, giving Charles some time to try to rally his forces.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/be/e3/14/bee3149fb519f862e795017250d219a0.jpg
This is a good examkple of a Grunhag, from the Ludwig von Eyb kriegsbuch

However, the Swiss skirmishers quickly found a way around the Guhnhag by marching up the slope through the woods, and flanked the Burgundian fortification, swiftly followed by the main Swiss column or gewalhut (basically a big mob of halberdiers and two handed swordsmen protected by an outer layer of pikemen). A Burgundian counterattack nearly captured the Duke of Lorraine but Swiss infantry came to his rescue. Charles formed a line of English longbowmen but they were hit by Swiss skirmishers before they could shoot a volley, their commander killed by a Swiss gunner.

Angered by the massacre of prisoners at Grandson, the Swiss offered no quarter and ~ 8,000 Burgundians and their mercenaries were killed.

This is a good example of how Swiss forces were able to make a sudden flanking attack when faced with a potentialy dangerous setback (the fortified defensive line or Grunhag), move through difficult terrain and maintain momentum and coordinate between heavy infantry (pikemen and halberdiers) and their marksmen (crossbowmen, handgunners, and even javelin throwers) as well as the allied cavalry from Lorraine. The Swiss forces were led by a burgomeister from Zurich (Hans Waldmann), a burgomeister from Bern (Adrian von Bubenberg), a Swiss rural clan leader from Aragau and the Duke of Lorainne.

In general during the Burgundian wars the Swiss did a better job of coordinating with allies in spite of often having a 'leadership by committee' command structure - including in this case reacting quickly and effectively to dangerous enemy counterattacks (when the Duke of Lorainne was almost captured).


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/Schilling_murten.jpg/800px-Schilling_murten.jpg

Batle of Calven , May 22, 1499
Swabian Wars / Wars of the Grisons

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

Three Leagues (Swiss Allies) 6,300 men, mostly pike and halberd infantry and some marksmen, plus a small force of cavalry; vs Hapsburgs 12,000 men, a mix of Swabian Landsknechts (including pikemen, halberdiers and some gunners), Tyrolian soldiers and German and Italian mercenary knights.

This was a local battle, between a coalition of small towns and some peasant clans (the Three Leagues (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Leagues) consisting of the League of God's House (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_God%27s_House), the Gray League (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_League) and the more urban League of the Ten Jurisdictions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_the_Ten_Jurisdictions), collectively known as the Grisons, led by a committee of burgomeisters and clan leaders; and the Hapsburgs and a group of noblemen and prelates including the Bishop of Chur.

Originally feuding between the Bishop of Chur and the counts of Tyrol (who had been fighting among each other for control of a large valley) caused so much damage that it triggered a coalition of small towns and peasant clans to form a Landfrieden against all of them. This became part of the larger regional conflict, the Swabian War, when Hapsburg pressure (over control of the valley and it's access to Italy through the Umbrail pass) forced the Three Leagues to sign an alliance with the neighboring Swiss Confederation.

The opening move of the battle took place when the Hapsburgs erected a fortification called a Letzi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letzi) (similar to a Grunhag but specifically designed to control a mountain valley) across the entrance of the valley of Mustair, which would have split the Grisons territories. The Three Leagues forces needed to break this defensive line - which was defended by 2,000 men - before the full force of Hapsburg reinforcements arrived. They also needed to block the Hapsburg reinforcements.

The Three Leagues forces split into two groups, 3,000 men led by two burgomeisters were tasked with marching on a wide sweeping maneuver over the mountains to flank the Letzi, leaving at night so they couldn't be seen, while the other 3,000 made a frontal attack against the Letzi to keep it occupied.

In the battle the first flanking force was stopped by a small Tyrolian force at the Marengo bridge, but the force making the frontal attack, despite suffering heavy losses from cannon fire, managed to make a local flanking maneuver up the slopes and around the Letzi. After they turned the Hapsburg fort the defenders panicked and the defenders were routed. The two League columns then attacked the main Hapsburg force which was approaching from their camp, and broke it's cohesion.

Hapsburg losses ~ 5,000 dead. The Three league forces lost ~2,000, nearly a third of their army.

This is a good example of multiple flanking maneuvers over very difficult terrain, one done at night, the other under heavy pressure from gunfire and cannon. It's a good example of the incredible discipline as the second group suffered 50% casualties but was still able to flank and rout a numerically superior force. This is also a good example of battlefield coordination between multiple elements and in site of leadership by committee.

Battle of Dornach, July 22 1499
Swabian Wars
6,000 Swiss vs. 16,000 Germans

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Hl_Victor_von_Solothurn.jpg/454px-Hl_Victor_von_Solothurn.jpg
Saint Victor of Solothurn

16,000 'Austrian' (actually German, Austrian, Italian (Savoyard) and French (Gascon), but mostly German) troops led by Heinrich von Furstenberg with a heavy contingent of knights, having sacked several villages near Lake Constance, moved toward the village of Dornach... the Swiss town of Solothurn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solothurn#Medieval_city), perceiving the threat sent messengers to ask for assistance from Bern under the terms of the Confederacy. Solothurn militia stayed behind their walls while Bern sent 5,000 troops, Zurich sent 500 both on July 19. The next day on July 20 Lucerne sent 600, and Zug sent another ~500.

The battle started out as a hard fought stalemate. The Bern and Zurich militia charged the fortified Imperial camp but were pushed back, though they managed to kill the Imperial Condottiere Hauptman Henirich von Furstenberg. They were then subjected to cannon fire, repeated cavalry charges and attempts to encircle them for several hours but held fast. When the small reinforcement columns from Lucerne and Zug arrived later in the afternoon, "with horns and shouting", and attacked the flanks of the Imperial Army, a column from the Bernese force completed an envelopment of the Imperial forces and trapped a large number of their cavalry, killing about a third of the Hapsburg forces.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Schlacht_bei_Dorneck.jpg/885px-Schlacht_bei_Dorneck.jpg

This battle was a good example of how the Swiss maintained pressure, coordinated their reinforcements and exploited fluid moments on the battlefield with skillful maneuvering. Using a comparatively small force of infantry to pin down enemy cavalry forces in order to enable reinforcements to attack them on the flanks was a common strategem of medieval infantry going back to the 13th Century. It's also worth noting that, as was typical by this time, a Swiss column of ~5,000 attacked a cavalry-heavy force three times their size. This is not something you would see with 17th Century infantry as far as I'm aware.

The Three leagues loosely became part of the Swiss Confederation after the battle, becoming more closely integrated in the 1520's. Today the region is part of Switzerland but that was a gradual process.


I hope collectively these examples give you some idea of:


The discipline of Swiss and German infantry including under heavy pressure and high casualties (and including from gun and cannon fire).
Their ability to maneuver in the field without breaking formation.
Their ability to coordinate their actions with allies and multiple internal elements.
Their ability to act quickly and decisively to exploit confusion in enemy ranks.
Their ability to act quickly and decisively to exploit available terrain.



If you know of similar exploits by infantry in the 17th Century I'd be interested to hear about it. I do know of some examples - mainly by the Cossacks, but I wouldn't consider them conventional Early Modern infantry.




You say yourself you consider the medieval army per capita more costly than a later pike and shot force (and I agree with that), which means it's not entirely an equal fight.

Agreed, though i would say that contemporaneous match-ups in the 15th Century between small Late Medieval armies vs. much larger (and cheaper) forces of the Ottomans, who I would argue were similar to and kind of anticipated Early Modern strategies, show that the smaller but more expensive and harder to control medieval armies could do very well. Similarly, Cossack infantry armies in the 16th and 17th Century seemingly performed numerous military miracles fighting basically in the manner of 15th Century Hussite mercenaries from whom they had learned tactics like the use of mobile war-wagons (something they continued to do right up into the 1920's).



My money is probably on the French though. Better guns (muskets *will* punch through plate) and artillery means armour is much less significant a factor.

Well maybe yeah, if they can hit anything, they seem to shoot a lot less accurately in the 17th Century. Also *will* punch through plate may be an exaggeration, at least not all the time- I guess you didn't see the Nova special with the musket test done by Nova:

You can watch it yourself here

https://youtu.be/YNhh1yDpOEk?t=2426

The TL : DR of it was that they made a very accurate tempered steel armor based on a surviving antique harness (very carefully done including electron microscope analysis of the metal ala Alan Williams). They shot a musket at it from about 20 feet. The musket ball ricocheted leaving a small dent.

So lets keep in mind, in the 17th Century armor was not gone, it was just used less and was typically made of inferior quality compared to earlier. Iron instead of steel, and by necessity much heavier. Nevertheless they still used it a lot especially for cavalry so even the comparatively crude 17th Century armor must have had some value.



I'm sorry but that's massively hyperbolic. You can't just pick one battle (or war) hundreds of years ago "hey this saved XXX". I hate it when they do that in books,

I didn't say one battle, or even one war. What I am saying is that if you took away the city-State of Venice we would be speaking Turkish. They certainly weren't the only force blocking the Ottomans (the Hospitaliers, the Kingdom of Spain, the Hapsburgs and other Austrian warlords, the Cossacks, Czech Hussite mercenaries, & the Kings and Warlords of Hungary were also very important for example) and in general the technical innovations of Late Medieval cities were key, but I think Venice made the difference, and I think I can defend that. But it's a separate argument.



Remember that change also doesn't mean things got worse either...
Because the way you aruge quite often it seems civilization peaked in the middle ages.:smallamused:

Lol :smallsmile: haha ok you got me breh!

I agree I am "a fan" of Late Medieval urban culture (I think this is a safer term because more specific term to use than 'Renaissance' which means a lot of different things). What I believe more generally, beyond the scope of this specific argument, is that the Late Medieval period in certain more urbanized regions (North Italy, Flanders and the Low Countries, Catalonia, Bohemia, Southern Germany, the Rhineland, Hanseatic coast of northern Europe and so on) entered a period of intense technological and cultural genesis. A Golden Age, in other words. Very similar to the much more famous Golden Age of Greece, the late Roman Republic and very early Empire, the Golden Age of Islam, and more local Golden Ages in the Elizabethan era in England, the Belle Epoch in France and so forth. I don't think it's actually controversial to suggest that the "Renaissance" was a kind of Golden Age, at least in terms of art and architecture etc., but I think it's generally very misunderstood and tends to be spun in a misleading way by modern Tropes.

In part this is because unlike these other eras, the Late Medieval period which is so relevant to this thread (since most RPG's follow our cultural obsession with a quasi-late medieval world) the middle ages in general is believed to be almost the opposite of a Golden Age - the general assumption, including by the ostensibly educated among us (i.e. college graduates, even historians) is that it was a particularly backward time, a Dark Age (a term, ironically coined by medieval scholars referring to the Migration Era). A time when filthy people living in mud huts, playing bad recorder music, struggled do move hay around on crude wooden carts with thick, square wheels, and died of the plague. Only the tiny number of aristocrats seem to get any respect (or a bath), with the vast majority of the others depicted as filthy cavemen. There is basically no modern concept of the medieval burgher who actually produced nearly all the art and architecture that to this day generates many billions of dollars in tourist revenue every year.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/t2c-X8HiBng/maxresdefault.jpg

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gameofthrones/images/6/61/Mole%27s_Town.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140724214122

So we are baffled when we see hard evidence of how sophisticated they were, for example in the quality of their arms, armor and martial arts, which we didn't even realize existed until 20 years ago. We are baffled when we see the architecture of the real medieval world with our own eyes, because it does not fit with our tropes:

http://cdn.gogofirenze.it/slir/w750-h430-c750:430/images/2/5/25-signoria-2.jpg

https://www.mugello-tuscany.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/piazza-del-campo-siena-tuscany.jpg

I guarantee that if you walk into the Piazza della Signoria in Florence or the Piaza del Campo in Siena, as I did this week, you will feel small and deeply humbled, (as I did). I already knew a fair amount about these places, in fact I'd been to Florence 30 years ago. But I was unprepared for what I saw this week in the medieval parts of Sienna, Volterra, Lucca, Florence, and Bologna. I really vastly underestimated the scale of these places both in terms of beauty and sophistication but also sheer size and might which was still palpable five to six centuries after most of this stuff was built.

http://www.arte.it/foto/600x450/2c/46969-Duomo_di_Siena-9635.jpg

http://www.hotelsienaborgogrondaie.com/sienahotelstuscany-2016/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/duomo.jpg

And having just spent a week in Tuscany I can definitely say that this impression has not abated, to the contrary.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G-X5GHJaw3E/Vz6P4ZL6zGI/AAAAAAAAGKo/2VHcyrZEQg4m2JVfvV3bXQOCEEShMYveACLcB/s1600/G0013378.jpg

And if you walk along the walls of even a lesser known town like Lucca, you will not fail to be impressed by the military capabilities of this period. More to the general point, in military technology and techniques, as in so many other things from art to architecture to literature, optics, math, chemistry, metallurgy and music went through very important revolutionary changes in the Late Medieval period to an extent far beyond what most people today are aware of.

In my opinion (and i admit this is just my opinion) most military innovations of the period 1550-1750 were basically incremental developments of more revolutionary changes developed roughly 1300-1550. And that is the general point I was making. I do also believe that armies of that earlier period, while much more expensive and harder to control, were within those limitations more capable very generally speaking. I admit this is hard to prove.

I think you can also say that swords and armor from the earlier era were much better made.

G

[Storm Bringer]

How long did pitched battles typically take prior to the advent of massive Napoleonic-era armies with significant artillery?

I'm specifically thinking about decent-sized to major battles involving at least 1000 soldiers per side, and specifically wondering about the duration of intense combat rather than the entirety of deployment, maneuvering, skirmishing and retreating that might bookend the physical combat.


battles as a whole took a long time. it was, and still is, very difficult to get a thousand men into position, facing the right way with a workable idea of what the plan was. With modern communications it is much quicker, but it might literally take all morning to get medieval army deployed in battle array correctly and safely. I have heard tales of battles in Antiquity where the two armies spent several days or even weeks in close proximity before the actual battle, engaged in manoeuvring, skirmishes, waiting for reinforcements, etc.

On the "Intense combat" part, a tv show a few years ago did a quick and dirty experiment, they got half a dozen willing young fit guys, give them a few hours of basic sword training, then strapped one up in full plate armour with suitable padding (only one, because, they admitted ruefully, the damm things cost over £20,000 each to make and they could only afford to borrow one set), and then had his mates take turns sparring with the plated man until he became exhausted. It literally took all of five minutes before he could no longer defend himself even vaguely, reduced to staggering around waving his sword vaguely at his opponent.

Now, the show admits this little test was not damming proof, but even assuming a historical knight, with years of conditioning for this exact task, might last two or three or even five times longer, that's still well short of the lengths of time the accounts indicate that battle lines were in contact, which could be for many hours, so either their was some extremely efficient systems to rotate tired fighters back to rest, or their were long periods when the lines were a few feet apart, catching breath and building up the courage for another go.

So, the "fighting" phase might be quite drawn out, over one or more hours, but troops would not be physically fighting for their lives for the whole of that time.


one way to look at it is boxing or similar sports, where two grown men, in earnest competition, are reduced to sweating heaps in the space of a quarter hour. humans simply cannot keep up that level of activity for much longer

[Carl]

Sounds reasonable- I've been horseback riding once or twice and getting even one horse to turn it's head when it doesn't want to can be a challenge.



OH SURE, the Egyptians could steer with their waist and fight at the same time, but when I steer with my knees while drinking coffee and eating my McMuffinTM the cops call it "dangerous" and "reckless driving"! :smalltongue:

To be fair those kind iof rules are more about the fact that your average driver couldn't do well enough at driving that way to be considered safe. Things like road laws kinda have to be written with the lowest common denominator in mind.

[Galloglaich]

Now, the show admits this little test was not damming proof, but even assuming a historical knight, with years of conditioning for this exact task, might last two or three or even five times longer, that's still well short of the lengths of time the accounts indicate that battle lines were in contact, which could be for many hours, so either their was some extremely efficient systems to rotate tired fighters back to rest, or their were long periods when the lines were a few feet apart, catching breath and building up the courage for another go.

So, the "fighting" phase might be quite drawn out, over one or more hours, but troops would not be physically fighting for their lives for the whole of that time.


On the one hand, I concede this is a reasonable point - fencing takes a lot out of you. You get worn out very quickly it's true, even if you are experienced. And it's clear they did rotate people out of the front line for rest, you can even see this in some paintings.

But experience does make a big difference, I think. Both in terms of familiarity with armor and with fighting. You can certainly see this in fencing, people new to fencing invariably tire out more quickly, I'm not certain exactly why physiologically. It seems to take about 4 or 5 practices to begin to develop sufficient endurance, and also so your arms don't get sore. it's also different for different weapons; you need a while to get used to a rapier for example even if you have already gotten used to saber or longsword.

Imagine if you took a dozen guys who had never played soccer and put them on a soccer field against say FC Barcelona in a football match. Putting aside skill at playing the game, would you expect a substantial disparity in endurance? How long could the experienced soccer team play vs. the group of random kids?

