Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk XII

[Fortinbras]

Polybius and Plutarch seemed to make some distinctions between the different types of spear.

[warty goblin]

Define 'larger' spear. I doubt even Achilles could throw a sarissa like a javelin.

There certainly are spears in the Iliad specifically called out as being of unusual size. Ajax defends the Argive ships with a sort of pike, described as being so long the shaft is jointed together. Achilles' Pelian ash spear - a weapon that has its own epithet - is apparently of such a stature that none of the other Achaean warriors can handle it. Patroklus, when arming for his last and only fight, takes two spears but not the Pelian ash.

Later, when Patroklus fights Sarpedon, he kills a fairly random Trojan with a spear thrust to the chest over the rim of the shield, then Sarpedon with a throw, apparently of the same spear. Or at least there's no indication that he changes weapons. One of Sarpedon's missed throws - a lot of spear casts miss - kills one of the horses pulling Patroklus' chariot.

Achilles, in his duel with Hektor, makes a spear cast, but it's not clear if he throws the Pelian ash spear in particular, or any other. Since the Pelian ash spear is repeatedly described as 'the death of heroes' and Hektor is the greatest hero Achilles kills in the Iliad though, it seems a not unreasonable assumption. Whatever sort of spear it is, it's certainly usable in close combat, since he later kills Hektor with it.

A javelin is weighted towards the tip to help it being thrown. Melee spears are more balanced, so it makes them a bit 'light' to be thrown as effectively and personal experience with 6ft re-enactment spears seems to corroborate this.

Interesting, I did not know this. I knew pilums were forwards weighted, but not whether this true of javelins in general.

I would think you could throw a melee spear in an emergency, although the lethal distance would be shorter than a javelin's (peltasts could reach 25m+ with a throwing strap).

Most of the casts in the Iliad seem to be over very short distances, short enough that after a missed throw a combatant can quickly close the distance with his sword. Even if a fighting spear isn't very optimal for throwing, it may be easier to manage than carrying two kinds of spear, particularly when supporting a large shield, and in combat that moves from striking distance to longer ranges very frequently and quickly.

[Vitruviansquid]

My friends and I had an argument about swordfighting the other day, and I want to see the playground's opinion on this.

So gist of the argument is this. My friend asserts that modern fencing, like the kind you would watch at the Olympics, is objectively the best way to use a sword that mankind has come up with, and that a good fencer today, if he was armed with an actual sword instead of blunt sports equipment, would kill any other swordsman in history. Furthermore, studying any other way to use a sword is irrelevant if you could learn fencing. This, he says, is because fencing is nothing less than the latest state in the evolution of swordsmanship - it is better than any other way swordsmanship has been practiced because modern fencers considered every lesson discovered from swordsmanship in the past in coming up with modern fencing techniques. As proof, he says there is a youtube video out there where a "relatively good" fencer has matches against historical reenactors using other styles and handily defeats them all.

My argument was that modern fencing can't possibly be considered the "best" way to use a sword for multiple reasons. Chiefly, swords were used for different things at different points in history. A Viking probably used different functionality from his sword than a mounted Crusader than a landsknecht with a zweihander. I am, for instance, skeptical that a fencer could have an advantage over a fully armored knight who might have fought in the War of the Roses, though my friend claims that a sharpened version of the fencer's epee or saber could easily pierce any armor (edit: I'm sure he meant "defeat any armor," as in the fencer would be able to either go through it OR around it). At the very least, the way a landsknecht used his sword would be much more useful in the battles a landsknecht would fight in, as compared to the way a fencer would use his sword. As well, I would expect modern fencing (as well as modern kendo) to lose some of its deadliness because it's taught not to help people kill each other, but to help people win at a game with set rules. As a result, I doubt a modern fencer is prepared for an armored opponent that also understands grappling martial arts, like Judo.

To recap:

1. Would a modern fencer, using a sharpened epee or saber, have a problem against any kind of armor worn in history?
2. To actual competitive fencers: how useful would modern day sport fencing be for a kill-or-be-killed situation?
3. To what extent, if at all, could we say modern day fencing "obsoletizes" other swords and styles of using swords?

[Spiryt]

I would say that your friends are mildly delusional, which is probably not unheard of among proud students of almost any art.

Sport with area you cannot leave, various, various arbitrary rules about no hand attacks, no covering your body, any sort of grappling or even colliding with opponent, grabbing your opponent blade is hard to compare even to 19th century fencing with similar weapons, let alone all other things.

1. Would a modern fencer, using a sharpened epee or saber, have a problem against any kind of armor worn in history?

Yes, against all of them. And 'problem' is probably very mild way to put it.

[Mr. Mask]

I have heard many times from my friend, a history professor, about what a bad weapon the rapier is--and that's when you're using it properly, not like a sport fencer. Recently, he pointed out that while it was a lousy sword, it was still a sword, so it does a lot of damage to unarmoured flesh. Not a useless weapon--just far from optimal among its warlike brethren.

For more details, look up George Silver's "Paradoxes of Defence".

"For, you honor well knows, that when the battle is joined, there is no room for them to draw their bird-spits, and when they have them, what can they do with them? Can they pierce his corslet with the point? Can they unlace his helmet, unbuckle his armor, hew asunder their pikes with a Stocata, a Reversa, a Dritta, a Stramason or other such tempestuous terms? No, these toys are fit for children, not for men, for straggling boys of the camp, to murder poultry, not for men of honor to try the battle with their foes."

