Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk XII

[Brother Oni]

And usually an invading force wants something from the conquered nation. Wiping out the population, razing the cities and burning the crops tends not to have much in the way of a payoff.

Aside from the plunder, slaves and sheer hell of it (see the barbarian hordes).

In a fantasy or sci-fi setting, the invading force may just want the living space and are more than happy to exterminate the former occupants (for example because their physiology is significantly incompatible and hence need to terraform the environment, or an extremely xenophobic ideology).

Soldiers wading through paddies did no more trampling of rice than the farmers' own oxen or the occasional wild pig. I doubt marginal agricultural damage weighed that much.

Actual damage no, but perceived damage yes.
You can't help damage caused by accidental wandering by oxen or foraging by boars - these are occupational hazards. Soldiers walking through your fields when there's a perfectly usable path is something else (or wade between the rows of plant rather than through them).

I concede that the soldiers may not want to use the path due to potential booby traps, but as demonstrated in Afghanistan, the locals are far more likely to know the position of any traps and may not appreciate that the soldiers aren't aware.

[Mike_G]

Soldiers wading through paddies did no more trampling of rice than the farmers' own oxen or the occasional wild pig. I doubt marginal agricultural damage weighed that much. Why didn't the torture, rape and similar Maoist destabilization tactics used against uncooperative villages cause massive uprising against the VC? As for the latter, I suspect Abu Graib did more for demagogues in the US than recruiters in the NME. In either case, it made a good rallying cry for those already predisposed.

It makes a good character development device, like The Patriot, but I think it rarely inspires heroics in real life.

Wow.

Just...Wow.

So, enemy atrocities don't inspire anybody to actually fight? How many Americans joined the military right after 9/11?

You don't think that maybe, just maybe widely distributed photos of prisoner abuse turned the population against the Coalition? Maybe made the locals a little more likely to not tell the troops about an IED, or suspected insurgent?

PR is a huge deal in wining the support of the population, both your own and the enemy's and the support of the population is HUGE in fighter on either side of a guerilla war.

A civilian who is largely ignored by the government and is left more or less alone by the occupying force probably won't risk much to fight them. If his crops are destroyed, his neighbors dragged off to prison, his family members killed or raped, then maybe he does figure he has some fertilizer he can donate to the case, and maybe he won't let that truck full of troops know about the strange men burying something on the road last night.

Lots of commanders who were on the ground in Iraq have written about how the insurgency was strengthened by stories of US atrocities, and how it lost popular support because of insurgent atrocities. I'm not pulling this out of my butt.

[Galloglaich]

Well we started the war on fake incident, killed almost half a million civilians* plus 300,000 Cambodians and 60,000 Laotians for good measure, and deforested vast swaths of the land with Agent Orange and blew a lot of rice paddies up which is a bit worse than walking through them, so that is probably all sufficient to help recruit for the other side, per the original point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Casualties

Vietnam is the classic, text-book case of a tough place to deal with a guerrilla insurgency. Their tactics involving tunnels for example were also used in Silessia in the 15th Century, by the citizens of Wroclaw / Breslau to pick apart invading armies.

Even the Mongols had a real hard time in Vietnam, as did the Maoist Chinese when they invaded n the late 1970's, the Vietnamese regular army was in Cambodia putting down the Khmer Rouge, they didn't even bother to move it back when the Chinese invaded but relied on guerrilla militia to stop the invasion, which they did.

The basic tactics of guerrilla war are applicable against a more powerful invader but also when both sides are equal - and that is how the Vietnamese fought.

One basic principle which is a crucial part of cavalry warfare going back centuries, is to temporarily achieve local numeric and situational superiority. So for example say the enemy has a column of 1,000 men, and you only have 200. If you fought them in a pitched battle, all things being equal, you would face 5-1 odds which would mean your almost certain defeat. But when the enemy column is crossing a bridge, lets say, you could wait until 950 of them have crossed, then sweep down and attack the last 50 with 100 of your guys - you have 2-1 odds which is often sufficient for a victory. You do as much damage as you can

Then once the enemy force recovers from their initial shock and begins to come back across the bridge, you immediately disengage and flee, then if they pursue, draw their force away from the original battle area, and into an ambush. Here once again you use a terrain feature, say the entrance to a narrow valley or a road through a forest, to bottle-neck their force. Your ambush consists of 100 guys plus the original 100 who were being chased. Only 100 of their guys are actually in the valley, the others are queued up behind, so once again you have 2-1 odds, and your ambushing group is in a force-multiplying ambush position, so their vanguard gets slaughtered.

If this causes a morale problem and they start to retreat, you can harry them and try to cause a rout. Or you can split your force again, have one lead a fighting retreat deeper into the valley, while the other uses an egress out of the valley to circle around and attack the rear of the enemy force when it is 90% into the valley, and once again achieve local numeric superiority against their last 50 guys. This way you can whittle down a much larger force.