Similarly, modern re-enactors, particularly in Europe, and participants in combat sports like Bohurt / Battle of The Nations seem to have pretty good endurance fighting in their armor.

I would also say more generally, having just spent a week in Italy tramping around the medieval parts of several towns, I was reminded of the exhausting nature of simply living in one of those places, without cars, elevators, escalators, etc. I'm middle aged and not in the best shape but I saw a lot of other younger tourists out of breath! For most people today, climbing up and down steep hills and up into towers and five and six story buildings, walking for miles around even inside a town, let alone marching 20 or 30 miles through mountains in armor, is a bit daunting.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Torre_san_niccol%C3%B2%2C_ext.%2C_02.JPG/576px-Torre_san_niccol%C3%B2%2C_ext.%2C_02.JPG

Climbing up seven flights of stairs to the top of a defensive tower like this, while on regular guard duty, is no longer a typical regular activity for most city dwellers today but it was routine for a burgher of that day. I'm not making some kind of 'medieval people are supermen' argument, but I am pointing out that people from any pre-industrial era were a lot more used to physical activity generally and therefore had a little better endurance typically. Just living in the era before electricity and motor transport is fairly constant hard work.

G

[Deepbluediver]

On the "Intense combat" part, a tv show a few years ago did a quick and dirty experiment, they got half a dozen willing young fit guys, give them a few hours of basic sword training, then strapped one up in full plate armour with suitable padding (only one, because, they admitted ruefully, the damm things cost over £20,000 each to make and they could only afford to borrow one set), and then had his mates take turns sparring with the plated man until he became exhausted. It literally took all of five minutes before he could no longer defend himself even vaguely, reduced to staggering around waving his sword vaguely at his opponent.
I think I saw that video, or a similar one. If I recall correctly, it wasn't just exhaustion that wore him down, but also overheating. While metal might not be a great insulator, the layer of padding underneath probably is- it would be like trying to exercise when wearing a snowsuit.

[Kiero]

Climbing up seven flights of stairs to the top of a defensive tower like this, while on regular guard duty, is no longer a typical regular activity for most city dwellers today but it was routine for a burgher of that day. I'm not making some kind of 'medieval people are supermen' argument, but I am pointing out that people from any pre-industrial era were a lot more used to physical activity generally and therefore had a little better endurance typically. Just living in the era before electricity and motor transport is fairly constant hard work.

G

There's even distinct issues when comparing contemporaries with a few decades ago. I remember a documentary in which a (middle-aged) Royal Marines colonel was complaining about the standard of modern recruits. They'd arrive gym-fit (ie with vanity muscles) but not Marine-fit. In particular their feet were soft, because they never wore boots or any hard shoes, they couldn't take the pressure of marching around with loads on their backs. So it took weeks to harden their feet up to the rigours of spending days outdoors, carrying loads, without cushioned sole support.


I think I saw that video, or a similar one. If I recall correctly, it wasn't just exhaustion that wore him down, but also overheating. While metal might not be a great insulator, the layer of padding underneath probably is- it would be like trying to exercise when wearing a snowsuit.

Indeed, even sparring in t-shirt and shorts is going to burn up your energy in a few minutes, even when you're fit. That's with good ventilation reducing your heat fatigue to a minimum.

[PhoenixPhyre]

There's even distinct issues when comparing contemporaries with a few decades ago. I remember a documentary in which a (middle-aged) Royal Marines colonel was complaining about the standard of modern recruits. They'd arrive gym-fit (ie with vanity muscles) but not Marine-fit. In particular their feet were soft, because they never wore boots or any hard shoes, they couldn't take the pressure of marching around with loads on their backs. So it took weeks to harden their feet up to the rigours of spending days outdoors, carrying loads, without cushioned sole support.


There are complaints being heard right now that US Army recruits don't have the physical strength (and practice throwing other objects) to properly throw hand grenades. Part of it is that fewer play pick-up baseball as kids, so they're just not used to throwing balls around. Conditioning to a particular activity goes a long way, and is separate from raw strength.

I used to walk everywhere, walking 5+ miles per day for two years. I could do it without getting tired, even in dress clothes and shoes. Now that I've spent a decade being sedentary, not so much. People "back then" used to just move a lot more and do much more physical labor just to survive (even the middle-class) than we do now.

[wolflance]

On jousting

Parrying a lance with your own lance when you're both charging is a very, very bad idea. Lances are long and hard to move around once you remove them from that very small cone right in front of you, and something that happens to people even without trying to parry is the lance going sideways (at the right angle with the direction you're going) and basically giving themselves a lariat. This can do any number of things, from just wrenching the lance out of your hand, throwing you off the saddle all the way up to breaking your arm.

Then there's the problem of timing. Let's say both horses are going 40 km/h (~11 m/s), and you have 4 metres of lance to work with before you get hit. That means you have to parry in the space of 180 milliseconds. Not just make a hit, make a hit and move the lance. For comparision, a longsword strike takes about 250 ms.

So, provided you don't have a shield, your best defence is to find good purchase with your own lance, that way your opponent will get unhorsed and it will throw off his lance point. Especially since hitting a specific spot without late plate armors deflecting the lance point is really, really hard.

To sum up, trying to parry a lance with a lance will likely get you hurt and will probably not work, while landing a good hit with your own lance will maybe work and you have your armor if it doesn't.

That's not to say parrying lances was never done, it was, but the techniques described for it assume you have a shorter weapon (sword, short lance) nad that you're not moving. Fiore has some of these described at the end of Fior di Battaglia:


http://wiktenauer.com/images/thumb/9/9e/Pisani-Dossi_MS_29a-b.png/400px-Pisani-Dossi_MS_29a-b.png



This only applies to Euroean jousting, situation may have been different e.g. in Iran/Persia, where lances were held in two hands, but I'm only beginning to research that part of the world.
If I understand the first part of your answer correctly, it is because lance is so optimized for its specific purpose that attempting to use it any other way comes with high risk of lariating oneself/losing the lance/broke arm/unhorsed? While shorter, more agile weapons (especially with a two hand grip??) may attempt to parry?

On second part, while the horses move much faster and the reaction window (for parry) is quite small, the lance itself is pretty large, highly visible, moves on a predictable trajectory, and cannot feint, so I think parrying it shouldn't be too much harder than sword.

[Kiero]

Uh, one-handed lances are not difficult to parry. There are plenty of accounts from the Napoleonic wars of unarmed horsemen parrying them. As mentioned, you can't feint with them, so unless you're coming up on someone distracted, they have a good chance of turning the point.

[Galloglaich]

Uh, one-handed lances are not difficult to parry. There are plenty of accounts from the Napoleonic wars of unarmed horsemen parrying them. As mentioned, you can't feint with them, so unless you're coming up on someone distracted, they have a good chance of turning the point.

Seemingly in the medieval world too. Though I think it's assumed that it's just a lot safer to parry it with a shield if possible

http://daobg.com/uploads/monthly_12_2009/post-3457-1261767608.jpg

G

[Vinyadan]

When I see such an image, all I can think is, "why couldn't they make Chivalry: Medieval Warfare a better game?"

[rrgg]

In fact the Dutch reforms and the Swedish brigading system derived from it was in fact a much more manouvre friendly system for individual units than any medieval system. That is the basic idea they worked to after all. To copy the Roman manipular system to weigh up their comparative troop deficiencies compared to massive Spanish tercios. They also wanted to more effectively bring firepower to bear. The Spanish Tercios were more "wasteful" of their shot than later developments which increased firepower downrange by bringing fewer troops to fire more often.

The older Spanish Tercios were in that sense much closer to the medieval way of fighting in more massive bodies. The Swiss may have been mroe dynamic but they were also utterly defeated by increased firepower?

Yeah, I would disagree with you here. The Spanish "tercios" were initially developed from swiss and landsknect tactics and organization at the beginning of the 16th century (literally, as in landsknecht mercenaries were paid to take up residence in Spain and help create the first tercios) and designed to be very flexible. The term "tercio" was primarily an administrative unit, equivalent to the Landsknecht regiment, and in a similar fashion the tercio could be deployed as either as a single large square, some number of smaller squares, or even separate into individual companies. As the number of firearms in 16th century armies increased, the bulk of the shot were initially divided into two "wings", then four, and at times even more subdivisions than that in order to keep the arquebusiers flexible and allow the tercio to deploy all its firepower in any one direction as needed.

If anything, the tactics implemented by Maurice of Nassau and later Gustavus Adolphus in many ways greatly decreased the amount of firepower available compared to the the mid 1500s tercios. By the time of Maurice's reforms though, commanders and military theorists were no longer very interested in maximizing the amount of firepower deployed first place.

I'd also have to agree with Galloglaich regarding the Swiss. At best perhaps you could argue that defeats like Bicocca started to cool their aggressiveness a bit. But the Swiss in the fifteenth century frequently had no problem defeating armies with far more handgunners and cannons than they had and the pike formations they helped develop remained continued to play an essential role well into the 1600s. The decline of the pike was was a very gradual process and in no way a liner one. In 1511 for example, according to F L Taylor the Swiss army which left for Milan the ratio of firearms was suddenly increased to 1 arquebus for every 4 soldiers. It seems that this was found unnecessary however and later swiss armies returned to fielding a much lower number of firearms.

---

@Galloglaich

Knyght Errant put out a pretty good video recently which I think sums up my concerns pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAcdn7HQFDY

I agree that medieval armies were way better than they were generally given credit for, but I think you're perhaps going to far in the other direction while hating on 17th century soldiers in the process.

As an example of 17th century infantry performing rapid maneuvers in combat yeah there's the Battle of Brietenfeld (http://syler.com/Breitenfeld/battle/battleAnim.htm). But even Gustav more often tended to deploy his Swedish infantry fairly defensively with multiple layers of interlocking reserves. So do you even go about comparing the overall "quality" of soldiers from two periods where the experience of combat and what was required of them was so different?

If you replaced the veteran spanish tercios at Rocroi with Swiss pikemen from the battle of Nancy would they still have remained steadfast for so long under a hail of cannon, musket, and pistol fire even with all of their instincts screaming "Why are we just standing here? This is suicide! We need to either attack or run away Now!"?

Sure they may have been more eager to charge than most, but that isn't what was needed from 17th century pikemen anymore.


. . . and though such a squadron doth not charge without time, nor order, moued therevnto by being ill able to resiste their blowes, & esteeming it for lesse inconuenience to mingle themselues amongst those which giue them, yet commeth it ordinarily to be done with great disaduantage: and notwithstanding that it hath sometimes fallen out to be no impediment at all to the gayning of the victorie, yet grew it more by chaunce, then reason, through the rashnes of the soldiors, & not wise∣dome of the general: who is to seeke to forbeare it, and like∣wise not to fight with men tyred, vnable to carrie them with speede vnto it, which waxe breathles, the pikes not being able then to be held with strength, nor the harquebuserie to shoote with assurance, nor the cauallery to moue with force and dexteritie, and all for want of breath.

Even when it comes to using specific battles as examples, a great success for one side tends to mean a major failure on the other. I'm not sure you can say much about the quality of late medieval soldiers as a whole by giving examples where one group of late medieval soldiers did really well and another group of late medieval soldiers did really poorly.

Even going back to the subject of armor. While the Swiss certainly wore quite a lot of armor, especially the front rankers, they certainly weren't able to afford as much protection as most knights or many of the better-funded armies they squared off against. And while the Swiss were well practiced from their communal drills and war games, I'm pretty sure they didn't spend as much time training in extremely heavy jousting armor as actual knights did. Yet it was the Swiss peasants who frequently won the fight due to their skill, bravery, and rapid maneuvers.

Wearing armor a lot and strenuous exercise can help a person become accustomed to the weight, but it doesn't eliminate the effects completely and as a result it was still always a matter of weighing advantages vs disadvantages. Interestingly, the 15th century book on jousting I linked earlier does bring this up on page 35: "And if I have mentioned the clothes I can also address the armor; if the horsemen carry light armor, they can move faster in everything they have to do and therefore they will feel like stronger horsemen. there are some who say that that option is a disadvantage when they are not riding, but I say that being heavy in the saddle causes them to move slowly and it is much worse if they get themselves unbalanced. Therefore the disadvantage is greater than the advantage. Nevertheless, I agree that heavier armor is advantageous for personal defense."

[rrgg]

https://archive.org/stream/77154910TheRoyalBookOfJoustingHorsemanshipKnightly Combat/77154910-The-Royal-Book-of-Jousting-Horsemanship-Knightly-Combat#page/n1/mode/2up/search/shoot

And of course, King Dom later goes on to mention how important it is to constantly practice in whatever armor your are planning to wear into battle and stresses the importance of riding skill above all else, even when it comes to battle.

Time for another controversial opinion: With that in mind I think that the most skilled knights in medieval europe on good horses would have no problem chasing down the vast majority of mongol horse archers, even in good armor.

[wolflance]

Uh, one-handed lances are not difficult to parry. There are plenty of accounts from the Napoleonic wars of unarmed horsemen parrying them. As mentioned, you can't feint with them, so unless you're coming up on someone distracted, they have a good chance of turning the point.
Wow, unarmed lance parry sounds even more impressive than Hollywood unarmed blade block!.



Seemingly in the medieval world too. Though I think it's assumed that it's just a lot safer to parry it with a shield if possible

http://daobg.com/uploads/monthly_12_2009/post-3457-1261767608.jpg

G
So to sum up the answers of one of my initial questions: People did attempt to parry couched lance charge, if not with a shield, then with whatever they had in hands at the moment.

(Wait, the crossbow dude actually shot a bolt into the chest of the knight while parrying, impressive!)




Time for another controversial opinion: With that in mind I think that the most skilled knights in medieval europe on good horses would have no problem chasing down the vast majority of mongol horse archers, even in good armor.
It is certainly possible, but IMO incredibly unlikely. By his weapon's nature a knight usually attack forward, while a horse archer usually attack his (right or left) sides. This means the horse archer will naturally move away from the knight's line of attack ("running circles") simply by attacking.

That is, unless a cavalry lance charge can steer/readjust direction mid-trot/gallop (or "homing lance charge" so to speak). Given my general lack of knowledge on couched charge, I can’t really say it can’t.

If said knight threw away his lance and intended to hack the horse archer to pieces with his sword/mace/axe/pick/flail, chance are he would be more likely to succeed in catching up with the horse archer.

[Brother Oni]

Time for another controversial opinion: With that in mind I think that the most skilled knights in medieval europe on good horses would have no problem chasing down the vast majority of mongol horse archers, even in good armor.

Accounts of the Battle of Legnica 1241 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Legnica) seem to disagree with you, where the standard Mongol horse archer feigned retreat managed to separate the Polish/Moravian/Templar knights from their infantry forces, straight into an ambush by Mongol heavy cavalry with flanking attacks by Mongol light cavalry.

Looking at the rest of the listed battles of the First and Second invasions, it didn't go very well for the Western forces at all, although they learnt their lesson by the Third invasion and defeated the Golden Horde for lighter casualties.

[Kiero]

Wow, unarmed lance parry sounds even more impressive than Hollywood unarmed blade block!.

So to sum up the answers of one of my initial questions: People did attempt to parry couched lance charge, if not with a shield, then with whatever they had in hands at the moment.

(Wait, the crossbow dude actually shot a bolt into the chest of the knight while parrying, impressive!)


General Beresford's unarmed disarm of a Polish lancer at Albuera made it into artwork:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Bereford.jpg

[Deepbluediver]

Time for another controversial opinion: With that in mind I think that the most skilled knights in medieval europe on good horses would have no problem chasing down the vast majority of mongol horse archers, even in good armor.
According to Wikipedia, the use of heavy cavalry was fairly successful tactic against the mongols, at least compared to light cavalry and melee (fighting on foot) combat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#European_tactics_against _Mongols

Given that the mongols didn't go in for sieges that much the best tactic might have been to find a heavily-armored fortress and just wait them out, but this wasn't always an option.



Accounts of the Battle of Legnica 1241 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Legnica) seem to disagree with you, where the standard Mongol horse archer feigned retreat managed to separate the Polish/Moravian/Templar knights from their infantry forces, straight into an ambush by Mongol heavy cavalry with flanking attacks by Mongol light cavalry.
Reading the description it sounds like the main problem for the knights was that they allowed themselves to get cut-off, outnumbered, and individually picked apart. Good tactics on that part of the mongols, certainly, but if that's what it took for them to defeat European heavy cavalry, then it seems like under more equal circumstances the knights would have held the advantage.

So could the European heavy cavalry ride down the mongols? Yes, it sounds like they could.
Was it a good idea for them to do so? No, almost definitely not.

[Galloglaich]

---

@Galloglaich

Knyght Errant put out a pretty good video recently which I think sums up my concerns pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAcdn7HQFDY

It's a valid point he's making in theory, but you do have to walk a very fine line and with all due respect to this guy, it's not enough to just be up on the latest consensus, you have o actually know something about the period, know some of the primary sources etc. before you can nail down what is real and what is another Trope.