[Starshade]

1. Would a modern fencer, using a sharpened epee or saber, have a problem against any kind of armor worn in history?
2. To actual competitive fencers: how useful would modern day sport fencing be for a kill-or-be-killed situation?
3. To what extent, if at all, could we say modern day fencing "obsoletizes" other swords and styles of using swords?

1.
Well, noone CAN demonstrate they can beat modern fencing exept by fencing With something like a blunt sword or a federfechter, which are ludicous. The other way around is impossible due to ethics and moral, though an Viking would simply Challenge Your friend to a bout of Holmgang to prove his view (duel, aim is hacking apart the enemy SHIELD, not bloodying enemy. both get 3 Shields, using one at a time, not needed to actually hold it, from reading icelandic saga's I assume some stood in front of it ,with their sword/Axe in two hands, guarding it like an Soccer goal).

3.
It's a efficient and great sport, and makes styles as the gladiator combat style obsolete, since modern fencing is an great sport for the current age. It's not aiming for defense, or war, thus not usefull for any military drill (probably never was, though that's my pow).

[warty goblin]

1. Would a modern fencer, using a sharpened epee or saber, have a problem against any kind of armor worn in history?

You might be able to stick the point of a fencing weapon through mail, but any form of solid or lamellar metallic armor is going to be completely impenetrable. Which they were for pretty much all swords in history as well. However most swords through history are also capable cutting weapons with enough mass and rigidity to deliver some percussive force to armored parts or hew effectively at unarmored extremities.

2. To actual competitive fencers: how useful would modern day sport fencing be for a kill-or-be-killed situation?
3. To what extent, if at all, could we say modern day fencing "obsoletizes" other swords and styles of using swords?

Modern fencing is a sport. It has rules. Even if at some level an epee or fencing saber could be used in a fashion superior to other swords, modern sport fencing is not that style because the modern sport fencer will neither anticipate nor know an appropriate response for attacks that violate those rules.


And pretty much anybody is going to violate rules like not using their off hand, and strike to illegal targets using illegal methods.

[Storm Bringer]

To recap:

1. Would a modern fencer, using a sharpened epee or saber, have a problem against any kind of armor worn in history?
2. To actual competitive fencers: how useful would modern day sport fencing be for a kill-or-be-killed situation?
3. To what extent, if at all, could we say modern day fencing "obsoletizes" other swords and styles of using swords?

1. yes, any solid armour would stop a epee thrust or a sabre slash with ease, which is why people wore armour. "soft" armours, like a gambeson, might be penetrated, but that's about it. Rapier Fencing is in essence a "civilian" combat style, intended for self defence, and is based on the assumption that both you and the foe are not wearing armour.


2. better than no training at all, but not a patch on medieval or early modern era training, simply because it's a "limited" form of combat. A modern day fencer would be fine as far as his training and experience goes, but he has never fought someone who can move to the side, can circle around, can make off hand stikes, can grapple, etc.

compare the moves sets of Kendo, Japanese "sport" fencing, and Kenjitsu, the actual combat style that kendo is derived form. Kenjitsu has every move in Kendo, plus others, which give the kenjutsu user a wider choice of moves that the kendo user has no experience in and no counters for.

For a modern day example, compare the difference between a Police officer using his pistol and a soldier in Afghanistan using his rifle. sport fencing is derived form the civilian side of things, and drawing conclusions form modern fencing and applying it to historical combat styles is like drawing a conclusion based on a cops experience and applying it to a soldier. their may be some overlap, but the soldier has to deal with a much greater range of problems and threats.


3. none. modern sport fencing is basically derived form a limited subset of "Historical" fencing styles and knowledge, specialised for a specific purpose ( originally civilian self defence, then formalised honour duels), and leaving out things that a soldier on the battlefield might need to know, but a civilian fencer fighting in a back ally would not. things like how to deal with spears, how to fight cavalry, etc.

Then, as the intended use shifted form self defence to duelling, things like fighting multiple opponents, weapons other than swords, or fighting in anything but a straight line, and so on were also dropped form training, as they were no longer needed. the result is a more limited, more focus skill set that was well suited to the conditions of formal duelling and not very suited to other situations. And is this style that modern sport fencing is derived form.



to argue that modern fencing is an evolution of past styles is, strictly, correct. The flaw is to equate "evolution" to "better in every way", rather than "better in the current situation".*

Modern fencing has "evolved" by trimming out excess elements no longer needed. to put a modern fencer back into a situation where he must face those elements is disadvantage him. a modern sport fencer, armed with a sharpened version of a epee, would get his arse handed to him by any historical fencer of similar skill, simply because the historical fencer isn't fighting by the same, limited rules set the sport fencer is used to.




* it's a pet hate. evolution only runs in one direction: forewords. even when you change back to something you had before, it's still evolution.

[SiuiS]

This video looks quite old and I suspect a lot of it has already been incorporated into police procedure.

The reactionary gap corroborates several sources on the subject: ~20' of space required to draw your weapon against someone charging you with a knife is something I heard before and making space by putting obstacles between you makes plain sense.

Yeah, I've been joking about that for years. It's nice to see that someone, somewhere, put it to use.

Spoiler

Show

I thought this was covered pretty well before (you might want to go back and read that part of the thread again since it will provide a lot of good, well sourced details to add to this) but I'll try to paint a broader picture for you to compliment what was said earlier.

In a word, there is no "Medieval Boot Camp" because medieval armies were made up of people who knew how to fight. Boot Camp is for very quickly training people who have no idea how to fight - originally in fact it was for training conscripts, i.e. untrained civilians who are forced into the military and must be rapidly made to learn how to take orders, do simple things like march, and to use, maintain and carry their weapons.

In the middle ages in Europe, there were no true civilians. There were free people, protected people, and slaves. Free people by definition could fight. Free people owned and carried weapons, and by carrying them they were required to fight when necessary. Carrying a weapon in the middle ages was like wearing a Hells Angels vest or 18th Street Gang tattoo's today - if you are wearing it, you better be able to back it up. Today, most of us are not warriors like Hells Angels or 18th Street gangmembers have to be - the State has a monopoly of force, in the medieval world there was no State really, you had to be able to protect your own life and property- or at least participate in this protection. In towns for example, all citizens had to do duty as police (and firemen) every few weeks something like jury duty, because they couldn't trust anyone else to do it.

Protected people were people like Priests and Monks, and free women (among others), who were not required to carry weapons. If you were caught hurting one of these protected people, your punishment would be extremely harsh, usually meaning death.

Training was gradual and took place over a lifetime. It was not an individual thing where you were taught by an uncle or your father (though that was undoubtedly part of it) but it was usually a communal thing done in small and large groups. It's like, everyone was at least a little bit something like a gang banger or a Hells Angel. What that training consisted of varied by your estate. So knights an their buddies were horsemen. They would perform complicated hunts in large groups to practice many of the techniques of warfare. They were members of the tournament circuit which was the medieval equivalent of professional sports today, just as physically demanding (we can see the physiques of some of these guys are really impressive) and just as rough, actually a bit more rough since people routinely died and you could also get captured and lose a ton of money (though the rules varied a great deal from one tournament to the next). They also exercised and trained with weapons on a daily basis if possible. Finally they routinely participated in raids, small fights, and battles as part of their jobs administering an estate or acting as bodyguard to a rich noble.

Townsmen (burghers) fought as heavy infantry or (most often) marksmen. They practiced shooting regularly, nearly every town had a shooting range, initially for bows and crossbows, by the 14th century for guns as well increasingly. They participated in shooting contests which were expensive to enter (cost the equivalent of hundreds of dollars to enter) but had huge payouts (equivalent of 50 or 100 thousand dollars in some cases for the winners and runners up). They participated in fechtschuler, fencing tournaments, which also included staves, grappling, saber (dussack) fighting, pollaxe fighting and so on. And they all had to work in the town watch (municipal police) on a routine basis. The town watch operated as a small unit and carried halberds while inside the walls, pikes while outside, and basic drill was part of the job. They had to do this every few weeks. And some towns had formal drill training - Venice more than most.

Finally, like the knights, townsfolk had to pretty routinely get involved in skirmishes, raids and fights while keeping the peace (landfrieden) in their towns territory. It was very common for example for towns to destroy the castles of so called 'robber knights', and to capture outlaws, bandits, robbers and brigands to be judged by the town's magistrates. Burghers also participated in hunting in forests owned by the town. They protected these hunting preserves every bit as aggressively as the nobles did, for example the town of Greifswald in Pomerania went to war with their own Duke (captured his whole entourage and nearly killed him) when he went hunting in their forest without permission in the 1456

Free Peasants also participated in shooting and fighting contests (grappling, fencing, and staff fighting particularly) during events like kermesse festivals and we know that they also systematically did pike and halberd drill, we have evidence of the Swiss doing this but also in Bohemia, Saxony, in a place called the Dithmarschen, and others. It was the Swiss in particular who were the inspiration for the formally organized professional mercenaries called Landsknechts in the late 15th Century. They imported Swiss sergeants (feldweiebel) to train German peasants, mostly Swabians originally I think, who themselves were half-trained at least, but were taught specific Swiss fighting techniques. These Swiss were either burghers (from towns like Bern, Solothurn or Zurich) or peasants from the forest cantons like Uri, Schwyz, or Innerhoden. Condotierre companies in Italy and the Balkans also had systematic training regimens.


Slaves of course were serfs, who had lost the culture and tradition of fighting and usually made terrible soldiers, regardless of training or equipment, and actual chattel slaves, who were usually not allowed to fight (though there were exceptions - in a lot of Muslim countries the best troops in their army were slaves).

All this stuff started to change in the Early Modern (1500's - 1800's) era when pike drill was gradually systematized into something which could be trained to unskilled, non-warriors (i.e. serfs) and guns became simple enough to use and cheap enough to make that they could also be equipped to unskilled troops. Armies became much larger as a result, less individually skilled or effectively equipped, but often more effective simply due to the scale.

Neat. Will reas again, later.

As a final thing, I'm not sure how common it is in the US, but UK police officers these days typically patrol with body armour (stab proof vests primarily) so it gives them a bit of defence.

Depends on beat, I think. I see police officers come in, usually in pairs, with full long-sleeve coats and obvious vests. I also see sheriffs come in in what amount to t-shirts and havier armaments - one gentleman carries a baton thats a two inch thick shaft of plain wood, at least a cubit long, and I've seen several speed loaders in a special holster, even when they're in their civvies.

And in many real situations with such an attacker, you'll never have a chance to. You won't know it's an attack until the guy walking past you is suddenly stabbing you.

Well, yeah, but that's not really germane. The first thing anyone ever says about "knife fighting" is you will get cut, you will bleed, you will get hurt. "Knife defense" is always about a situation which escalates into someone grabbing a knife. An assassination is so far outside the scope of self defense as physical action that it shouldn't need a foot note. That belongs in the "Keep your wits about you, stay vigilant, don't look for trouble" section of self defense.