To wit - his first example about leather armor isn't very good. The two images he showed were armor incorporating iron pieces (on the left) and tournament armor (on the right).

As far as I'm aware (and I'm ready to be proven otherwise) there is no actual example of a panoply of leather armor in use in Europe by Latinized armies or individual warriors the middle ages for war. I know of at least two partial panoplies which were identified in Italy as used for tournament (i.e., warlike games with blunt weapons or even 'whalebone'). There are certainly many examples of leather and other animal hide armor panoplies used in Central Asia, there is European armor which incorporates leather for example in some types of brigandine (I have seen a couple of 15th Century examples from Spain with my own eyes) or as stiffeners for mail. Maybe (possible) individual pieces of limb armor but I have yet to see clear evidence even of that (clear evidence that they were armor for war).

Of course it is possible to 'correct' too far in the other direction, and you and a couple of others have repeatedly accused me of doing so in this thread, but I'm waiting to see substantial evidence that anything I've been saying is off. I don't think Late Medieval warriors were the 'best evuh' but I do think the general trend of the emerging data is toward further rehabilitation rather than the opposite, and I think most of our current tropes are just wrong, the reality may be more at right (or oblique) angles to it than it's exact opposite in the long run, but it doesn't like like we have oversold it yet.




I agree that medieval armies were way better than they were generally given credit for, but I think you're perhaps going to far in the other direction while hating on 17th century soldiers in the process.

...

So do you even go about comparing the overall "quality" of soldiers from two periods where the experience of combat and what was required of them was so different?

...

I'm not sure you can say much about the quality of late medieval soldiers as a whole by giving examples where one group of late medieval soldiers did really well and another group of late medieval soldiers did really poorly.



I was making a very specific comparison, that of late medieval infantry with 17th Century infantry. Making the point that while it was routine for late medieval infantry to perform rapid and complex maneuvers in the field, under fire, while taking casualties and so on, this became far less the case in the 17th Century. So yes I think I can make my case exactly the way I did do so. I also don't think it was a failure of all the other forces necessarily - especially since there were so many from so many different quarters- so much as their less organic composition.

Incidentally, this was true not only for the Swiss. I could easily provide a similar list of definitive examples about Czech infantry across the 15th Century, and with a little more effort (since it's a bit more scattered) about German urban infantry in the same period.

I was citing this example (comparing the relative capabilities of infantry in the two periods) to support my broader point about the differences between how late medieval armies differed from 17th Century armies. But I admit how that translates into relative merits of quality is harder to definitively prove - as you and others have pointed out we don't have a time machine. We can only examine specific data markers. I do think you could make a similar analysis with handgun accuracy but I don't have the time to plunge into that right now. Cavalry would be trickier because 17th Century cavalry had some tools at their disposal (i.e. pistols) that medieval cavalry didn't, and also the best 17th Century cavalry developed some very sophisticated tactics.




Sure they may have been more eager to charge than most, but that isn't what was needed from 17th century pikemen anymore.

If you read the examples I cited, it's far more involved than just eagerness to charge. It's the ability to make nearly instantaneous decisions on the battlefield to split forces, perform flanking maneuvers, coordinate with allies and so on. A much greater dynamism in other words, which I think it would be hard to argue simply wasn't "needed" by 17th Century armies since it certainly was needed and exploited again in later eras.




Even going back to the subject of armor. While the Swiss certainly wore quite a lot of armor, especially the front rankers, they certainly weren't able to afford as much protection as most knights or many of the better-funded armies they squared off against.

That most certainly isn't true. For one thing, their repeated large scale victories gave them all the armor they could possibly want. Their success as mercenaries also put a lot of money into their hands, and of course, contrary to the persistent trope - good quality armor wasn't so expensive that only nobles could afford it. Quite to the contrary, nobles were decorating their armor with gold leaf and silver etchings precisely to make it stand out from armor used by commoners, because the quality (tempered steel) armor was widely available.



And while the Swiss were well practiced from their communal drills and war games, I'm pretty sure they didn't spend as much time training in extremely heavy jousting armor as actual knights did. Yet it was the Swiss peasants who frequently won the fight due to their skill, bravery, and rapid maneuvers.

A lot of incorrect assumptions here again.


Jousting armor, which was indeed heavier, wasn't used on the battlefield.
Battlefield armor in the 15th Century, particularly and specifically armor used in German speaking areas ('Gothic' harness etc.) was not that heavy. An entire panoply could be ~ 40 lbs
Infantry didn't wear entire panoplies anyway, typically just 'half armor' i.e. with no lower-leg protection.
Swiss infantry in the 15th Century were actually mostly burghers. Bern and Zurich, and to a lesser extent smaller cities like Lucerne, Zug, and Solothurn and so on, were the main contributors of forces and by far the most aggressive military actors in the Confederacy. They did also have peasants particularly from the forest cantons
There is very little evidence they did pike drill, what little we have seen seems to have been the burghers in Bern training their peasants to get them up to speed.


Here is another list which hopefully will help illustrate my point. The difference between the Late medieval (say 1420-1520) armies vs. those of the 30 Years War were as follows:


Late medieval armies were part of organic living traditions of warfare, especially from free Estates including the gentry and lower nobility, the burghers from Free Cities and City States, and peasants from free clans.

Early Modern armies, by contrast, were increasingly made up of people from lower-status estates who were systematically trained to emulate systems worked out in the earlier periods. As a specific example, Landsknechts were Swabian peasants (mostly) trained by Swiss Reislaufer veterans in a kind of imitation of the Swiss system. Spanish tercios were Spanish peasants (I think a lot from poorer districts like Estremadura etc. trained by Landsknecht veterans in an imitation of the Landsknecht system. With each iteration the systems got a bit simpler, but it was also more predictable and easier to control.

Medieval armies generally had better equipment, at least better armor. Notably 15th Century was often made of steel and therefore could be made much lighter than 17th Century armor which was usually made of wrought iron and much heavier (a single breast plate could weigh as much as 60 lbs).

Nevertheless we know from the recent Nova experiment that the relatively thin steel armor could be just as or more effective - capable of even stopping a musket ball at short range.

Early Modern armies were easier to control, cost less and were much more loyal to their rulers, and therefore easier to keep as standing armies.

Late Medieval armies by contrast were difficult to control and almost always for a limited duration.





My belief is that the differences had to do less with a steadily evolving progression of military science than with the changing socio-political-economic realities mostly related to the opening up of the Atlantic and Pacific and to the Wars of Religion.

These different kinds of armies in the different eras had different capabilities to be sure. In some ways the Early Modern armies were more capable probably, in others I think less.

G

[rrgg]

It is certainly possible, but IMO incredibly unlikely. By his weapon's nature a knight usually attack forward, while a horse archer usually attack his (right or left) sides. This means the horse archer will naturally move away from the knight's line of attack ("running circles") simply by attacking.

That is, unless a cavalry lance charge can steer/readjust direction mid-trot/gallop (or "homing lance charge" so to speak). Given my general lack of knowledge on couched charge, I can’t really say it can’t.

If said knight threw away his lance and intended to hack the horse archer to pieces with his sword/mace/axe/pick/flail, chance are he would be more likely to succeed in catching up with the horse archer.

Yeah, you'd think that it would be better to toss away the lance and continue on with just a sword for better speed. The lance seems to have required a lot of strength and skill to use effectively, the extra size and weight made it much more difficult to stay balanced on the horse and could even require the rider to pay close attention to the wind so that it doesn't drag him to the ground. Additionally a couched lance relied almost entirely on the horse's speed to deal damage. Especially compared to a pistol, though a bow would be closer to the other end of the spectrum as well.

In the late 16th century, complaints that the weapon made horsemen slower or less maneuverable tended to be the main arguments against continuing the use of lancers. But despite europeans having known about the use of recurve bows and crossbows from horseback the lance seems to have stuck around as the primary light cavalry weapon for a really long time. During the HYW many knights had a lighter weapon called a lancegay which they could carry instead of the full lance during a skirmish or when traveling alone, but during the 15th century it seems that even many light cavalry started to prefer using the full-sized lance.

Talhoffer's sections involving mounted crossbowmen were in part instructions for using either a crossbow or a lance and it seems that he perhaps thought this sort of lightly armored encounter was fairly common.

http://wiktenauer.com/images/thumb/2/23/Cod.icon._394a_136r.jpg/800px-Cod.icon._394a_136r.jpg

http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Hans_Talhoffer/W%C3%BCrttemberg#Mounted_Archery

http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Talhoffer_Fechtbuch_(MS_Thott.290.2%C2%BA)

However as near as I can tell, mounted crossbowmen still generally continued to be seen as a sort of "inferior" light cavalry compared to lancers, even for skirmishing/harassing roles. By the Italian wars, the best light cavalry tended to be from Eastern Europe who had a great deal of experience from constant skirmishing against the turks and tartars. And while many of these horsemen learned to shoot the composite bow as well, they were most prized for their skill with the spear or lance during an ambush or skirmish and their strong lancer tradition. Polish and Cossack cavalry continued to use lances through the napoleonic wars.


Reading the description it sounds like the main problem for the knights was that they allowed themselves to get cut-off, outnumbered, and individually picked apart. Good tactics on that part of the mongols, certainly, but if that's what it took for them to defeat European heavy cavalry, then it seems like under more equal circumstances the knights would have held the advantage.

So could the European heavy cavalry ride down the mongols? Yes, it sounds like they could.
Was it a good idea for them to do so? No, almost definitely not.

That's sort of it though. These battles involving the mongols certainly weren't bloodless victories where the horse archers kited the knights around indefinately shooting them with arrows. The mongols relied on coordination to split various knights apart and draw them into favorable engagements where they could be defeated. A battle doesn't necessarily play out the same as a 1v1 though.

[Martin Greywolf]

Lance parries

Juts because you can sometimes parry a lance doesn't mean it's easy. Manuscripts have all sorts of techniques in them, would you claim that parrying a longsword with a dagger is easy, too?

Original question was about jousting lance against lance charge - parries there are a bad idea, as evidence by no one doing them unless they had no chance with standard charge tactics (way shorter lance as show in Fiore, for example).

Once you don't have a lance, it's still hard to parry it, as hard as a good, fast longsword strike, with the added, very significant, complication of having to move around to not be ran over by the opponent's horse if you happen to be on foot. If you are on horse and not charging at the lancer, then it's doable, almost like a normal parry.

One thing that makes lance parries slightly easier is that you generally don't have to be worried about followup strike. That also means that, unlike a spear, lance can be parried equally well with your hand - it's a thrusting weapon and only gets one thrust, no chopping off your arm after the stab is deflected.

As for the Napoleonic accounts, remember that there is a significant amount of they mention it because it was unusual and caught their attention effect.

Mongols vs knights

What people forget about the mongols is that they had heavy cavalry too, and it was as well armored as the European knights. The problem here isn't so much that the knights couldn't catch horse archers, but thet if they tried, they would be eventually countercharged by mongol heavies and shot in the flanks by the regrouped horse archers.

We know basically nothing about European horses of the time, but if we go forward to 1400s, knights seemed to favor large, impressive sprinter types for their warhorses (well, large for their time, which means 160 cm for the very largest), while mongols had more of an endurance runners. If this were the case earlier, then knights could well catch a portion of mongol light horse, provided they were well rested, but then swiftly fall behind because there is an awful lot of those light horsemen.

Oh, and rocket launchers. Battle of Mohi/Sajo has descriptions of what are probably hwacha-like weapons that sowed panic in Hungarian ranks - if they used these against European horses of the time (completely unused to any sort of gunpowder and explosions), the horses would likely panic. Hell, the knights would have panicked too.

[Kiero]

If you are on horse and not charging at the lancer, then it's doable, almost like a normal parry.

One thing that makes lance parries slightly easier is that you generally don't have to be worried about followup strike. That also means that, unlike a spear, lance can be parried equally well with your hand - it's a thrusting weapon and only gets one thrust, no chopping off your arm after the stab is deflected.

As for the Napoleonic accounts, remember that there is a significant amount of they mention it because it was unusual and caught their attention effect.

Beresford was unarmed, sitting on his horse, when the Pole came charging out of a squall of rain to surprise his staff. He wasn't a young man, but he had presence of mind enough to disarm the lancer. Commentators from the time often said the point was the only dangerous part, get past it and a lancer was harmless. The lancer doesn't want to stop, mobility is part of his defensive array, so he won't get multiple chances at sticking someone if he carries on travelling.


What people forget about the mongols is that they had heavy cavalry too, and it was as well armored as the European knights. The problem here isn't so much that the knights couldn't catch horse archers, but thet if they tried, they would be eventually countercharged by mongol heavies and shot in the flanks by the regrouped horse archers.

Indeed, all the steppe people who preceded them also had lots of very good quality heavy cavalry, as well as clouds of lights. Even if only 10% of their force was heavy (all the significant lords and their retinues), that would still be thousands of them.

[Galloglaich]

On the Mongols,

Their heavy cavalry definitely was not as good as the Latin (or Russian) European heavy cavalry, which is why they typically only deployed it when the other side was wavering. That isn't to say it was bad, but it wasn't as good. But their light cavalry was well trained in dealing with heavy cavalry, because they were familiar with it going back to the Cataphract days, and they had good (and lethally effective) tactics to handle a cavalry charge so long as they had room to maneuver. The Latinized forces only became effective against the Mongols in the open field when when they adapted combined-arms tactics.

However when Latin cavalry could catch mongol cavalry in a close space, they typically prevailed. Almost nobody ever mentions it but the Bohemians under Wenceslaus badly defeated a mongol 'raiding force' of ~10,000 cavalry in the mountain passes near Klodzko in the same big 1241 invasion in which they smashed Polish / German forces at Leignitz and the Hungarians at Sajo river. The Czechs even captured a Mongol commander. This had major implications for the history of the Czechs as their land was never devastated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#Invasion_of_Czech_lands

Aside from the defense of Bohemia, the first successes against the mongols were by infantry, in sieges. For example in Croatia and some places in Hungary, and in Krakow in 1287. Crossbows seemed to take a heavy toll, both according to Polish, Hungarian etc. records and in the words of the Mongols themselves. Later, it was again infantry, in the open field using Czech war-wagon tactics with crossbows and guns which had the first notable successes. The Cossacks also used Czech tactics as well as Viking style raids down rivers on boats with great success against the Mongols or Tartars as they came to be known.

Into the 15th Century you started to see two different combined-arms strategies deployed by Latin forces; the Poles and Teutonic Knights and German urban militia from Livonia etc. used a combination of heavy cavalry, supported by light cavalry and mounted crossbowmen, with Czech mercenary infantry (and other Central European infantry) using war-wagons. While in Hungary the emergence of an infantry heavy, gun-and-crossbow heavy type of army, fortified by war wagons, typified by the famous Black Army (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Army_of_Hungary), but also used by Captains like Jan Jiskra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jiskra_of_Brand%C3%BDs) up in Northern Hungary / Slovakia and others, supported by light cavalry and a smaller number of heavy cavalry, became the main antidote to all types of Steppe Nomads especially the Ottomans.

The Cossacks also had a kind of hybrid strategy as mentioned, but while they are famous for their cavalry today, initially they were known for their excellent infantry and use of war -wagons.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Battle_of_Mohi_1241.PNG
At Sajo river incidentally, the Hungarian (etc.) knights were causing problems for the Mongol heavy cavalry who tried to force a large bridge. The Mongol commander lost 30 of his bodyguards before they deployed whatever mysterious gunpowder weapon it was (we don't actually know what it was, just that it was some kind of pyrotechnic or explosive weapon).

On mounted crossbowmens
It's very dangerous to generalize about the medieval world. I can tell you for a fact that mounted crossbowmen were considered extremely important in North-Central Europe from ~ 1400 onward, and more so over time as improved technology like new spanners and ever-improving crossbows themselves made them more lethal.

I don't know as well about every other part of Europe but they were definitely important for the Swiss and in Flanders, and I believe Italy as well. I just saw a bunch of 15th Century depictions of battles in the Uffitzi museum in Florence and they depict as many mounted crossbowmen as the Swiss do (that is to say, a lot). I also saw 15th Century plaques in Lucca commemorating their "Compagnia dei Balestrieri" (crossbow guild) which depicted mounted crossbowmen.

In Prussia and Poland mounted crossbowmen were considered a crucial precaution against mounted archers and also against the Lithuanian style light cavalry (who were armed with light lances and javelins / darts primarily). All lances for the Prussian and Livonian city-states, the Teutonic and Livonian Knights, the Poles and the Bohemians included your main heavy cavalry lancer, more lightly armored light lancers, and at least one mounted crossbowmen. The mounted crossbowmen also seemed to be used independently as scouts. From reading anecdotes their main utility against the Mongols seemed to be in quickly dispatching horses.

I think this, incidentally, is what you are seeing in Talhoffer, the lesser armed elements of the lance fighting each other.