[Brother Oni]

Hmm, what javelin and what spear? Do you have sources?

I'm using a couple of second hand sources regarding javelins (link), but my own knowledge on throwing melee spears (re-enactment spears with pine or ash hafts).

There certainly are spears in the Iliad specifically called out as being of unusual size. Ajax defends the Argive ships with a sort of pike, described as being so long the shaft is jointed together. Achilles' Pelian ash spear - a weapon that has its own epithet - is apparently of such a stature that none of the other Achaean warriors can handle it. Patroklus, when arming for his last and only fight, takes two spears but not the Pelian ash.

However for normal people, simple physics dictates that using a 21ft spear to fight someone at 5ft is rather sub-optimal.

Most of the casts in the Iliad seem to be over very short distances, short enough that after a missed throw a combatant can quickly close the distance with his sword.

Probably about 20ft, working from the other topic.

So gist of the argument is this. My friend asserts that modern fencing, like the kind you would watch at the Olympics, is objectively the best way to use a sword that mankind has come up with, and that a good fencer today, if he was armed with an actual sword instead of blunt sports equipment, would kill any other swordsman in history.

Further to other replies, possibly if the other swordsman was fighting under fencing rules.

In full contact under HEMA/HMB rules... the protective gear a typical fencer wears is inadequate: HMB competition between Russians and Ukranians.

Even under the same rules, a longsword versus a rapier appears to be about even.

As proof, he says there is a youtube video out there where a "relatively good" fencer has matches against historical reenactors using other styles and handily defeats them all.

Does you or your friend have a link for this video? Even so, re-enactors* tend not to be competition fighters, so someone trained in sport fencing under sport fencing rules is going to beat them. If it were someone who was a HEMA/HBA fighter, then it would be a fairer match.

*I'm using the specific term of someone primarily interested in authenticity of the kit, language and techniques of the period.

[Mr Beer]

Fencing weapons are the ultimate sword...for fencing. I wouldn't want to fight an extended battle against numerous guys in armour and carrying heavy weapons, while armed with a rapier. The guys who did that kind of stuff felt the same way, which is why they used swords, axes, spears etc. instead of extended stilletos.

Armour is heavy, expensive and exhausting to fight in. Still warriors tended to get the best armour they could afford and wear it in battle. Because it worked. Most armour would stop a fencing weapon very easily, leaving the "primitive warrior" free to attack (or "riposte" if you will) and good luck parrying a broadsword or axe with a rapier.

[warty goblin]

Fencing weapons are the ultimate sword...for fencing. I wouldn't want to fight an extended battle against numerous guys in armour and carrying heavy weapons, while armed with a rapier. The guys who did that kind of stuff felt the same way, which is why they used swords, axes, spears etc.

Armour is heavy, expensive and exhausting to fight in. Still warriors tended to get the best armour they could afford and wear it in battle. Because it worked. Most armour would stop a fencing weapon very easily, leaving the "primitive warrior" free to attack (or "riposte" if you will) and good luck parrying a broadsword or axe with a rapier.

Actual rapiers can be fairly substantial weapons. The later smallswords and epees are where things start to get really, well, small.

[Galloglaich]

You can tell your friend that modern epeeists, sabrists, and foil fencers routinely enter HEMA tournaments and try their luck, I've never heard of one winning any without also getting training in the historical techniques. That said, having both modern 'fencing' training AND HEMA (historical training based on 400-500 year old fencing manuals) is a good combination, there are at least two dozen sport fencers I know who are also good competitive HEMA fencers, including at least one guy who is an "A" rated epeeist (all the competition sport fencers are rated A-F) who is one of the top longsword guys in the US, but he's also been training German longsword for 7 years.

The problem with the modern fencing as others have already mentioned, is that they are trained to go back and forth in a strait line, are not allowed to grapple, and most damning from our (HEMA fencing) point of view, they don't really defend themselves since you can win a sport fencing match by stabbing the other guy 0.0003 seconds before he stabs you, which is ridiculous.

The rapier should not be confused with the epee or the foil fencing, nor the Olympic "saber" (basically a car aerial) with real saber fencing.

Sport 'fencing' weapons look like this:



Basically car aerials, extremely light, 400 - 500 grams or around 1 lb in most cases.

A real smallsword, which is what the epee and the foil are based on, is a much more deadly, heavier weapon, closer to 2 lbs



A rapier is quite heavy (3-4 lbs) and almost 4 feet long. The ones we fence with are quite substantial beasts, which require a lot of arm and wrist strength to use:



Real sabers (usually around 2-3 lbs) look like this:



And actual 16th-19th century style ('military') saber fencing is a very rough sport, though a lot of fun, which looks like this



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3_YCJ406JU

G

[Brother Oni]

Armour is heavy, expensive and exhausting to fight in.

It's not as heavy as you think (earlier on this thread, there were some links to the agility of people in full plate), which in turn, doesn't make it as exhausting as you make it out to be.

Expense, I'll definitely give you.

And actual 16th-19th century style ('military') saber fencing is a very rough sport...

I believe their advocates have a saying - 'Give blood, fence sabre.'

[Spiryt]

If we have to guys in shirts and pants standing against each other and going at it swinging weapon -

Then 19th century style smallsword/epee could be really dangerous weapon to go against - extremely quick, mobile, and has surprisingly low 'dead field' so it can stab from short ranges and weird angles, while lunges are still rangy.

And blade that penetrates few good inches and can bend a lot to make things worse could be very deadly, or at least health ruining.

The 'problems' begin when we complicate situation, and wonder about actual ability to stop/disable opponent where he stands, defend against different threats when things go nasty and there's not enough room/time/cold blood for footwork and so on.

[Brother Oni]

If we have to guys in shirts and pants standing against each other and going at it swinging weapon -

Then 19th century style smallsword/epee could be really dangerous weapon to go against - extremely quick, mobile, and has surprisingly low 'dead field' so it can stab from short ranges and weird angles, while lunges are still rangy.

I definitely agree that under those circumstances, a fencer has an advantage, but that's significantly different from saying a fencer would kill any other swordsman in history.

[rrgg]

A javelin is weighted towards the tip to help it being thrown. Melee spears are more balanced, so it makes them a bit 'light' to be thrown as effectively and personal experience with 6ft re-enactment spears seems to corroborate this.

Not necessarily, weighting the tip does surprising little to keep a javelin flying straight (both ends are supposed to fall at the same rate regardless of mass and all that).

Whether a spear was good for throwing sort of depends on what your goal is. Skirmishers' javelins would often be really lightweight things, finger-width shafts that were only around 4 feet long. Javelins of those type probably had a lot of range, but if you want just a ton of damage then you probably want something weighs closer to a thrusting spear. You might not have a ton of range, but you'd still have more reach than a sarissa if need be.

[TuggyNE]

Not necessarily, weighting the tip does surprising little to keep a javelin flying straight (both ends are supposed to fall at the same rate regardless of mass and all that).

Irrelevant; weighting the tip shifts the center of mass forward past the center of pressure, which allows airflow to stabilize it. Same basic principle as rocket fins, arrow fletching, and the like. Sure, it's less impressive without actual stabilizing fins (since there's a smaller moment of stabilization) but you can still manage it with enough of a weight change.

[Mr Beer]

It's not as heavy as you think (earlier on this thread, there were some links to the agility of people in full plate), which in turn, doesn't make it as exhausting as you make it out to be.

Expense, I'll definitely give you.

It is as heavy as I think; I don't think it weighs 250lbs or anything like that. I also know you can do all kinds of stuff in platemail, including some quite startling acrobatics. But it gets tiring to fight in, certainly much more tiring than no armour *.

Really my point is not that donning armour is excruatingly unpleasant but rather that no-one would do so unless it had a great deal of utility.

* I suspect that well trained knights were extremely fit. People tend to think of raw strength as a knight's defining characteristic and while they would certainly be stong, I imagine that having the stamina to exercise vigorously in full armour for any length of time would be more important.

[Kaeso]

This question isn't really about weapons or armor, but it's still related to ancient militaries so please forgive me if I'm not allowed to ask this here. I just want to know when actual military training became standardized. This question has been haunting me for a while because standing armies weren't really "professional" until the age of Napoleon. For example, ancient Hoplites outside of Sparta were just rich citizens who could afford the equipment needed, as "normal" civillians I imagine they had little more than the most basic training of "pointy end goes into the enemy". So when did the hardcore training regiments we know today come into being? The ones where soldiers are drilled to their maximum extent to keep sure they stay in tiptop shape and have the morale a "real" soldier needs?

[TheYell]

This question isn't really about weapons or armor, but it's still related to ancient militaries so please forgive me if I'm not allowed to ask this here. I just want to know when actual military training became standardized. This question has been haunting me for a while because standing armies weren't really "professional" until the age of Napoleon. For example, ancient Hoplites outside of Sparta were just rich citizens who could afford the equipment needed, as "normal" civillians I imagine they had little more than the most basic training of "pointy end goes into the enemy". So when did the hardcore training regiments we know today come into being? The ones where soldiers are drilled to their maximum extent to keep sure they stay in tiptop shape and have the morale a "real" soldier needs?

I think you're forgetting Rome and Sparta, and centuries before that, since the Egyptians and Assyrians used mass chariot units, there had to be some discipline in an army that moved at different speeds in coherent groups.

The era of Napoleon is when mass universal conscription comes in, from the politics of the time that basically said all of France could be looted to pay for the national army, which was a total reversal of medieval tax policy. Also, transportation after Napoleon came to be improved, and by the last quarter of the 19th century, the army wasn't expected to forage to survive. Medieval and early modern armies were usually temporary musters of men. Temporary because of the huge cost, and because they had to steal to eat as they walked around, and because the simple act of putting 100,000 people together could kill several thousand of them with disease. But at some point after the age of steam and rail, it became possible to bring several hundred thousand recruits hundreds of miles to stand with career soldiers - at which point it became realistic and prudent to bring the recruits to the standard of veterans as quickly as possible.

Before that happy period of kriegspiel, even in Roman times, you tended to have a crack core of hard veterans who were the best trained, permanent, professional soldier. He had the best gear, the best leaders, the best weapons, higher priority in the minds of the commanders, and if possible was the best soldier out of the rest of the army. These elite forces were surrounded by many times more second-rate or worse recruits, called out as needed and send to reinforce the elite forces. He'd be trained to respect the elite forces as the backbone of the army, and given duties that basically prepared him to fight the enemy until the elite settled the issue. Apart from them, there were also such local yokels as could be persuaded, or forced, to fight with the army. They were not expected or prepared to stand their ground, and their role was usually to scout the enemy force, bring food, guard the food, or harass escaping enemies after the elite broke them on the field.