On lances
I think it's hard to parry a lance with anything other than a shield. But there are examples of other weapons being used. The thing to keep in mind is that the heavy lance was never the only type of lance used. Shorter lances were always around, there were always the lighter cavalry types (Spanish Jinetes for example but they had the equivalent everywhere) as well as javelins and darts which never entirely went away.

Latin cavalry didn't only use chargers, they also used coursers and palfreys more suited to kind of hit and run, continuously moving fights. The Teutonic Knights also bred many specific breeds of horses suitable to the colder climates of the far north.

This article is an oldy but goody which covers a lot of that

http://deremilitari.org/2014/03/horses-and-crossbows-two-important-warfare-advantages-of-the-teutonic-order-in-prussia/

G

[Martin Greywolf]

On the Mongols,

Their heavy cavalry definitely was not as good as the Latin (or Russian) European heavy cavalry, which is why they typically only deployed it when the other side was wavering. That isn't to say it was bad, but it wasn't as good. But their light cavalry was well trained in dealing with heavy cavalry, because they were familiar with it going back to the Cataphract days, and they had good (and lethally effective) tactics to handle a cavalry charge so long as they had room to maneuver. The Latinized forces only became effective against the Mongols in the open field when when they adapted combined-arms tactics.


This really depends on when we're talking about. At the start at Sajo, they were roughly equal in equipment (mail has better coverage, but lamellar protects the parts without gaps better, especially against lances and arrows), with training being sepaarte but equal deal. Once we start to see coat of plates frequently and move on to mail and plate, the mongols do fall behind. The real question would be numbers, but we have very poor estimates on those in total, let alone proportionally.

What mongols couldn't really do was countercharge couched lance charges, and they tended to loose when they had to face them in closed space - such as, among other places, Sajo itself (Rogerius mentions the terrain as being impassable because of high water and swamps).



Aside from the defense of Bohemia, the first successes against the mongols were by infantry, in sieges. For example in Croatia and some places in Hungary, and in Krakow in 1287. Crossbows seemed to take a heavy toll, both according to Polish, Hungarian etc. records and in the words of the Mongols themselves. Later, it was again infantry, in the open field using Czech war-wagon tactics with crossbows and guns which had the first notable successes. The Cossacks also used Czech tactics as well as Viking style raids down rivers on boats with great success against the Mongols or Tartars as they came to be known.


A lot of these successes, especially Hungarian ones, were due to the fact that mongols were on a raiding campaign, not a campaign of conquest, and therefore avoided besieging well fortified cities - which they could do, and do well. That reinforced a misconception of their siege incompetence in European monarchs, and by the time there were larges clashes with them after 1300, mongol empire largely fell apart.

Genghis Khan era conquering army wouldn't be easily stopped by anything short of a Crusade, or at least French-HRE alliance.



At Sajo river incidentally, the Hungarian (etc.) knights were causing problems for the Mongol heavy cavalry who tried to force a large bridge. The Mongol commander lost 30 of his bodyguards before they deployed whatever mysterious gunpowder weapon it was (we don't actually know what it was, just that it was some kind of pyrotechnic or explosive weapon).


Not quite. There are 2 major sources for Sajo battle, Carmen miserabile and Historia Salonica. Carmen miserabile talks about Koloman's countercharge across the bridge that got to mongol commanders, but it doesn't mention any sort of weapons explicitly, the sole exception being arrows that blot out the sun - well, the actual phrasing is "so many they cast a shade".

Historia Salonica does talk about what is almost certainly a hwacha and naphta bombs, though I can't quote it, I had Sasinek's translations borrowed and returned it by now. The fragments of it I have do mention mongols "throwing fire on Hungarian wagons" - naphta bombs. I swear on my life I read about fire arrows that panicked Hungarian knights in some original source (probably Salonica), but I can't say where it was with certainty.

The hwacha theory was derived from the fire arrows - using them made little sense at the time, since it was after a rain and fire arrows would do zilch, and they wouldn't really panic Hungarian army - these were veterans, and knew what fire arrows were. Hwacha seems to explain this pretty neatly, especially since we know mongols did have access to it from their earlier sieges against Khwarezmians.

The gunpowder weapons turning awayu Koloman's charge though, I don't remember sourced anywhere. Either my memory of Salonica is fuzzy, or it happened by someone mistranslating or accitentaly combining two separate incidents.

[wolflance]

However as near as I can tell, mounted crossbowmen still generally continued to be seen as a sort of "inferior" light cavalry compared to lancers, even for skirmishing/harassing roles. By the Italian wars, the best light cavalry tended to be from Eastern Europe who had a great deal of experience from constant skirmishing against the turks and tartars. And while many of these horsemen learned to shoot the composite bow as well, they were most prized for their skill with the spear or lance during an ambush or skirmish and their strong lancer tradition. Polish and Cossack cavalry continued to use lances through the napoleonic wars.
Mounted crossbowmen (and harquebusier/pistolier) were invaluable for the sedentary army that lacked a horse archery tradition to have a modicum of mounted missile firepower - they were no substitute for the real deal though.

Lance already enjoyed a sort-of prestigious position among the Europeans, so I am not surprised that they found the lance skill of Poles and Cossacks to be most valuable - even if they had a much more diversed skill set.

Plus, for ambush and raid you would prefer to ride close and chop/impale the victim (likely defenseless peasants etc) anyway.


Lance parries
Juts because you can sometimes parry a lance doesn't mean it's easy. Manuscripts have all sorts of techniques in them, would you claim that parrying a longsword with a dagger is easy, too?
Not saying it was easy, just that:

a) IMO it is about as hard as parrying most other weapons.
b) it was likely actually attempted in the past.
c) I'd say parrying longsword with a dagger is actually HARDER than parrying a couched lance with a short spear.


Original question was about jousting lance against lance charge - parries there are a bad idea, as evidence by no one doing them unless they had no chance with standard charge tactics (way shorter lance as show in Fiore, for example).
Someone mentioned Paulus Hector Mair a few replies back, and I go dug around wiktenauer for his treatise - apparently he taught parrying couched lance with another lance, although not in a way I envisioned it (the parrying knight actually grip his lance with two hand).



Mongols vs knights
We know basically nothing about European horses of the time, but if we go forward to 1400s, knights seemed to favor large, impressive sprinter types for their warhorses (well, large for their time, which means 160 cm for the very largest), while mongols had more of an endurance runners. If this were the case earlier, then knights could well catch a portion of mongol light horse, provided they were well rested, but then swiftly fall behind because there is an awful lot of those light horsemen.

That will be the case if both knight and horse archer are moving in the same direction, i.e. if the knight is chasing after the tail of horse archer, then his sprinter-type horse may well have the acceleration advantage to catch up with the Mongol (disregarding encumbrance difference etc)

More often than not however, when the knight was moving toward the Mongol, the Mongol would move out of the way to the knight's left hand side (since that's how he could aim his bow most conveniently), forcing the knight to change direction, so no "sprinting" happened in the first place.

[Brother Oni]

Historia Salonica does talk about what is almost certainly a hwacha and naphta bombs, though I can't quote it, I had Sasinek's translations borrowed and returned it by now.

If I may make a minor point of order and a clarification:


The hwacha is a 16th Century Korean weapon which is effectively a MRL. The Mongols would have been using a Chinese predecessor, most likely a huo che (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huo_Che) (火 車) or 'fire cart' which was a cart designed to launch multiple fire arrows.
I think you're also confusing an incendiary arrow (ie an arrow dipped in pitch or flammable substance and lit before firing) with a fire arrow (huo jian (火箭) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_arrow)), which is an arrow with a gunpowder charge attached.

[Martin Greywolf]

The hwacha is a 16th Century Korean weapon which is effectively a MRL. The Mongols would have been using a Chinese predecessor, most likely a huo che (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huo_Che) (火 車) or 'fire cart' which was a cart designed to launch multiple fire arrows.


They are korean and chinese name for the same weapon (hell, hwacha means fire cart in korean, too), with only very small differences, but unlike huo che, almost everyone knows what a hwacha is. If we wanted to be proper and correct, we'd have to scour mongolian sources and find what they called them.

Also, hwacha isn't 16th century, first examples of it were probably imported in early 15th or late 14th, being used on a large scale in anti pirate campaign by 1419.




I think you're also confusing an incendiary arrow (ie an arrow dipped in pitch or flammable substance and lit before firing) with a fire arrow (huo jian (火箭) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_arrow)), which is an arrow with a gunpowder charge attached.


No, I'm not. Hwacha/huo che are weapons that can fire multiple types of ammunition, from rockets to simple arrows without any additional bits attached, including incendiary arrows. I don't know if the actual explosive charge at the end porjectiles were in use in time for Sajo.

Identifying what they actually used is not easy, since only phrase I can recall referring to it is "fire arrows", and was written by someone who wasn't present at Sajo. The assumption behind the hwacha theory is that using incendiary arrows wasn't that good of an idea and wouldn't panic Hungarians, therefore it was something like a hwacha projectile, which is spewing fire and/or smoke while in flight no matter what payload it actually has.

[wolflance]

They are korean and chinese name for the same weapon (hell, hwacha means fire cart in korean, too), with only very small differences, but unlike huo che, almost everyone knows what a hwacha is. If we wanted to be proper and correct, we'd have to scour mongolian sources and find what they called them.

Also, hwacha isn't 16th century, first examples of it were probably imported in early 15th or late 14th, being used on a large scale in anti pirate campaign by 1419.
It should be noted that early Korean hwacha was a cannon-cart, closer to an ribauldequin than a Katyusha. It shoots arrows instead of rockets (many early guns shoot arrow, European pot-de-fer is one fine example). Korean did not perfect their rocket tech until much later.

I don’t have the faintest idea about what Mongols might had used, but other siege weapons could have achieve hwacha-like result (i.e. showering flaming arrow-like projectiles on the enemy) without resorting to rocketry.

A modified siege crossbow can launch entire bundle of fire arrows in one go to have similar "visual effect" like hwacha. Using whistling arrow may add to the sound effect for the shock factor. (especially when thousands of arrows are being launched).

[Brother Oni]

They are korean and chinese name for the same weapon (hell, hwacha means fire cart in korean, too), with only very small differences, but unlike huo che, almost everyone knows what a hwacha is. If we wanted to be proper and correct, we'd have to scour mongolian sources and find what they called them.

It's highly likely that the Mongolians would have called them by their Chinese name, as they would have employed Chinese sappers and siege engineers.

While I concede that hwacha were developed earlier than I originally thought, the Chinese weapons should still be called by their Chinese names as that's what they were listed as in the Chinese texts like the Huolong Shenqi Tufa and its descendant, the Huolongjing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huolongjing).

It's like saying the Black Army of Hungary were armed with muskets, when the musket was a later invention and they were actually armed with arquebus, or instead of The Three Musketeers, you have The Three Riflemen.


No, I'm not. Hwacha/huo che are weapons that can fire multiple types of ammunition, from rockets to simple arrows without any additional bits attached, including incendiary arrows. I don't know if the actual explosive charge at the end porjectiles were in use in time for Sajo.

Both the Mongols and Jin used gunpowder weaponry against each other during the 1232 Siege of Kaifeng (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_siege_of_Kaifeng) so it's likely that the Mongols picked up the knowledge during the conquest of the Jin and Western Jia Dynasties, making it not implausible that the Mongolians used gunpowder weapons against the Hungarians in 1241 at Sajo.

The 11th Century military text Wujing Zongyao (武經總要) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wujing_Zongyao) mentions the use of arcuballista with gunpowder charges:

http://zarhad.weebly.com/uploads/8/4/9/4/8494077/1817767_orig.jpg

Based on this and the readiness of the Mongols to adopt new technologies and use of conscripts to fill in capability/skill gaps in their military, I wouldn't be surprised that they did have proper exploding arrows at Sajo. As you've said, the veteran Hungarians wouldn't be surprised by incendiary arrows, but exploding ones would be something they hadn't faced before.

[Galloglaich]

The 11th Century military text Wujing Zongyao (武經總要) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wujing_Zongyao) mentions the use of arcuballista with gunpowder charges:

http://zarhad.weebly.com/uploads/8/4/9/4/8494077/1817767_orig.jpg

Based on this and the readiness of the Mongols to adopt new technologies and use of conscripts to fill in capability/skill gaps in their military, I wouldn't be surprised that they did have proper exploding arrows at Sajo. As you've said, the veteran Hungarians wouldn't be surprised by incendiary arrows, but exploding ones would be something they hadn't faced before.

Makes sense Brother Oni, thanks for all that.

G

[Max_Killjoy]

I almost always feel like I've gained something after I read these threads.

[rrgg]

I was making a very specific comparison, that of late medieval infantry with 17th Century infantry. Making the point that while it was routine for late medieval infantry to perform rapid and complex maneuvers in the field, under fire, while taking casualties and so on, this became far less the case in the 17th Century. So yes I think I can make my case exactly the way I did do so. I also don't think it was a failure of all the other forces necessarily - especially since there were so many from so many different quarters- so much as their less organic composition.

Incidentally, this was true not only for the Swiss. I could easily provide a similar list of definitive examples about Czech infantry across the 15th Century, and with a little more effort (since it's a bit more scattered) about German urban infantry in the same period.

I was citing this example (comparing the relative capabilities of infantry in the two periods) to support my broader point about the differences between how late medieval armies differed from 17th Century armies. But I admit how that translates into relative merits of quality is harder to definitively prove - as you and others have pointed out we don't have a time machine. We can only examine specific data markers. I do think you could make a similar analysis with handgun accuracy but I don't have the time to plunge into that right now. Cavalry would be trickier because 17th Century cavalry had some tools at their disposal (i.e. pistols) that medieval cavalry didn't, and also the best 17th Century cavalry developed some very sophisticated tactics.



What I meant was that just because pikemen of the 17th century tended to be used defensively much more often doesn't prove that they were incapable of more complex maneuvers, especially if they rarely had much reason to do so in the first place. As you mentioned earlier even the swiss stopped using such dynamic tactics when they became mercenaries for other armies. Why would the pikemen need to attack first and wear themselves out when they have so many firearms and artillery to wear the enemy down and cavalry to rapidly exploit any weakness? Why would you need to rely on pikemen for ambitious flanking attacks when musketeers and cavalry are much quicker and much more flexible anyways? Why would you need to ask so much of pikemen who are under heavy fire if you can shield them with a screen of skirmishers first, or better yet just send fresh reserves to relieve them or respond to new threats?

And again when you're looking at contemporary battles like that it tends to just end up showing how the soldiers compare to contemporary threats. Perhaps the enemy infantry just wasn't good enough to respond to the maneuvers of their own, perhaps the cavalry they faced just wasn't very good at exploiting the gaps in a pike formation, perhaps gunfire back then just wasn't as numerous or effective, or perhaps the wind was just blowing the wrong way that day.

---

On the subject of military theorists. They actually do end up driving European warfare in a pretty odd direction toward the end of the 1500s as many of them start to shift from "well, if we can't figure out for sure how to win a battle, maybe we can try to figure out how to avoid losing one."

The concept of a "forward", "main battle", and "rear" wasn't a completely new one, the swiss themselves tended to attack in staggered formations. But the 17th century takes this to a whole new level initially based on some vague descriptions from the ancient romans. Rather than a handful of large squares or continuous lines, the new strategy was to split the pikemen into many small formations in multiple lines, with large gaps between each regiment so that even if one is routed the men don't disorder their neighbors and don't disorder the battalions behind them while fleeing. If a weary enemy manages to overthrow one of the battalions in the front rank they find themselves up against two fresh battalions in the second rank. And if those are overthrown, they would still find themselves up against a third rank, ready to cover the retreat. "By which order it should seeme, fortune to abandon them thrice before that they should be quighte vanquished."

http://forum.milua.org/archive/TactiqueUk_data/Hollande1610.jpg

https://imgur.com/a/B6z1l

Exactly how successful they were at achieving this is perhaps debatable, but a number of historians such as Clifford Rogers have argued that, while it wasn't really that uncommon during the middle ages to see really lopsided battles like Agincourt where the victor manages to inflict casualties at a rate of 50:1 or even 100:1, during the early modern period in europe these sorts of victories become extremely rare, and battles most often leave the "winner" far too bloodied to actually achieve the military goals they wanted to. Especially as professional, state-funded armies grew larger, leaders generally became less and less willing to take major risks with the large, expensive, and well-trained armies that their power relies on.

Now, this type of formation isn't necessarily "better" than the great squares from earlier in the century. And during the second half of the 1500s you can already start to see sort of incremental shifts towards smaller and smaller battalions staggered to allow for interlocking fields of crossfire (https://imgur.com/a/4EpXK). Even the Tercios by the end of the century, while on paper continued to be 3000 strong, would typically only have about half of that in actual strength. As a result the the dutch brigades never really had to go up against anything quite like a full-sized swiss wedge charging at them, and the swiss never really had to go up against anything quite like the dutch brigades. It's sort of fun to speculate about, but in the end it's nothing more than wild guesses.

---


Early Modern armies, by contrast, were increasingly made up of people from lower-status estates who were systematically trained to emulate systems worked out in the earlier periods. As a specific example, Landsknechts were Swabian peasants (mostly) trained by Swiss Reislaufer veterans in a kind of imitation of the Swiss system. Spanish tercios were Spanish peasants (I think a lot from poorer districts like Estremadura etc. trained by Landsknecht veterans in an imitation of the Landsknecht system. With each iteration the systems got a bit simpler, but it was also more predictable and easier to control.


Anyways, going back to the subject of training. The transition isn't nearly as clear as you make it out to be, and I don't think this sort of social training ever really went away. The tercios typically included a significant number of "soldados particular" (gentlemen volunteers) and "soldados reformados" (typically former officers) who typically fought in the positions of honor among the front ranks of the pike squares. According to La Noue, the fact that the Spanish gentry were so eager to serve on foot as pikemen, while the French gentry during the 16th century largely continued to reject ever serving as infantry. As a result french Infantry tended to be mostly shot with a very weak pike component, and largely had to continue relying on the Swiss to form the strength of their armies. Though of course nobility isn't the only thing that determines military quality.

From La Noue:

". . . when any newe Souldier commeth into their bands, the olde doe instruct him in his duetie: if he transgresseth they reproue him: and if he be mean|ly apparelled they helpe him, least he should bee a dishonor to their nation: and he likewise taketh these admonitions as courteouslie, where we doe the contrary. For if a yong man newly come into a companie committeth any folly, they all doe laugh him to scorne: and if he haue any money, he is presently plumed either by play or some other practise: whereby many through this bad beginning doe start backe againe."

". . . if a Souldier among them be hurt, he that hath but one crowne will giue him halfe. Fourthly, if any one doe any notable act, all his companions will praise and honor him, and seeldome doe they through enuy conceale any vertue. This like|wise is good in them, that in their militarie commaundements euen the brauest Souldiers and of greatest calling will obey a sim|ple Serieant: so pliable are they to their officers. As also when they are called to haue any charge, they doe as well keepe their au|thoritie."

In Germany, serving as Landsknecht similarly became very popular, and by the middle of the century a regiment might need to dismiss half of all recruits because so many were eager to join. Though the Landsknechts often end up going in their own completely different direction acting more like independent societies who followed their own laws, elected their own officers. etc.

The point is that this sort of organic military culture and education never really goes away in professional armies as long as at some of the men take soldiering seriously and have battlefield experience. If anything this could sometimes end up being even stronger with soldiers gaining experience everywhere from ireland to the balkans to North Africa and Ireland, and with children born to Landsknecht's wives who grow up knowing nothing but the military life.

In either case humans tend to be pretty good at learning and adapting. If we really did somehow pit 10,000 15th century infantry against 10,000 17th century infantry, then no matter who won the first battle there is a very good chance that the second battle will turn out very differently.

---

Regarding armor, I think we've gotten into a tiff about this before and my position is still more or less the same. It's already sort of unfortunate that the video doesn't give much info about the exact thickness of the armor (though it seems to be a fairly late design with both a breastplate and a reinforcing placcate), or the dimensions of the firearm (it's not entirely clear if that actually is a "musket" and not just an arquebus or caliver), or the and the mass and velocity of the bullet. In particular, it's not clear whether they made a significant effort to replicate the appropriate gunpowder, which is it's own really complicated subject. (just as how you can't take modern steel and call it medieval plate armor, you can't just take modern black powder and call it medieval gunpowder).

People still knew what the difference between iron and steel was in the early modern period. According to Sir Roger Williams, the main problem with all the old-fashioned bills stockpiled by shires and communites across england is that they "are lightlie for the most part all yron, with a little steele or none at all; but they ought to be made of good yron and steele." In England, the Greenwich armory continued to produce high-quality hardened steel armor throughout most of the 16th century, but still no one seems to have really believed that it was practical to make armor "musket proof". In fact, Sir John Smythe had his own personal suit of Greenwich armor which is still at the Royal armory today, yet despite this and him being essentially the poster child for "all of these newfangled guns and pikes and other new inventions are overrated and everyone but me is wrong" he still did not think that fully musket proof armor was practical.


But the Duke at this time being Lieutenant generall and absolute Gouernour in the Lowe Countries (as aforesaid) see∣ing the numbers of Rutters in all Armies encreased, and that the most of those Rutters, as also that manie Captaines and Officers of footmen were armed at the proofe of the Harquebuze, he to the intent to fru∣strate the resistance of their armours, did encrease his numbers of Mosquettiers, the blowes of the bullets of which, no armours wearable can resist.

You can find a lot of good reasons given for why guns hadn't made armor obsolete, but the claim that armor of any sort was actually "musket proof" is not one of them:


Their Horsemen also, and themselues seruing on horsebacke with Launces, or any other weapon, they thinke verie well armed with some kind of head∣peece, a collar, a deformed high & long bellied breast, and a backe at the proofe; but as for pouldrons, vam∣braces, gauntlets, tasses, cuisses, and greues, they hold all for superfluous. The imitating of which their vn∣soldierlike and fond arming, cost that noble & wor∣thie Gentleman Sir Philip Sidney his life, by not wea∣ring his cuisses, who in the opinion of diuers Gentle∣men that sawe him hurt with a Mosquet shot, if he had that day worne his cuisses, the bullet had not bro∣ken his thigh bone, by reason that the chiefe force of the bullet (before the blowe) was in a manner past. Besides that, it is a great encouragement to al forraine Nations their Enemies that are better armed, to en∣counter with them and their soldiers that they see so ill armed. And as their ill arming is an encouraging to the Enemie, so it is vnto them a discouragement, and a great disaduantage. For in case anie horseman or footman piquer so ill armed, should bee wounded on the thigh, or chieflie on the arme or hand, either with Launce, Pique, Sword, or any other weapon, his figh∣ting for that day were marred; besides that, by such wounds receiued, he is put in hazard either to bee slaine or taken. And to the same effect it hath been a maxime in all ages amongst all great Capraines, and skilfull soldiers, that the well arming of horsmen and footmen is a great encouragement vnto them to fight valiantlie; whereas contrariwise being euill armed, it is a great discouragement vnto them encountring with well armed men, and most commonlie through wounds receiued, the verie occasion that doth make them to turne their backes.


. . . for leauing Armes in respect of the furie of the Fireshot which no portable Armor is able to resist, is both friuolous and false. For there are many reasons to vse conuenient Armes, albeit that were true that they profited vs nothing against the Fireshot. For they de∣fend vs from the Launco, from the Pike, the Halberd, the Iauelin, the Dart, the Arrow, and the Sword: yea and from the greater part of the fireshot also that any way endaunger vs in the field: I meane euen the por∣table and indifferent Armor that is made (n•t of Mus∣ket or Caleuer proofe) but onely against the Launce and Pistoll. For the greatest part of the fire∣shot that touch the bodies of any man in the field, graze first and strike vpon the ground: And from all such shot, a meane Armor verie portable and easily to bee worne by any souldier, sufficeth to saue a mans life, as ordinary experience in the field daily teacheth. For indeed to lade men with armes of Musket proofe (I am of their opinion) were not possible to endure, and meere folly to put in vre for many respects: too long to com∣mit to writing in this place. But this light and meane Armour is still to bee continued in all battailes and bat∣talions that shall encounter with Pike or Launce, be∣cause it assureth the life of man greatly from all other weapons, yea and from the most part of the fireshott also.


in matters of armes. For where they had some reason in respect of the violence of harquebuzes & dagges to make their armor thicker and of better proofe than before, they haue now so farre exceeded, that most of thē haue laden themselues with stithies in liew of clothing their bodies with armour. Lyke∣wise all the beautie of the horseman, is conuerted into deformi∣tie. His head peece resembleth an •ron pot. On the left arme hee weareth a great gantlet vp to his elbowe, and on the right a poul∣dron, that shal scarce couer his shoulder: and ordinarily they weare no Tases: also in liew of Cassockes, a Mandilion, and no Speare. Our men of armes in ye time of K. Henry made a farre fayrer shew, wearing their Sallet, Pouldrons, Tases, Cassocke, Speare, and Banderol, neither was their armour so heauie, but they might wel∣beare it 24. houres, where those that are now worne are so waigh∣tie, that the peize of them will benumme a Gentlemans shoulders of 35. yeres of age. My selfe haue seene the late Lord of Eguillie, and the knight of Puigreffier, honourable old men, remain a whole daie armed at all assaies, marching in the face of their companies, where now a yong Captaine will hardlie continue two houres in that state.


True it is, it is necessarie, for the shocke of a horse to weare a little Cuisset to co∣uer the knee, so ought al the Launtiers to be. We know it by experience; let a horseman be armed, the forepart of his curaces of a light pistoll proofe, his head peece the like, two lames of his pouldrons the like, two or three lames of his tasses of the like proofe, the rest I meane his tasses, cuisses, pouldrons, vambraces, and gauntlets, bee also so light as you can deuise.

I'm pretty certain that even in the 15th century no armor was completely impervious to all man-portable firearms (https://imgur.com/a/HvmUM). The main difference seems to be that people generally become more familiar with firearms, how to make powder more consistent and more powerful for any given weapon, how to make gun barrels lighter and more portable while being less likely to explode under high pressure (interestingly, you sometimes see firearms made in former major armoring centers like Milan start to become very highly regarded by the end of the century), etc.

Taking a quick tanget about leather armor for a moment. Tanned leather was sometimes used as a defensive armor in the late 16th and 17th century, and experiments today can show that tanned leather is fairly light and flexibile and can offer quite a bit of resistance to cuts and stabs compared to materials like layered cloth. So why didn't soldiers in the middle ages wear leather gloves much more often? Why wouldn't the swiss at least wear leather trousers to protect their legs if even a fairly minor cut has the chance to put them out of action or worse, become infected? It might be that the swiss just didn't know how to make tanned leather into armor back then, or maybe it's just that choice of armor and weapons in any period is to some degree influenced by culture, fashion, tradition, and "eh, that's good enough" rather than pure min-maxing logic.

While the armor used during the early modern period was generally weaker relative to thickness than that of the high medieval period, the process used to create it did typically produce wrought iron with a very low slag content. So it still would have been a fair bit tougher than most medieval iron. It also may have made the armor much easier to decorate.

---

I don't think I've ever heard of a single breastplate that weighs 60 lbs. 60-70 lbs seems to be about where full suits of surviving cuirasser armor top out when complete with limb armor, helmet, and reinforcing placcate attached.

https://i.imgur.com/oCxZtwH.gif

John Cruso's description of a lancer's/cuirasser's armor: "His arms were a close casque or head-piece, gorget, breast, pistoll proof (as all the cuirasse in every piece of it) and calli∣ver proof (by addition of the placcate) the back, pouldrous, vanbraces, 2 gauntlets, tassets, cuissets, culets, or guard-de-rein; all fitting to his bodie: A good sword (which was to be very stiffe, cutting, and sharp pointed) with girdle and hangers, fo fastened upon his cuirasse as he might readily draw it: a buffe coat with long skirts to weare between his armour and his cloathes"

If anything it seems to have been much easier to put a cuirassier in very heavy armor than a heavy lancer once the former started to take over the heavy cavalry role. A cuirasser's horse needed to be large and strong to support the rider and his heavy armor, but because he relied more on his sword, pistol, and dense formation in a melee it didn't need to be quite so speedy. A heavy lancer's horse on the other hand needed to be just as large and strong as a cuirassier's, while also being extremely fast like the small, nimble horses used by the mounted harquebusiers. Horses like this existed but were extremely expensive and increasingly rare, especially during long periods of extending conflict like the religious wars in france. As noted by Blaise de Montluc:



One thing I perceive, that we very much lose the use of our Launces, either for want of good horses, of which methinks the Race visibly decayes, or because we are not so dextrous in that kind of fight as our Predecessors were; for I see we quit them for the German pi∣stols, and indeed fighting in gross Battalions, these are much more ready than Launces are; for if they be not fought in file the Launceers are apt to encumber one another; and also that open kind of fight is not so safe and certain as in close Bodies.

---

On the subject of mounted crossbowmen yeah I should have clarified That I think a combination of weapons with some horsemen using lances and some shooting bows or crossbows from horseback was potentially extremely effective. From what I can find about small-unit cavalry tactics from the pike and shot period they very much tend to stress the use of combined arms and reserves. If you had one company of mounted harquebusiers and another of made of lancers or pistoliers you could send the harquebusiers to charge forward while the heavier horsemen remain a good distance behind. If the harquebusers are replused or deliver a massive volley using their "wenden" or "wheeling" maneuver and retreat, then they can withdraw to safety while the lancers or cuirassiers prevent any heavier horsemen from pursuing. Which then gives the harquebusiers plenty of room to reform and prepare to charge again. Even if it's a small troupe of entirely harquebusiers out on patrol, Cruso recommends keeping a small number of the "best mounted" well behind under a good officer to serve as a rear guard. If the main body of horse gets repulsed, then this reserve is supposed to be able to somehow stop the enemy horsemen from pursuing and then escape without any casualties themselves due to their speed and small numbers.

What it mostly comes down to though is that I think King Dom was right in that when it comes to single combat by far the most important factor is riding skill, essentially the ability of a horseman to ride at full gallop, strike his lance, swing his sword, aim his bow, wear heavy armour, and throw his spear without losing his balance or falling off his horse. Oh and his ability to do all that while looking cool in the process (there seems to be quite a few chapters on that).

[Galloglaich]

Rrgg, I think you are reaching a little bit, but more importantly you are definitely missing the point I was trying to make, in spite of considerable effort to get it accross.

You can speculate all day long about why 17th Century pikemen didn't move around on the battlefield but the notion that they had no need to isn't very convincing to me.

17th Century armor was often as much as 6mm thick. 15th Century armor is typically 3-4mm at it's thickest.

I think you and I may just have to agree to disagree. Hopefully others reading the thread did learn something.

G

[rrgg]

Yeah, I'm kind of getting the sense that that's the case. I just don't think you've managed to make a very good comparison and I don't think that "the ability to make nearly instantaneous decisions on the battlefield to split forces, perform flanking maneuvers, coordinate with allies and so on" is a very useful metric. Anyone can make instantaneous decisions or walk from one place to another. What matters is making the right decisions in the first place, or at least knowing how to follow the lead of someone who's making the right decision.

Regarding armor, some armors during the 15th century and earlier could reach 3 mm or more at their thickest but many were closer to 2 mm, even dropping to <1mm in many places. Many 15th century armors were also meant to incorporate mail or very thick padding as well which would have further limited the thickness of plate which could be worn comfortably.

No armor was "bullet proof", just "bullet resistant", and I highly doubt that the armor of most 15th century knights as "bullet resistant" as the 6mm cuirasser breastplates worn in the 17th century when guns were a much more common threat, even if the latter is of a lower quality metal.

[Galloglaich]

Yeah, I'm kind of getting the sense that that's the case. I just don't think you've managed to make a very good comparison and I don't think that "the ability to make nearly instantaneous decisions on the battlefield to split forces, perform flanking maneuvers, coordinate with allies and so on" is a very useful metric. Anyone can make instantaneous decisions or walk from one place to another. What matters is making the right decisions in the first place, or at least knowing how to follow the lead of someone who's making the right decision.

You are right, any one individual can make instantaneous decisions to make flanking attacks or 'walk from one place to another' the challenge is doing this as a unit while maintaining sufficient cohesion to resist cavalry attacks. Swiss infantry was capable of this, most 17th Century were not.

Your contention that pikes didn't need to move around on the battlefield in the 17th Century because muskets, is ridiculous- Swiss pikemen coordinated closely with their marksmen who moved with them (and out ahead) and their gunners played a key role in several of the battles I mentioned above. Of course this is also doubly true for the Czechs and Germans, including Landsknechts.



Regarding armor, some armors during the 15th century and earlier could reach 3 mm or more at their thickest but many were closer to 2 mm, even dropping to <1mm in many places. Many 15th century armors were also meant to incorporate mail or very thick padding as well which would have further limited the thickness of plate which could be worn comfortably.

No armor was "bullet proof", just "bullet resistant", and I highly doubt that the armor of most 15th century knights as "bullet resistant" as the 6mm cuirasser breastplates worn in the 17th century when guns were a much more common threat, even if the latter is of a lower quality metal.

You should read Alan Williams. And watch that Nova video again.

G

[Martin Greywolf]

Both the Mongols and Jin used gunpowder weaponry against each other during the 1232 Siege of Kaifeng (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_siege_of_Kaifeng) so it's likely that the Mongols picked up the knowledge during the conquest of the Jin and Western Jia Dynasties, making it not implausible that the Mongolians used gunpowder weapons against the Hungarians in 1241 at Sajo.