So, as we read from Bernal Diaz del Castillo's "History of the Conquest of Mexico" that at some point :

Cortes now reviewed the whole of his troops, which amounted to 1300 men, 96 horses, 80 crossbow-men, and a like number of musketeers. This body of troops Cortes considered sufficiently strong to venture fearlessly into Mexico [the capital] with, particularly as the caziques of Tlascalla had furnished us with 2000 of their warriors.

And of that body less than 500 Spanish were hardened veterans of the first part of the campaign in Mexico. Cortes had a hardened vanguard. He had hundreds more Spaniards with less experience but the same gear and accustomed to the same army organization and discipline. He had temporary use of 2000 natives with their native weapons and no real experience of Spanish order, but used to fighting the common enemy and more knowledgeable of the immediate area. The art of knowing what to expect of each such contingent was necessary in a general for at least two millenia.

[Mike_G]

you can win a sport fencing match by stabbing the other guy 0.0003 seconds before he stabs you, which is ridiculous.
G

That's not actually true, except with epee. Foil and sabre points are not awarded to the guy who hits first, but the guy who has established prioty, or right of way.

If I attack you, and you just counter- attack into my attack and we both get hit, I get a point and you don't regardless of who landed first.

If I attack you, you parry and riposte, and I continue my attack and we both get hit, you get the point.

The reason for this is that fencing rewards parrying, not just double hits, which comes from the original intent as a training weapon for dueling.

So, in a nutshell, until you defeat my attack, it has the priority in a double touch. The unrealistic thing is that my "parry" doesn't have to be very strong. I just have to make contact with your blade to get right of way for my riposte. So a weak parry that would have left D'Artagnan dead counts for points.

It's tag with blunt swords. But it does teach very fine point control and speed, so it's something any rapier fencer should do to help polish their tip control.

I was a rated sabre fencer and fenced all three weapons back in college. It's not a martial art, but it's not as pointless as a lot of other fighters think. A good sport fencer can pick up SCA rapier style quickly and beat the snot out of the generally slower and sloppier SCA rapier guys, because all he needs to do is learn to incorporate lateral movement and stronger parries. He already can put his point on target and is used to a much faster sport, so that extra speed and control helps

[Galloglaich]

This question isn't really about weapons or armor, but it's still related to ancient militaries so please forgive me if I'm not allowed to ask this here. I just want to know when actual military training became standardized. This question has been haunting me for a while because standing armies weren't really "professional" until the age of Napoleon. For example, ancient Hoplites outside of Sparta were just rich citizens who could afford the equipment needed, as "normal" civillians I imagine they had little more than the most basic training of "pointy end goes into the enemy". So when did the hardcore training regiments we know today come into being? The ones where soldiers are drilled to their maximum extent to keep sure they stay in tiptop shape and have the morale a "real" soldier needs?

It's a perfectly legitimate question (though I think you mean 'regimen' not 'regiments') but oddly, it's one which has been answered recently several times. I'm going to try to tackle this in as simple a way as possible, but I'd like to ask you - please review the other comments on this subject earlier in the thread.

The difference between the Napoleonic era army (and later, up to modern times) and the armies of what the Napoloenic folks called the "Ancien Regime" (basically everything that came before going back to Rome, is in a word, conscription.

The systematic training regimen was invented to take non-warriors, people unaccustomed to bearing arms let alone to acting in concert as a group of fighters, to learn how to obey orders, march, maintain their weapons without ruining them, and fight under command.

In the eras before hand, people who fought, basically all free people, were training most of their lives more or less continuously.

As an example, you might ask, at what point do people in North America or Europe or Asia learn to use computers and the internet? When do they go to training for it? The answer is, for most people, that we don't. It's just part of our life. If you are talking about free people in Europe before roughly 1790 AD, a good percentage of them (proportionally more the further back in time you go) did have some familiarity with fighting, the use of weapons, and war, more or less the same way. It was just part of life.

Even the Romans, who did do some systematic training of new recruits (especially when new Legions were formed) for most of their history, relied on recruits who had some military experience; initially Roman citizens, burghers and small landowners of a certain level of wealth, later on increasingly "barbarians" from Germanic, North African, Central Asian and Middle Eastern tribes who were saturated with the martial and military arts just as much as medieval Europeans were after the Western Roman Empire fell. In Byzantium, the most reliable troops were Varangians, who were basically Vikings, and later Saxons and Gaels from the British Isles, who were also 'hard men' with a fighting culture.

For really systematic training you have to look to Central Asian and Middle Eastern cultures which took slave boys and trained them from early youth to be fighters, like the Mamelukes in Egypt and the Janissaries in Ottoman Turkey. These were effective troops but not necessarily more effective, it's worth pointing out, than their opponents from Poland, Hungary, the Teutonic Knights, the Serene Republic of Venice, the Knights Hospitaller, the Tercio's and Conquistadors of Cortez and so on and so forth, who relied on free warriors who learned to fight through the more open, informal (rough and tumble) training methods which I and others described already upthread.

G

[Galloglaich]

That's not actually true, except with epee. Foil and sabre points are not awarded to the guy who hits first, but the guy who has established prioty, or right of way.

If I attack you, and you just counter- attack into my attack and we both get hit, I get a point and you don't regardless of who landed first.

(snip)

You'll have to forgive me, I'm pretty opinionated on this matter - to me, Right of Way is just another way in Sport fencing where you can win a match without any regard for your actual safety- you get the point on a double-hit

In HEMA tournaments, in most cases, if you get a double-hit it counts as a loss for both fighters regardless of who struck first or had 'right of way'. I have been at tournaments where nobody won in a given weapon category because both guys 'doubled out'. There is in some places an 'afterblow' rule which says if you get hit right after you hit the other guy you get no kill (because you failed to protect yourself). I'm kind of on the fence about it because it does have some similarity to 'right of way' rules.

But either way the emphasis in HEMA rules-sets, at least to date, is on NOT getting cut or stabbed, which I think personally is what is needed to really consider yourself a fencer. If you can't prevent yourself from getting cut, or stabbed, regardless of what your opponent is doing or whether he or she is playing by the rules, then what do you really know about fencing which is the art of self defense?


Personally I think Olympic competition and (especially) electronic scoring pretty much ruined sport "fencing". Classical fencing is another matter entirely, and there is no doubt that some of the skills you learn in sport 'fencing' help a great deal for something a little more hard core, whether it's HEMA or Kendo or Jianshu or Eskrima or whatever. It may just be a matter of taste, but regardless, I'm just stating what I've seen with my own eyes, the premise that a 'modern' "fencer" can defeat anyone with more antique weapons is ludicrous, and is not born out by evidence. Otherwise the increasingly substantial prizes at HEMA tournaments would be carried home by all those A rated epeeists as an afterthought. They can use our same equipment, just have to bleach it white ;)

The smallsword is a good weapon against say, a walking stick or a cudgel, but I'd hate to be in a fight with a smallsword against a guy with a rapier and dagger, or against a longsword, let alone something like a spear. If you look at judicial evidence, remittance letters and so on, (of which some very interesting stuff has been published recently) smallswords don't do all that great; two guys dueling with them often stab each other and both die, the blades frequently break, and in unevenly matched fights (one type of weapon against another) they often lose out to other weapons like staves or daggers, for whatever reason.

I was a rated sabre fencer and fenced all three weapons back in college. It's not a martial art, but it's not as pointless as a lot of other fighters think. A good sport fencer can pick up SCA rapier style quickly and beat the snot out of the generally slower and sloppier SCA rapier guys, because all he needs to do is learn to incorporate lateral movement and stronger parries. He already can put his point on target and is used to a much faster sport, so that extra speed and control helps

SCA, I'll take your word for, but I haven't yet heard of a sabreur, ranked or otherwise, walking into a significant HEMA saber tournament and winning or even placing, without doing some historically based training first. They are just not used to an 'open' fight, moving around other than back and forth in a strait line, or the striking power of a realistically weighted saber, unlimited target areas, grappling, and so on.

G

[Mike_G]

You'll have to forgive me, I'm pretty opinionated on this matter - to me, Right of Way is just another way in Sport fencing where you can win a match without any regard for your actual safety- you get the point on a double-hit

In HEMA tournaments, in most cases, if you get a double-hit it counts as a loss for both fighters regardless of who struck first or had 'right of way'. I have been at tournaments where nobody won in a given weapon category because both guys 'doubled out'. There is in some places an 'afterblow' rule which says if you get hit right after you hit the other guy you get no kill (because you failed to protect yourself). I'm kind of on the fence about it because it does have some similarity to 'right of way' rules.

But either way the emphasis in HEMA rules-sets, at least to date, is on NOT getting cut or stabbed, which I think personally is what is needed to really consider yourself a fencer. If you can't prevent yourself from getting cut, or stabbed, regardless of what your opponent is doing or whether he or she is playing by the rules, then what do you really know about fencing which is the art of self defense?

I freely admit that fencing isn't fighting. It's several steps removed. But the precision it teaches is a nice addition to any fighter's skill set.

I just wanted to correct the statement that all you have to do is hit first. Because that's simply not true. I did say that a parry in Olympic foil doesn't actually have to be a useful real world parry to count, but it does need to happen.

Personally I think Olympic competition and (especially) electronic scoring pretty much ruined sport "fencing". Classical fencing is another matter entirely, and there is no doubt that some of the skills you learn in sport 'fencing' help a great deal for something a little more hard core, whether it's HEMA or Kendo or Jianshu or Eskrima or whatever. It may just be a matter of taste, but regardless, I'm just stating what I've seen with my own eyes, the premise that a 'modern' "fencer" can defeat anyone with more antique weapons is ludicrous, and is not born out by evidence. Otherwise the increasingly substantial prizes at HEMA tournaments would be carried home by all those A rated epeeists as an afterthought. They can use our same equipment, just have to bleach it white ;)

That premise is ridiculous. But an A rated epeeist, or better, and A rated sabreur, would have a strong base on which to build the skills of a good HEMA fighter.

The smallsword is a good weapon against say, a walking stick or a cudgel, but I'd hate to be in a fight with a smallsword against a guy with a rapier and dagger, or against a longsword, let alone something like a spear. If you look at judicial evidence, remittance letters and so on, (of which some very interesting stuff has been published recently) smallswords don't do all that great; two guys dueling with them often stab each other and both die, the blades frequently break, and in unevenly matched fights (one type of weapon against another) they often lose out to other weapons like staves or daggers, for whatever reason.



SCA, I'll take your word for, but I haven't yet heard of a sabreur, ranked or otherwise, walking into a significant HEMA saber tournament and winning or even placing, without doing some historically based training first. They are just not used to an 'open' fight, moving around other than back and forth in a strait line, or the striking power of a realistically weighted saber, unlimited target areas, grappling, and so on.