The question was never whether mongols had gunpowder weapons - we have enough records from their Khwarezmian campaign to know that they did and used them, the question is what their raiding campaign brought to Europe. One tidbit that gets forgotten when you look at Polish-Hungarian campaign is that unlike a lot of earlier mongol conquests, it was never meant to actually take the land, just plunder it. There may have been some plans to use these initial plundering campaigns to prepare for conquest later on, but collase of Mongol empire brought a stop to them.

The fire arrows in the text may not acutally be rockets, they could also possibly be arrows with gunpowder charges attached, or the whole panicking as a result of fire was added in attempt to save Hungarian noble's reputation, the bottom line is we can't know for sure. Personally, I'm leaning towards it being gunpowder rockets.

As a last interesting bit, english books often mention that Hungary employed some mongols at this time, perhaps with some gunpowder of their own - this is simply wrong. Hungary did have Cuimans on their side, but the relations fell apart after a lot of Hungarian population acccused them of being in league with mongols, or just mistook them for mongols. No chance of gunpowder there. To be fair, the period sources themselves have trouble distinguishing between nomad tribes, sometimes going as far as to call them all Huns.

[Galloglaich]

The question was never whether mongols had gunpowder weapons - we have enough records from their Khwarezmian campaign to know that they did and used them, the question is what their raiding campaign brought to Europe. One tidbit that gets forgotten when you look at Polish-Hungarian campaign is that unlike a lot of earlier mongol conquests, it was never meant to actually take the land, just plunder it. There may have been some plans to use these initial plundering campaigns to prepare for conquest later on, but collase of Mongol empire brought a stop to them.

The fire arrows in the text may not acutally be rockets, they could also possibly be arrows with gunpowder charges attached, or the whole panicking as a result of fire was added in attempt to save Hungarian noble's reputation, the bottom line is we can't know for sure. Personally, I'm leaning towards it being gunpowder rockets.
.

Like I said, we don't really know. You make some plausible suggestions here, as does Brother Oni, but at this point we are just guessing. I suspect we may learn more as more Mongol records surface or are translated / transcribed.

I've only ever seen some fragments of their various histories - it seems like there is a lot more out there to read, sadly I don't read Mongol or Cuman. The Italians also have a fair amount of data on them from the 14th Century onward (from books like the Pratica Della Mercatura (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratica_della_mercatura) and so on) but similarly, only a small part of that has been translated or transcribed.

One quibble - I don't think the Mongols ever truly collapsed or went away. There were periodic 'contractions' during various interregnums and the giant, massive unified Horde of Ghenghiz Khan didn't last forever, but the Golden Horde and later, the Crimean Khanate remained very dangerously hostile neighbors cheek by Jowl with Latin Europe (and slave masters of Russia) for centuries. You also had newer mighty warlords like Tamarlane arise who were if anything more brutal than Ghenghiz Khan was.

G

[rrgg]

You should read Alan Williams. And watch that Nova video again.

G

Alan Williams is in the Nova video, explaining that nothing would have protected against a musketeer at close range.

https://youtu.be/YNhh1yDpOEk?t=39m32s

My guess is that the show was instead trying to simulate a caliver, which was far more common than the musket on 1580s battlefields anyways, but didn't want to spend time going into detail about elizabethan terminology and explaining that just because something looks like a musket doesn't mean it actually was a musket.

Williams reaches similar conclusions in The Knight and the Blast Furnace. Firearms improved over time and over the course of the 15th and 16th century armorers responded by making armor either harder or thicker. He concludes that in the late 16th century, a bullet striking a 3mm plate made of **** steel (the highest quality) at 45 degrees would require around 3000 joules to penetrate. Full-sized muskets however were capable of achieving much more energy than that.

[Brother Oni]

Like I said, we don't really know. You make some plausible suggestions here, as does Brother Oni, but at this point we are just guessing. I suspect we may learn more as more Mongol records surface or are translated / transcribed.

Unfortunately, this is going to be tricky as the Mongols weren't the best historians, so we're highly reliant on the Yuan Dynasty Chinese chroniclers.

However the Yuan Dynasty can be a bit of a political hot potato; for example, the first (posthumous) Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, Fatian Qiyun Shengwu sounds clearly Chinese, but what happens if he's better known as Genghis Khan? By the time we get to his grandson and the actual founder of the Yuan Dynasty, Emperor Shengde Shengong Wenwu (aka Kublai Khan), are they still Mongolian or Chinese?

Although Mongolia is dwarfed politically, military and economically by China, it's still enough of a touchy subject that can't be discussed on this board.


He concludes that in the late 16th century, a bullet striking a 3mm plate made of **** steel (the highest quality) at 45 degrees would require around 3000 joules to penetrate. Full-sized muskets however were capable of achieving much more energy than that.

Wait, 3kJ? NATO 5.56mm only gets 1.8kJ and the NATO 7.62mm used in sniper rifles would just about penetrate comfortably (3.3-3.5 kJ).

[Max_Killjoy]

I still have the NOVA documentary saved on DVR, at this point I'm going to rewatch it tonight to refresh my memory.

[Galloglaich]

Alan Williams is in the Nova video, explaining that nothing would have protected against a musketeer at close range.

https://youtu.be/YNhh1yDpOEk?t=39m32s

My guess is that the show was instead trying to simulate a caliver, which was far more common than the musket on 1580s battlefields anyways, but didn't want to spend time going into detail about elizabethan terminology and explaining that just because something looks like a musket doesn't mean it actually was a musket.

You are only "guessing" that because it doesn't fit your expectations. You want to bend the data to fit your expectations, but it works a lot better in the long run if you do it the other way around. I think the people involved knew the difference.



Williams reaches similar conclusions in The Knight and the Blast Furnace. Firearms improved over time and over the course of the 15th and 16th century armorers responded by making armor either harder or thicker. He concludes that in the late 16th century, a bullet striking a 3mm plate made of **** steel (the highest quality) at 45 degrees would require around 3000 joules to penetrate. Full-sized muskets however were capable of achieving much more energy than that.

Rrrg, as usual you are confused here and trying to change the parameters of what I actually said so as to win an argument.

If you actually read, as opposed to skimmed through Knight and the Blast furnace, you would know that per Williams tables based on the tests they did, there was plenty of armor around more than capable of resisting all firearms in the medieval period.

3000 joules, incidentally, is about the energy of a typical 16th Century musket, at the muzzle, which is to say, at even the closest band of normal firing range they would have a hard time penetrating 3mm-4mm of **** steel, although it doesn't take that much with iron *(i.e. effectively, armor-piercing) ammunition.

From Chapter 9 of Williams' book, p. 942 has a table stating that a 1.9mm wrought iron plate requires 900J from a steel (or cast iron) ball or 1500J from a lead ball to defeat it. Good quality steel armor can resist about double this energy. On p. 948 Williams reckons that an average quality 4mm cuirassier's breastplate would need 2000J to defeat it.

There were very few, if any Late Medieval firearms which could generate 2,000J

Per Williams:

From p. 945
a Hussite 15th C handgun with serpentine powder produces 500-1000J at the muzzle.

early 16th C arquebus with serpentine powder produces 1300J at the muzzle
the same weapon with corned powder produces 1750J
later 16th C musket with serpentine powder produces 2300J
the same weapon with corned powder produces 3000 J

Which is why we can see the result from the NOVA video is not unexpected. The way they made the armor in the NOVA video, incidentally, was the way armor was made in Augsburg in 1470 for ordinary soldiers at a cost well within the range affordable by regular artisans or wealthy peasants.

I would also go so far as to say that top quality late medieval armor of **** (tempered medium carbon steel) would probably stop a modern handgun like a .357, assuming using regular lead or copper jacketed lead ammunition.

What no armor could stop, however, and what really made armor start to decline (aside from the Socio-Economic reasons I have alluded to) is cannon. No armor can stop a cannon ball, therefore armor could no longer really offer the kind of relative invulnerability that it once did on the battlefield. This is one of the reasons why you see the higher nobility gradually removing themselves from the front line in the Early Modern period.

Muskets, which appear (at first in small numbers) in the Early Modern period, were specifically designed, at least originally, to be armor-piercing weapons, in fact they are analogous to earlier and more cumbersome "wall guns" and "trestle guns" and so on used in the medieval period for example by the Czechs and Germans (and Swiss and Italians and Flemish and others) but the best armor still seems to have protected reasonably well against them. Later muskets were not nearly as powerful.

Also we are talking here about the thickest parts of the armor on the front of the helmet or cuirass. Reiter cavalry in the 17th Century were trained to shoot the thighs or faces, or the side of the horse armor of their opponents, ideally at 'almost touching' range.



By the late 16th Century the original Late Medieval armor industries in Augsburg, Nuremberg, Brescia and Milan had dramatically shrunk, if not collapsed, and were no longer making armor for middle class consumption. Many of the armorer families had moved to places like Innsbruck or Greenwich to work in Royal foundries to make armor for the elites. So that bullet proof armor which was affordable for a master mason or an affluent farmer in 1470 was pretty much only made for Dukes or Kings in the 17th Century.

The typical armor being made in the 17th Century was made out of effectively wrought iron, and could be as much as 8mm thick (per Williams). Not because that worked better, because the industry to make tempered steel armor on any kind of large scale no longer existed. Per Alan Williams (p. 948 "Increasing the thickness from 2 to 3.1mm will double the resistance, and have a similar effect to the use of hardened steel at a fraction of the cost.") But of course it means the soldier has to carry around much more weight. This seemed to be directly related to some extent to the old Masters dying out - Anton Peffenhauser was one of the last of the old Augsburg Masters working in Greenwich, his death in 1603 coincides pretty well to the last known attempt at heat treated armor to come out of that facility in 1612.



Finally, I would like to make a general suggestion on research. I know there is a certain appeal to Early Modern military manuals- I like to read them too and many of them are readily accessible and relatively easy to understand from a modern point of view - but I think if you want to understand the middle ages at all, you would do better to read stuff from the middle ages. And if you want to understand what happened in battles, you are better off reading chronicles, letters and personal accounts from people directly involved than manuals of theory in general (particularly ones from 200 years after the fact).

Modern archeological / scientific / empirical analysis like that of Mr. Williams is also very helpful of course as a way to verify the earlier sources.

It's a lot harder to make sense of medieval sources, both because far fewer of them are transcribed let alone translated into easily accessible modern languages, but also because their world is so very different from ours. Much different than the Early Modern period is and also in many respects, much different than the Roman or Ancient Greek. Their language is often very easy to read, it's if anything easier to follow (translations of) Machiavelli or Piccolomini or Jan Dlugosz than it is to follow John Smythe, at least for me. It's just that the assumptions they make, the world they refer to and come from, it's wildly complex and in a word, alien to our world. But it's also fascinating and rewarding, not least of which it's not just armor that they did well in that era - so much of art, architecture, chemistry and a million other things in our world today come out of that strange universe of the Late Medieval which we sometimes (I think misleadingly, in many cases) call the Renaissance.

But if you are interested in this stuff, it's worth it to make the effort. More and more medieval sources are becoming available and after you have read a few of them, the patterns start to make sense. I think you'll find so do many things about that period that you find frustrating now because they don't fit into the Early Modern patterns.

G

[Galloglaich]

In other words TL : DR , take the plunge, walk through the looking glass - it's incredibly rewarding and if you can figure out rules to an RPG or 'canon' for some complicated fantasy / sci fi genre book series, you can (eventually) figure out medieval sources.

But leave your expectations behind, everything we "know" about the Middle Ages is wrong. And as a wise friend of mine once reminded me, the past is a foreign country, and we must try not to offend the locals.

G

[Lvl 2 Expert]

the past is a foreign country

With an outdated military and huge oil reserves (https://xkcd.com/1191/).

[Galloglaich]

With an outdated military and huge oil reserves (https://xkcd.com/1191/).

Hahahahaha yeah but what happens when they get a hold of a few of our machineguns and tanks?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Hahahahaha yeah but what happens when they get a hold of a few of our machineguns and tanks?

Or worse, our genealogical records. "Sarah Connor?"

[rrgg]

Hi Galloglaich,

I assure you that I'm not confused, I haven't been moving goalposts to win an argument, I haven't been over-relying on primary sources or modern testing, and I'm not the one who posted a youtube video about a suit of armor made at Greenwich, England in 1588 for Lord Compton (https://youtu.be/YNhh1yDpOEk?t=23m6s) (**** quality, according to Alan Williams), which features two overlapping breastplates designed specifically to improve protection against firearms rather than to increase flexibility, and then began implying that this test provides rock-solid proof for your assumptions about armor in the 15th century.

To be absolutely clear, I do not think you are dumb. I think you are an extremely reasonable and well-informed individual who I have learned a lot from over the years, which is why I've kept coming back to try to better explain some of my main points rather than giving up to do something else because I hate typing and it's just a stupid internet argument.

So, will you please follow your own advice and take a moment to put aside your own preconceptions as best you can while you hear me out? I'm putting aside all the other stuff and I just want to say something about early modern guns and armor in the for now.

There's a lot we don't know about medieval armour, but at the very least we have some surviving examples to study and historians like Alan Williams have managed to use metallurgical analysis to teach us a ton about how many of these armors were made and how well they may have protected against various sorts of attacks.

However we still have no way whatsoever to go back in time and measure how fast a particular bullet was traveling during this period. The first time people were able to accurately measure and record the instantaneous muzzle velocity of a projectile was in the mid 18th century with Benjamin Robbins' invention of the ballistic pendulum. In New Principles of Gunnery he mentions testing the velocity of a .75 caliber musket loaded with "about half" the ball's weight of powder. At 25 feet from the muzzle he was able to calculate a velocity of 1700 fps. Even with the 32 g bullet from the Brown Bess that would translate into about 4,300 Joules of KE, or enough to mince almost everything from Williams' tables (assuming that a soldier's powder wasn't somewhat damp at the time and he didn't spill any of it while loading). Later experimentation with the pendulum at England's Royal Powder Mills and elsewhere were able to come up with new powder that was twice as powerful by the end of the century and the size of the cartridges given to musketeers were reduced accordingly. American Experiments (https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1646AAAAcAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=musket+ballistics&ots=KHVmCqZXuo&sig=MDY96vRHQeI-V0AmrM8GZV5xgIA#v=onepage&q&f=false) involving different powders and quantities during the 19th century continued to aim for an average velocity of 1500 fps with smoothbore muskets, and suggest that that the powders used could sometimes even outperform modern black powders. Tests involving a "common rifle" firing a round ball wrapped in a tight-fitting greased patch showed muzzle velocities of around 2000 fps.

So the question is where does this leave earlier powder? As you know it's dangerous to assume a linear pattern of incremental improvement. So assumptions like the one from that NOVA documentary where they claim the bullet would be fired at around "1000 feet per second" should probably be taken as fairly conservative estimates. Especially when 16th century small arms tended to have a fairly long barrel relative to their caliber and use a much higher powder:lead ratio than many later guns. Again we only have a really vague idea of exactly what taste an early gunner was looking for when he touched various ingredients to his tongue to test the quality, how he determined whether the powder corns had the right texture or if they needed to be beaten more, which woods made the best charcoal and whether they should be cooked in containers of iron or clay, how well he understood the slight variations which made a powder ideal for a musket vs carbine vs a pistol, etc. We also don't know how good a particular soldier was at keeping his powder dry and well stored, how well he seated the bullet and the powder with his ramrod, or where exactly he drew the line between raw power, recoil, and personal safety when measuring his charges.

This isn't nit-picky rivet-counting if it could potentially mean the difference between the bullet dropping to the ground after 3 feet or reaching 2000 fps when it reaches the end of the barrel. Tests like the one in this Nova documentary which show just how difficult piercing 16th century armors could be, when compared the many contemporary voices who are so pessimistic about the ability of armor to withstand gunfire, at times even from arquebuses and pistols, claim that newer armors are better at resisting firearms than those from just decades earlier, and that firearms could penetrate far better than any older weapons such as longbows, crossbows, maces, or lances (though Roger Williams claimed that a couched lance was about on par with with a pistol as long as the lancers "know how to breake" well). Sure, it might just be that every single one of these authors was wrong and had no idea what they were talking about, but all things considered I think it much better supports the conclusion that early firearms were often much more powerful than typically assumed.

-

As a quick aside about the size of muskets,

The usual number I hear quoted is that the 16th century "Spanish" musket fired a bullet weighing about 2 ounces, or 8 bore. Although it might be that many muskets made outside of spain by the end of the century had already dropped to between 8-12 bore at the end of the century. Early in the Italian wars Maximilian apparently had a number of arquebus du crocs bored to fire 6 bullets in a pound of lead and each light enough to be carried by a very strong man.

In the early 1600s the spanish had switched to a musket which fit an 8 bore bullet but fired a 10 bore bullet rolling in. While the dutch and many other nations eventually adopted a standard musket of 10 bore, with a 12-bore rolling in. When they eventually became standard the british brown bess used a barrel of 11-bore, 14 rolling in, while the french fusil was eventually standardized at about 14-bore, about 17 or 18 rolling in.