G

It may have been my time in the Marines that made those less of of an obstacle, but it doesn't take much to adapt to moving sideways. It didn't for me anyway. Learning to hit a quarter taped to my fencing coach's jacket was hard. Learning to sidestep when it seemed appropriate, not so much

But SCA rapier is just as unrealistically sanitized as Olympic fencing. You can't grapple or grab his blade or kick anybody. They just like to claim that "sport" fencing isn't real, like their style. So I enjoy wiping the floor with them by their own rules. In my mid forties.

There isn't a real HEMA group anywhere local, so I can't comment on it. I am assuming a more realistic style would be better suited to real combat. I still fence once in a while because it's fun, even if it is tag with blunts, and I play with the rapier guys because it's like NERF fighting for grown ups.

I only waded in to correct the statement on timing. Because hitting first means squat in foil or sabre meets. I'm not trying to argue that a gold medal foilist would beat a guy with a rapier and dagger.

[Galloglaich]

Yeah you are right, I apologize, I kind of bristle over that issue because there are a lot of debates in the HEMA community about sport fencing rules, some of the sport fencing federations are trying to get involved in HEMA currently, so it's a bit touchy.

But you are absolutely correct, I've seen that with my own eyes: sport fencing does have some of the real 'art' in it and it does teach valuable skills that a lot of HEMA-ists are lacking, even if the reverse is also true.

SCA for me always have too many rules but some of the SCA rapier guys do come out of that to fence pretty well. A few of their heavy weapons guys too, with a little training (though they too are trying to kind of carve out their own HEMA niche, or somewhere between HEMA, SCA and something like battle of the nations, and still calling it HEMA which is alarming to me)

Sometimes all of this seems like a bit of a siege of what has been built up so far with HEMA in the last 10 or 15 years, I guess it's only a matter of time before we get more and more restrictive rules too in the name of 'safety' or whatever. It feels like kind of a 'golden age' right now, particularly in Europe, but I know it won't last. It's certainly been an interesting run.

G

[Mike_G]

I fully understand.

There is a lot of defensiveness and boosting of individual styles out there. It's like the Katana Cult.

I know I get irritated when fencing gets too much bad press, since I know it's a real skill, and a real art that takes a lot of concentration and dedication, and when Grimgnash, Bane of Ding- Dongs and Duke of some faux medieval land outside of Cleveland sneers at it, I blow my stack, so I can imagine that reading about how Foil is the One True Art, the apogee of thousands of years of sword technique, can make a man surly.

I think most martial traditions have something useful in them, and we can learn from pretty much all of them.

[Mr Beer]

Learning to hit a quarter taped to my fencing coach's jacket was hard. Learning to sidestep when it seemed appropriate, not so much

How technically difficult would it be to run your weapon through someone's eye or throat? What if they were say attacking you with a longsword and modestly competent but inferior to yourself in both skills and reflexes?

[Avilan the Grey]

I definitely agree that under those circumstances, a fencer has an advantage, but that's significantly different from saying a fencer would kill any other swordsman in history.

A sidenote:
Not that he is a real authoroty, but Jackie Chan has, when asked, said that the most deadly marial art in history was 19th century european fencing, at least against an non-armored opponent.

He actually demonstrates this in Shanghai Knights, where his character, Kung Fu master as he is, gets his behind handed to him over and over, with extreme ease, by the Big Bad who is an English aristrcrat and uses this tecnique.

Not necessarily, weighting the tip does surprising little to keep a javelin flying straight (both ends are supposed to fall at the same rate regardless of mass and all that).

Another sidenote: When it was allowed to experiment with the equipment in the Olympics, there were several "new" types of javelins invented. Almost all of those were lighter and had a more evenly distributed weight. Combined with things like different elasticity in the shaft etc these eventually flew so far that combined with the 'roid use in the 80ies and 90ies they had to be banned, since they were in danger of hitting other athletes and even the audience at the end of the field.

The difference between the Napoleonic era army (and later, up to modern times) and the armies of what the Napoloenic folks called the "Ancien Regime" (basically everything that came before going back to Rome, is in a word, conscription.

Just nitpicking, but some of us had conscription a hundred years earlier...

[Fortinbras]

At the risk of delving into matters I have only a little practical experience with, here is the best analogy I can think of for the foil vs HEMA issue.

A .22 long is great for target shooting. It's very light, it's quiet, and it has basically no recoil. It is an excellent caliber for hitting things with, if that is your only concern. Someone who knows little of combat but is aware that shooting your opponent is a desirable outcome for a firefight might consider a .22 to be a good rifle for combat: it is good for shooting things with and being shot at with one by someone who was a really talented marksman would be a terrifying experience that could very well end in serious injury or even death. However, you would be insane to choose a .22 over an M-16. The M-16 has vastly superior "stopping-power", a better magazine capacity than a target rifle (the one I learned to shoot on was single shot), is better suited to the rigors of campaign, etc. The M-16 is a much better choice for a solider or Marine who has all manner of concerns beyond simply hitting his opponent.

Likewise, a Norman arming sword is not going to be as quick as a foil. A foil is probably better at hitting things than an arming sword and if you didn't know much about sword fighting but you were aware that stabbing your opponent was generally a positive, you could be led to believe that a sharpened foil would outclass the slower arming sword. Certainly having a talented foilist try to stab you with a sharpened foil would be a terrifying experience that could easily end in serious injury or death (occasionally this happens even with blunted foils). However, a foil has less "stopping power" than an arming sword, it is more likely to get stuck, it is more likely to break, etc. The arming sword is a much better choice for a solider who has all manner of concerns beyond simply hitting his opponent.