So while they do become smaller and lighter over time, the actual caliber still remains a bit larger than most of the estimates I've found for 16th century arquebuses and calivers, which tend to range anywhere from 1 oz to less than .5 oz for the bullet.

[Carl]

Wait, 3kJ? NATO 5.56mm only gets 1.8kJ and the NATO 7.62mm used in sniper rifles would just about penetrate comfortably (3.3-3.5 kJ).

Surface area and material composition.

A lead musket ball is >50 cal size and deforms very easily because its lead.

As such it has to penetrate a larger area whilst wasting more energy on the bullet, (i.e. the musket ball), undergoing rapid disintegration prior to penetration.

[Vinyadan]

When I tried calculating it in the past, a "perfect" charge by a knight would inflict 9 kJ on whoever was at the end of the lance. Does it double when jousting?

I tried calculating it again now, assuming 800 kg total for the horse + knight, at 20 km/h, I get 12 kJ. If there really were warhorses around 950 kg, + 80 kg of naked knight, + let's say 60 kg of equipment, I get 1090 kg total, and something like 16 kJ.

Are these results likely? Or am I messing up? Of course, not all of this energy would be transmitted to the target, and knight+horse aren't a single part, so that has to count for something. Someone noticed that Polish lancers would lather adopt hollow lances, which makes them more robust and allows to transmit more energy before they snap.

Jousting must really have been a great show, however.

[Max_Killjoy]

Surface area and material composition.

A lead musket ball is >50 cal size and deforms very easily because its lead.

As such it has to penetrate a larger area whilst wasting more energy on the bullet, (i.e. the musket ball), undergoing rapid disintegration prior to penetration.

Indeed.

There's so much more to penetration and damage inflicted than simply the energy involved.

[rrgg]

When I tried calculating it in the past, a "perfect" charge by a knight would inflict 9 kJ on whoever was at the end of the lance. Does it double when jousting?

I tried calculating it again now, assuming 800 kg total for the horse + knight, at 20 km/h, I get 12 kJ. If there really were warhorses around 950 kg, + 80 kg of naked knight, + let's say 60 kg of equipment, I get 1090 kg total, and something like 16 kJ.

Are these results likely? Or am I messing up? Of course, not all of this energy would be transmitted to the target, and knight+horse aren't a single part, so that has to count for something. Someone noticed that Polish lancers would lather adopt hollow lances, which makes them more robust and allows to transmit more energy before they snap.

Jousting must really have been a great show, however.

Tobias Capwell did some experiments on this recently and came up with the equivalent of 90-200 Joules without an arret. with the arret 200 J was regularly attained all the way up to 250 J, limited by the lance breaking. He suspected that with a stronger lance it would be possible to reach 300 J.


https://www.academia.edu/33789994/AN_EXPERIMENTAL_INVESTIGATION_OF_LATE_MEDIEVAL_COM BAT_WITH_THE_COUCHED_LANCE



Indeed.

There's so much more to penetration and damage inflicted than simply the energy involved.

That's an extremely good point. Even when it comes to comparing round bullets energy is a very rough approximation. A larger, heavier ball is going to have more energy and more momentum, but it needs to punch a much larger hole to penetrate. This is another one of the problems with some of the tables in Williams' book. The one on page 928 which gets posted to internet forums a lot in particular had its numbers extrapolated from experiments against a 2mm mild steel plate, so it didn't actually involve shooting at 3mm or 4 mm of armor and it relies on assuming that bullets of different calibers behave similarly with the same amount of energy.

https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17669/22312

Here's the English summary of Peter Krenn's tests, which Williams also relied on heavily for his information. It's still not clearly explained how they came up with their various charges, but if you go through and calcuate the various kinetic energies at both 30m and 100m you can find quite a few places where the energy and penetration of mild steel don't match up with Williams' table. You can even find places where the penetration of mild steel doesn't match up with the penetration of wood for the same energy.

[rrgg]

To be honest, I haven't actually been reading that much about the middle ages lately. I've mostly been sticking to early modern with an emphasis on elizabethan england for the most part. And quite frankly it is weird, and not that well understood if you look at it with a lot of modern or medieval expectations. If anyone's interested in some reading I'd highly recommend Mark Fissel's English Warfare 1511-1642 which gets into a lot of the utter jackassery english knights and officers were still getting up to on the continent.

Sir Philip Sidney was far from the only nobleman to put himself in danger without putting on his armor. Sir Edward Norris during the bungled invasion of spain in 1589 was nearly killed by a sword cut to the head when he joined a cavalry charge into a massive spanish encampment without his helmet, he was then saved by the intervention of his brother John, the general, who it turns out hadn't put on any armor at all but nevertheless jumped into the fray. You also have everything from officers and gentlemen demanding that they be given the honor of being the first over the breach in the face of musket fire, artillery and grenades, to challenging each other to a fencing match on top of the trenches with hundreds of catholic soldiers taking pot shots at them. All this in spite of repeated letters from Elizabeth demanding that they knock it off.

[Carl]

That's an extremely good point. Even when it comes to comparing round bullets energy is a very rough approximation. A larger, heavier ball is going to have more energy and more momentum, but it needs to punch a much larger hole to penetrate. This is another one of the problems with some of the tables in Williams' book. The one on page 928 which gets posted to internet forums a lot in particular had its numbers extrapolated from experiments against a 2mm mild steel plate, so it didn't actually involve shooting at 3mm or 4 mm of armor and it relies on assuming that bullets of different calibers behave similarly with the same amount of energy.

https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17669/22312

Here's the English summary of Peter Krenn's tests, which Williams also relied on heavily for his information. It's still not clearly explained how they came up with their various charges, but if you go through and calculate the various kinetic energies at both 30m and 100m you can find quite a few places where the energy and penetration of mild steel don't match up with Williams' table. You can even find places where the penetration of mild steel doesn't match up with the penetration of wood for the same energy.



Indeed its a very complex subject, in a system where everything deforms equally regardless of musket ball dimensions you can roughly say the penetration energy required is proportional to the average mass behind any ne section of the maximum contact area, the problem of course is that this isn't true in full because differing sizes will produce differing deformation characteristics. In simple terms a small musket ball will deform less before disintegrating completely, but will take less energy to cause complete disintegration. In addition a smaller musket ball is likely to each the point of complete disintegration faster in timescale terms. This makes calculating penetration purely from energy a very inexact science.

[jojo]

Speaking, anecdotally, the ability or inability of a bullet to penetrate armor doesn't have a direct relationship to it's lethality.

This is coming from my experience as a combat medic and first responder.

[khadgar567]

Speaking, anecdotally, the ability or inability of a bullet to penetrate armor doesn't have a direct relationship to it's lethality.

This is coming from my experience as a combat medic and first responder.
since we have a expert can you explain please mate? how common lead bullet and regular 9mm bullet effects the the legality.

[Deepbluediver]

since we have a expert can you explain please mate? how common lead bullet and regular 9mm bullet effects the the legality.
I'm not an expert but I'm guessing that the ideal bullet for penetrating armor is hard and fast, while the bullets that cause the most damage to human tissue are slow and soft, so they mushroom or fragment inside the body. There's probably some sort of correlation between armor-penetration and killing-power, though maybe not as strong as most people expect.

[Brother Oni]

since we have a expert can you explain please mate? how common lead bullet and regular 9mm bullet effects the the legality.

As I understand it, the traits for good armour penetration capabilities are the opposite for what you want for lethality.

For good armour penetration, you want a hard bullet with a small cross section that retains its shape when it hit something hard.
For lethality, you want a large round which disperses as much of its energy as quickly as possible when it hits the target, preferably also fragmenting to maximise the hole made and the damage to internal organs and structures.

People are very soft when compared to steel, so something that retains its shape through armour plate tends to overpenetrate squishy people, leaving small wound tracts with less damage than expected. This was a reported issue during the recent Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts where hits from NATO 5.56 rounds were not incapacitating enemy combatants quickly enough.
Steel is very hard compared to people, so a soft bullet will just impact on or slide off the surface, expending all its energy and fail to penetrate through to injure the person underneath.

There are some subtleties involved here with modern materials (eg kevlar is a soft armour and uses that to absorb all the energy from an incoming round) and technologies (eg HESH shells use the shockwave propagated through the armour plate to cause spalling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spall) on the other side to kill the crew or damage internal components), but by and large, this generalisation is true.

Ideally, you want to hit that sweet spot where a round will penetrate but slow down enough to cause maximum damage to the target - this is why exit wounds are generally much larger than the entry wound. The issue is that what works for a certain thickness of armour at one distance and angle, may not work for a different distance/angle or for thicker armour at the same distance and angle.

[jojo]

since we have a expert can you explain please mate? how common lead bullet and regular 9mm bullet effects the the legality.

Sure, I'll certainly do my best. Clinical/technical terms greatly aid with understanding so I'll identify the relevant ones as I employ them.

Material composition of the projectile (bullet) is a relatively accurate predictive factor for the types of trauma (injury) it will cause to a target. A lead projectile is very soft, as a result of this it will deform more easily. This in turn means that, even at high velocities, it can't be expected to penetrate armor well but that it can be expected to cause greater amounts of soft tissue damage (bigger entry wounds) without "over-penetrating" (no exit wound.)

Most modern bullets are "jacketed" in one way or another, which allows the core - usually lead - to maintain it's structural integrity and allow it to transfer more energy deeper into the body.

Some projectiles, like "hollow-points" are designed to deform more greatly on impact.

All of these are going to cause greater trauma to a human body than they will to any sort of rigid armor (plate for instance.)

Projectiles which are designed to penetrate armor on the other hand generally can be expected to cause significantly less soft tissue damage (smaller entry and exit wounds.) @Deepbluediver sums this up adequately:


I'm not an expert but I'm guessing that the ideal bullet for penetrating armor is hard and fast, while the bullets that cause the most damage to human tissue are slow and soft, so they mushroom or fragment inside the body. There's probably some sort of correlation between armor-penetration and killing-power, though maybe not as strong as most people expect.

In addition to providing a serviceable summary @Deepbluediver provides a nice segue into the effects of velocity. Higher velocity projectiles of any material composition are better at penetrating armor than lower velocity projectiles. This makes them more likely to pass through the target although it also introduces fragmentation and tumble, which are concepts that we concern ourselves with a good bit, particularly from the military perspective.

@Brother Oni provides a perfectly adequate breakdown of the gap between armor and tissue penetrating rounds below:


As I understand it, the traits for good armour penetration capabilities are the opposite for what you want for lethality.

For good armour penetration, you want a hard bullet with a small cross section that retains its shape when it hit something hard.
For lethality, you want a large round which disperses as much of its energy as quickly as possible when it hits the target, preferably also fragmenting to maximise the hole made and the damage to internal organs and structures.

People are very soft when compared to steel, so something that retains its shape through armour plate tends to overpenetrate squishy people, leaving small wound tracts with less damage than expected. This was a reported issue during the recent Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts where hits from NATO 5.56 rounds were not incapacitating enemy combatants quickly enough.
Steel is very hard compared to people, so a soft bullet will just impact on or slide off the surface, expending all its energy and fail to penetrate through to injure the person underneath.

There are some subtleties involved here with modern materials (eg kevlar is a soft armour and uses that to absorb all the energy from an incoming round) and technologies (eg HESH shells use the shockwave propagated through the armour plate to cause spalling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spall) on the other side to kill the crew or damage internal components), but by and large, this generalisation is true.

Ideally, you want to hit that sweet spot where a round will penetrate but slow down enough to cause maximum damage to the target - this is why exit wounds are generally much larger than the entry wound. The issue is that what works for a certain thickness of armour at one distance and angle, may not work for a different distance/angle or for thicker armour at the same distance and angle.

What isn't adequately elaborated on however is the relationship between trauma and mortality (death.) My initial comments are intended to provide the a bit of a primer for the relevant part of the explanation.

"Getting shot" is almost never fatal. Both JFK and Abraham Lincoln survived (strictly biologically), if in vegetative states, for quite a long time after being shot directly in the head for instance. Phineas Gage survived being impaled through the head with a 3 foot long steel tamping rod and went on to live a long and (physically if not mentally) healthy life. Examples of this are almost as common as examples of people dying "from being shot" they just don't tend to receive as much attention since life has, quite literally, gone on.

A gunshot wound (GSW) is generally going to be the "mechanism of injury" rather than the "cause of death." In most cases blood loss, secondary or post secondary infections are what actually "kill."

Depending on the coroner or forensic examiner in question an autopsy report for a "fatal shooting" could be expected to read something like this:

"Exsanguination secondary to penetrative trauma (GSW)." Translated to English this means "victim bled out."

Secondary infections are things like septicemia from a "gut-shot" but they can be anything, in which case it might end up being the symptoms of the infection rather than the infection itself which cause mortality. Someone who is immuno-compromised by septicemia might die from the fever caused by the infection for instance.

Now, there is a flip side to all of this which I don't see being discussed, which is that even in instances where armor functions perfectly and prevents penetrative trauma a projectile can still cause mortality. The kinetic energy delivered still needs to be absorbed. A rigid armor like plate is actually going to be better at doing this than our modern armors are - even if the armor works it's less than fun to take one in the back - but it would still be possible for blunt force trauma to cause a contusion of the pericardium (bruising swelling the sac around the heart) which would

I'll cut it off there to avoid spiraling into the deeper, more technical implications of GSWs in trauma care, hopefully my information has been helpful to you all though.

[Brother Oni]

@Brother Oni provides a perfectly adequate breakdown...

Damning by faint praise? :smalltongue:



A gunshot wound (GSW) is generally going to be the "mechanism of injury" rather than the "cause of death." In most cases blood loss, secondary or post secondary infections are what actually "kill."

Depending on the coroner or forensic examiner in question an autopsy report for a "fatal shooting" could be expected to read something like this:

"Exsanguination secondary to penetrative trauma (GSW)." Translated to English this means "victim bled out."


Interesting - does this mean that unless a GSW causes immediate clinical death, it's typically not classed as a cause of death?

I wonder a modern autopsy report would record for the cause of death for Carabinier Antoine Favreau...

http://i.imgur.com/zajI5UC.jpg

[Haighus]

Damning by faint praise? :smalltongue:



Interesting - does this mean that unless a GSW causes immediate clinical death, it's typically not classed as a cause of death?

I wonder a modern autopsy report would record for the cause of death for Carabinier Antoine Favreau...

http://i.imgur.com/zajI5UC.jpg

Heh. I reckon cannons probably come under a different classification to gun shots :D

It makes sense to me that gunshots would only be the cause of death if they hit the brain-stem and caused immediate brain death, as brain death and permanent loss of consciousness is basically the legal point of death irrespective of other body parts (temporarily) surviving.

[Zombimode]

A gunshot wound (GSW) is generally going to be the "mechanism of injury" rather than the "cause of death." In most cases blood loss, secondary or post secondary infections are what actually "kill."

Maybe this is just my ignorance speaking, but to me this reads like the saying from Magic The Gathering: "Damage doesn't kill creatures - state-based Actions do".

[Haighus]

Maybe this is just my ignorance speaking, but to me this reads like the saying from Magic The Gathering: "Damage doesn't kill creatures - state-based Actions do".
It is relevant from an epidemiological point of view, which is what the cause of death is often used for. Knowing which factor most often kills as a result of a particular pathology allows research and resources to be targeted in reducing that impact.

Also important from a legal perspective- some causes of death are more preventable than others, and therefore saying someone died of a gunshot is not enough detail if they then died due to poor hospital management of the wound.

[Knaight]

Velocity has been mentioned as something that helps armor penetration and hurts tissue damage - that's not strictly true. Cavitation and other indirect tissue damage can easily get worse due to higher velocity rounds.

[Mike_G]

Velocity has been mentioned as something that helps armor penetration and hurts tissue damage - that's not strictly true. Cavitation and other indirect tissue damage can easily get worse due to higher velocity rounds.

That's true, but you need to have a very high velocity to get serious cavitation.

I don't think slower bullets do more damage to tissue. I think bigger softer bullets are worse at piercing armor but do more tissue damage, and smaller, harder bullets are better at armor penetration but do less tissue damage.

More velocity is more energy, which is always more damage. It's only a problem when you go through and out the other side that you waste any energy.

[Knaight]

That's true, but you need to have a very high velocity to get serious cavitation.

Sure, but if we're bringing in modern firearms as points of comparison those high velocities are suddenly relevant.

[Deepbluediver]

Damning by faint praise? :smalltongue:
I wouldn't read to much into it- "adequate" is not an insult.


Interesting - does this mean that unless a GSW causes immediate clinical death, it's typically not classed as a cause of death?
I, too, am curious about the answer to this question, because it sounds kind of like a pedantic argument to me.

I mean, if you want to be REALLY technical about it, guns don't cause fatal injuries either. BULLETS do.



Maybe this is just my ignorance speaking, but to me this reads like the saying from Magic The Gathering: "Damage doesn't kill creatures - state-based Actions do".
The most basic paraphrasing of this (that I've heard anyway) is "It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden deceleration." I think I read that in a Darwin Award, but it probably has it's origins even further back than that.

[Vinyadan]

@rrgg Thank you, that's a really cool paper!

[Maquise]

Something I've been meaning to ask for a while. When White Harness was popular, how did people know who was who on the battlefield?

[Gnoman]

The guys you were in formation with were friendly. The guys your formation were shooting at were unfriendlies. That is pretty much all that the average soldier needed to know.


Officers used flags to determine sides. This is why standard-bearer is such an important job.

[Brother Oni]

Heh. I reckon cannons probably come under a different classification to gun shots :D

It's the same principle; lead ball propelled by gunpowder at high speeds, just the scale is different. :smalltongue:

And hey, large calibre pistols are known as hand cannons, it's just that this one is more cannon-y and less hand-y. :smallbiggrin:

[Deepbluediver]

Something I've been meaning to ask for a while. When White Harness was popular, how did people know who was who on the battlefield?
There are at least a couple of notable cases of militarys attacking themselves, though one of the most famous cases is apparently disputed (http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/04/battle-karansebes/). And I'm sure there are others (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_friendly_fire_incidents) that went unreported or have been forgotten to time.

[snowblizz]

Something I've been meaning to ask for a while. When White Harness was popular, how did people know who was who on the battlefield?

The problem is not particular to the period of "White Harness". It's a general problem which only really goes away (mostly) in modern times.

In the 1600s the accepted way to know friend and foe on the battlefield was a fieldsign (green sprig in hat, white armband, straw wreath, etc etc) and passwords. The guys shouting "Maria! Jesus!" were evil Papists, the guys shouting "Gott mit Uns" are your trusted allies. When both side shout "Jesus Hilf Uns" you've got a problem. :D

During the battle of Lützen when the Swedish army was being hard-pressed in the centre and the battleline essentially crumbling as the fog/smoke made it impossible to see far and units wavered since they thought they were alone, they started singing a psalm that no Catholic would ever deign to sign. Which helped units to reform and stragglers to form up since they could now tell they were not alone in a broken army.

Even in the late 1600s and 1700s when sort of uniforms were regular you had battles where there were Royal English troos, so decked out, on both sides, one supporting Stuarts and the French others being Willamites and on the Dutch/Allied side.

[Storm Bringer]

Something I've been meaning to ask for a while. When White Harness was popular, how did people know who was who on the battlefield?

traditionally, they would wear a surcoat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surcoat), or a Tabard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabard) over their armour to identify them, but that would normally have their personal or family coat of arms (or the coat of arms of their employer, for retainers and men at arms), which meant you needed to know your heraldry to identify forces at a distance, and as snowblizz mentions, temporary ID marks like passwords, agreed fieldsigns, etc were used. you can find references to this in contemporary works, like Shakespeare, where Henry V gives us an example of a password ("The game's afoot; Follow your spirit: and upon this charge, Cry — God for Harry! England and Saint George! "), and the Wars of the Roses took their name form a scene in one of Shakespeare's plays, where nobles about to fight in a garden pluck roses form the bushes to show their allengence to a side.

[Haighus]

and the Wars of the Roses took their name form a scene in one of Shakespeare's plays, where nobles about to fight in a garden pluck roses form the bushes to show their allengence to a side.
Huh!? I always thought it was due to the House of Lancaster being represented by a red rose and the House of York having a white rose. Did this only become a thing after Shakespeare?

I spend a lot of time in York, and there are still white roses everywhere in logos and badges, such as in the York Roast company logo. Damn, now I want a roast pork bap.

https://goo.gl/images/rztBZy

[Storm Bringer]

Huh!? I always thought it was due to the House of Lancaster being represented by a red rose and the House of York having a white rose. Did this only become a thing after Shakespeare?

I spend a lot of time in York, and there are still white roses everywhere in logos and badges, such as in the York Roast company logo. Damn, now I want a roast pork bap.

https://goo.gl/images/rztBZy


yes, but no, but yes, butnobutyes......

the White Rose was an established symbol of the house of York in the wars, but the Red Rose seems to have come into use only at the end of wars. I'll quote the wiki


The name "Wars of the Roses" refers to the heraldic badges associated with the two royal houses, the White Rose of York and the Red Rose of Lancaster. Wars of the Roses came into common use in the 19th century after the publication in 1829 of Anne of Geierstein by Sir Walter Scott.[6][7] Scott based the name on a scene in William Shakespeare's play Henry VI, Part 1, set in the gardens of the Temple Church, where a number of noblemen and a lawyer pick red or white roses to show their loyalty to the Lancastrian or Yorkist faction respectively.


The Yorkist faction used the symbol of the white rose from early in the conflict, but the Lancastrian red rose was apparently introduced only after the victory of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth, when it was combined with the Yorkist white rose to form the Tudor rose, which symbolised the union of the two houses;[8] the origins of the Rose as a cognizance itself stem from Edward I's use of "a golden rose stalked proper." [9] Often, owing to nobles holding multiple titles, more than one badge was used: Edward IV, for example, used both his sun in splendour as Earl of March, but also his father's falcon and fetterlock as Duke of York. Badges were not always distinct; at the Battle of Barnet, Edward's 'sun' was very similar to the Earl of Oxford's Vere star, which caused fateful confusion.[10

[Haighus]

Ahhh, that clears it up, thanks. So it was a case of retrospective symbolism to create the Tudor rose.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

There are at least a couple of notable cases of militarys attacking themselves, though one of the most famous cases is apparently disputed (http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/04/battle-karansebes/). And I'm sure there are others (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_friendly_fire_incidents) that went unreported or have been forgotten to time.

Stop slaughtering yourself, why are you slaughtering yourself?

[Vinyadan]

Edward IV, for example, used both his sun in splendour as Earl of March, but also his father's falcon and fetterlock as Duke of York.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

[Mabn]

So I have another question about Napoleonic warfare that came to me apropos of nothing. I read somewhere that infantry formations of that era only fired in 2 ranks because their guns were so long they had to load them standing up. I've also read that cavalry used shorter guns called carbines that could be more easily reloaded from horseback. So my question is, why not equip infantry with these carbines so they could kneel down while reloading and let the whole formation shoot?

[Haighus]

So I have another question about Napoleonic warfare that came to me apropos of nothing. I read somewhere that infantry formations of that era only fired in 2 ranks because their guns were so long they had to load them standing up. I've also read that cavalry used shorter guns called carbines that could be more easily reloaded from horseback. So my question is, why not equip infantry with these carbines so they could kneel down while reloading and let the whole formation shoot?
I thought the guns were so long so as to poke beyond the heads of the rank in front, and therefore avoid friendly fire. Two or three ranks are about the most ranks you can do this effectively in a dense formation. Also for extra reach when mounting a bayonet for an effective anti-cavalry deterrent.

Early bolt-action rifles were still long for this reason, such as the Lee-Enfield MLE, until it became clear firing in ranks was no longer effective. Then most nations went for a mid-length rifle, like the Lee-Enfield SMLE (short, magazine, Lee-Enfield) versions.

[Andor13]

So I have another question about Napoleonic warfare that came to me apropos of nothing. I read somewhere that infantry formations of that era only fired in 2 ranks because their guns were so long they had to load them standing up. I've also read that cavalry used shorter guns called carbines that could be more easily reloaded from horseback. So my question is, why not equip infantry with these carbines so they could kneel down while reloading and let the whole formation shoot?

Also with the slow burning powders of the day, the longer the barrel, the faster the bullet improving both accuracy and lethality. Once the breech loading rifle had been invented the length of the barrel became fairly immaterial to reloading. Breech loaders are tricky to manufacture en masse however and didn't see widespread use until about the time cartidges had been invented.

[Storm Bringer]

So I have another question about Napoleonic warfare that came to me apropos of nothing. I read somewhere that infantry formations of that era only fired in 2 ranks because their guns were so long they had to load them standing up. I've also read that cavalry used shorter guns called carbines that could be more easily reloaded from horseback. So my question is, why not equip infantry with these carbines so they could kneel down while reloading and let the whole formation shoot?


as Haighus mentioned, they needed the length, plus the shorter barrelled carbine type guns were even less accurate than the "shotgun with only one ball" spread of a regular musket.

also, the standard formation was only 3 ranks deep anyway, precisely to maximise the amount of shooters. 90% of the time, if you see a reference in a battle to a "column" of men that is 10-12 ranks deep and 30-40 men wide, normally, it is a column formed by three or four 3 deep lines "stacked" close to one another, which was supposed to deploy into a line before contact and thus bring every musket to bear.

[Mabn]

as Haighus mentioned, they needed the length, plus the shorter barrelled carbine type guns were even less accurate than the "shotgun with only one ball" spread of a regular musket.

also, the standard formation was only 3 ranks deep anyway, precisely to maximise the amount of shooters. 90% of the time, if you see a reference in a battle to a "column" of men that is 10-12 ranks deep and 30-40 men wide, normally, it is a column formed by three or four 3 deep lines "stacked" close to one another, which was supposed to deploy into a line before contact and thus bring every musket to bear.

If they moved in a column and then spread out when they got in range, didn't the time it took them to get into a line cause them to take a lot of fire from the enemy they were now in range of?

[Storm Bringer]

If they moved in a column and then spread out when they got in range, didn't the time it took them to get into a line cause them to take a lot of fire from the enemy they were now in range of?

again, yesbutnobutyes......

in theory, they would advance in column (which, having a smaller frontage, was easier to manoeuvre and quicker to get where you wanted) to just beyond range, then deploy, then advance into firing range and start shooting.


in practice, it didn't always work like that, for a number of reasons.

you might misjudge the enemies location, deploying too late and under fire

you might be caught by surprise, and have to try and deploy under fire

you might just not bother deploying, and go straight in with cold steel

etc.


bear in mind that rates of fire were only 2-3 rounds a minute, and given the exceedingly poor aim of formed troops of the time, it was quite possible to deploy into line, under fire, and with acceptable losses.

[Kiero]

as Haighus mentioned, they needed the length, plus the shorter barrelled carbine type guns were even less accurate than the "shotgun with only one ball" spread of a regular musket.

also, the standard formation was only 3 ranks deep anyway, precisely to maximise the amount of shooters. 90% of the time, if you see a reference in a battle to a "column" of men that is 10-12 ranks deep and 30-40 men wide, normally, it is a column formed by three or four 3 deep lines "stacked" close to one another, which was supposed to deploy into a line before contact and thus bring every musket to bear.

Indeed, 3 ranks was the standard "line" for most armies of the 18th and 19th century. The British were an exception in using only 2 ranks, and they also trained with live ammunition (which many other nations considered a waste of bullets), so usually had a higher rate of fire. The third rank was basically a reserve to fill out losses and thicken the line against cavalry surprise, they couldn't fire.

[Haighus]

So, I have been watching a series of videos (https://youtu.be/5tgLeMS30j8) by Matt Easton and Dr Tobias Capwell about a knightly effigy in Suffolk. In the videos, they talk about how this effigy is a great exemplar of a very English style of armour developed during the late 14th and 15th centuries for fighting on foot especially, in the manner favoured by English armies of the time. The effigy was of William Phelip, 6th Baron Bardolf, who was a favoured ally of Henry V and fabulously wealthy (annual income ~£400 apparently, 10 times the average income of an English knight). It can be assumed he could purchase whatever armour he desired.

My understanding of the armour industry of the period was that the best quality armour* in Europe was produced around Augsburg in South Germany and Milan in Northern Italy, which both had distinct styles of their own. Undoubtedly English knights at the time would want to wear the most protective armour they could afford.

Therefore my question is this:
Did England have it's own domestic armour production during the first half of the 15th century capable of creating high-quality tempered steel plate comparable to Augsburg and Milan, or did armourers in the latter two centres make armour to specifications, and in a style ordered by English knights?

To me the latter seems most likely, which would suggest that England had armourers who could design a harness, but couldn't manufacture the best quality plates to best utilise the design? Is a combination possible? That plates were ordered, but only assembled into a full harness once they arrived in England, similar to sword blades being fitted with a hilt on arrival at their destination.

Thanks in advance.



*By best quality, I mean best quality steel used in the armour plates providing optimum protection for the weight.

[wolflance]

A new, probaby stupid question:

How will the existence of "fantasy martial arts" - the kind that allows people to leap high, punch someone inside plate armor to pulp without damaging the armor, and cut through stone with ki-enhanced sword etc, affect pre-modern warfare, equipment, tactics and fortifications?

(for the sake of discussion, let's assume the pinnacle of this fantasy martial arts is roughly comparable to a low level naruto ninja without fancy ninjutsu - a young Rock Lee basically)

[Storm Bringer]

A new, probaby stupid question:

How will the existence of "fantasy martial arts" - the kind that allows people to leap high, punch someone inside plate armor to pulp without damaging the armor, and cut through stone with ki-enhanced sword etc, affect pre-modern warfare, equipment, tactics and fortifications?

(for the sake of discussion, let's assume the pinnacle of this fantasy martial arts is roughly comparable to a low level naruto ninja without fancy ninjutsu - a young Rock Lee basically)


depends on how easy these skills are to acquire.
IMHO, if these skills are limited to a very select few people, and it is possible for one very skilled warrior to take on dozens of lesser skilled regular fighters, then you end up with the Dynasty Warriors situation where it basically comes down to how many ninja types you have, as they will do all the heavy lifting and slice though regular joes like butter.

if so, then an "army" will basically just be the ninjas, plus a few helpers/scouts/etc, as their is no need to put 10,000 men in the field if only 5 of them actually matter. while their will still be regular guards and such for normal policing and such, warfare is still going to revolve solely around the ninjas and their employment.

[Haighus]

depends on how easy these skills are to acquire.
IMHO, if these skills are limited to a very select few people, and it is possible for one very skilled warrior to take on dozens of lesser skilled regular fighters, then you end up with the Dynasty Warriors situation where it basically comes down to how many ninja types you have, as they will do all the heavy lifting and slice though regular joes like butter.

if so, then an "army" will basically just be the ninjas, plus a few helpers/scouts/etc, as their is no need to put 10,000 men in the field if only 5 of them actually matter. while their will still be regular guards and such for normal policing and such, warfare is still going to revolve solely around the ninjas and their employment.

I think it also depends on just how many regular fighters they could defeat, and whether regular fighters are capable of providing meaningful support to the super fighters. If one of the super fighters could take on a hundred people individually, but you only had 5, regular troops would still be worth it as assembling more than 500 troops is not difficult in most eras. Especially if you can use your regular troops to pin down their supers, and take them out/prevent them from stopping your supers from acheiving their objectives.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I think the important part might be finding thing they can do that others can't. As in: normal soldiers can kill other soldiers in battle, it's just harder for them. But they have a much harder time replicating the effect of running up the enemy's castle walls unseen at night, or sprinting out across the water to docked enemy ships, or bribing a lord to swear loyalty to the king by power-healing his oldest son who recently fell ill (possibly due to undetectable ninja-poison.

It's like imagining wars with magic users. It's not going to be the fireballs that really turn the tide of wars, because anyone with a bow can make ranged attacks, armies planned around that already.

[Vinyadan]

So, I have been watching a series of videos (https://youtu.be/5tgLeMS30j8) by Matt Easton and Dr Tobias Capwell about a knightly effigy in Suffolk. In the videos, they talk about how this effigy is a great exemplar of a very English style of armour developed during the late 14th and 15th centuries for fighting on foot especially, in the manner favoured by English armies of the time. The effigy was of William Phelip, 6th Baron Bardolf, who was a favoured ally of Henry V and fabulously wealthy (annual income ~£400 apparently, 10 times the average income of an English knight). It can be assumed he could purchase whatever armour he desired.

My understanding of the armour industry of the period was that the best quality armour* in Europe was produced around Augsburg in South Germany and Milan in Northern Italy, which both had distinct styles of their own. Undoubtedly English knights at the time would want to wear the most protective armour they could afford.

Therefore my question is this:
Did England have it's own domestic armour production during the first half of the 15th century capable of creating high-quality tempered steel plate comparable to Augsburg and Milan, or did armourers in the latter two centres make armour to specifications, and in a style ordered by English knights?

To me the latter seems most likely, which would suggest that England had armourers who could design a harness, but couldn't manufacture the best quality plates to best utilise the design? Is a combination possible? That plates were ordered, but only assembled into a full harness once they arrived in England, similar to sword blades being fitted with a hilt on arrival at their destination.

Thanks in advance.



*By best quality, I mean best quality steel used in the armour plates providing optimum protection for the weight.

I remember reading some inventory of armories in Milan, and the pieces were described by style, like "German" or "Italian". This must have been at the end of the XV century, when there was some crisis going on (to put it simply, armourers were struggling economically, and many of their qualified and underpaid workers ended up in debt, so they run away, or tried to, possibly because of the Duke defaulting on payment). Anyway, workshops producing amours in a style different from that named after their "country" is possible.

I'll see if I can find the source again.