Each time you engage there will be a chance for the enemy force to become panicked - if they break or rout they can be slaughtered at a much higher ratio than normal, historically very large armies have been destroyed by much smaller forces this way. But it's also how a mobile, alert, well disciplined army can defeat an equally large but less well organized rival.


G


* plus close to that many combatants

[warty goblin]

Just to underscore these points, atrocities by the occupying force are often the best recruiting ads a guerilla army has. A Marine wrote of his time in Vietnam, "Every time we went on patrol, and swept through the paddy, trampling the rice crop, we created another Viet Cong. Any time we actually found and killed a Viet Cong, we created five more." The Abu Graib photos were the best thing for Al Qaeda's support ever. They only lost local support when they started killing too many civilians.

I believe it's actually an established strategy of insurgency to provoke an occupying power into reprisal attacks against the populace for exactly this reason. The people whose village gets torched tend to blame the people torching the village, regardless of their reasons for doing so.

[Mike_G]

The trampled rice is anecdote from one guy who fought in Vietnam, and saw the way the locals came to resent him and his comrades, and how resentful locals can work against you.

The point is that things you do and the way you do them can influence the population, and in a war that depends on information about small bands of rebels, sympathizers who supply them, informants for either side, and the locations of booby traps and ambushes, the goodwill of the locals is a valuable commodity.

And to an individual, small acts they can see matter more than large, abstract things they don't. A small scale violation by a squad of soldiers might very well tip an individual peasant over the edge, and he might very well pass on information to the enemy, sabotage bridges, or destroy or poison food he expects the occupiers to confiscate.

Big armies can do things like take a city or wipe out your forces, but local guerillas can impose a draining friction on every move you make, increasing casualties, making you divert more troops to defend supply lines and communications, and harass troops in supposed safe areas, keeping your men on constant edge, under constant stress.

All those things chip away at the effectiveness of your army. Even if the enemy can't wipe out a large unit in a Dien Bien Phu type action, they can grind down your will to fight.

Or did successive waves of occupiers leave Vietnam an Afghanistan over the centuries because they had accomplished all their objectives?

[Galloglaich]

Good points, all round.

G

[Wardog]

So for example, guerilla tactics would be somewhere between ineffective and worthless against the typical fantasy villain Orcs, since they're all for total devastation of whatever they can get their hands on, more than willing to kill every human they meet, and typically don't even have a supply chain to disrupt, since they live off the land and/or plunder. They aren't even likely to sit around in one place and let you do raids on them, instead favoring the "march right at the closest city, kill everyone, loot everything, burn it to the ground, repeat" strategy.

A realistic invading barbarian army, if it is large and reasonably organised, and fighting as an actual army, is still going to need a supply train (and/or a loot train to transport loot back home), so that could be a target for guerillas.

If they are living off the land, they will need to send out forraging parties, and you could hit them too.

And eventually they will want to return home (assuming they don't decide to settle down), and then they will be slowed down by loot, making them an easier target for both guerillas and conventional attacks.


Alternatively, is they are not fighting as a large, reasonably cohesive army, but just small bands out to raid targets of opportunity, then they are effectively guerillas themselves.

Also, depending on the politics/culture of the barbarian horde, it may be that they are mainly there to loot for personal gain, and don't have a any great loyalty to The Noble Cause of Invading Civilized Lands, in which case harrasing them until individuals start thinking "Meh, I've got enough loot to last me till next raiding season. I think I'll call it quits while I'm still alive".


Finally, the ability of an invader to make reprisals against the populace will depend on geography. If you have a sparse population in small, widely dispersed villages in rough terrain (as in ancient Caledonia), then it could be difficult for a large, slow-moving army to do much damage. Even more so if they are nomadic, and so not only naturally mobile, but don't even have any settlments to defend.

(I'm currently reading Heroditus, and if you'll pardon the use of modern gaming terms to describe ancient battles, the Scythian response to the Persian invasion could quite easily be summed up in as a combination of "kiting" and "trolling").



Of course, as Raum said, if you are talking about generic cliche orcs who are invading because Evil!, for whom noone has bothered to work out realistic command and logistic system (let alone social structure), then it probably won't work (unless the DM says it will).

[awa]

so silver is the default metal for supernatural nastiest but silver is soft.
So how much worse would a silver dagger be then a steel one?
would it just break easily or would it cut poorly if you can give it an edge at all.
Could it cut flesh or would even that enough to deform the blade.

What about if it was just silver plated (assuming pre-Renaissance silver plating tech) would that be meaningfully better or would it just be scraped off.

[Galloglaich]

Recommended experiment. If you have a silver spoon and a steel or cast-iron skillet, try banging them together a little bit and note what happens to the silver.

G

[AgentPaper]

Recommended experiment. If you have a silver spoon and a steel or cast-iron skillet, try banging them together a little bit and note what happens to the silver.

G

Since silver utensils tend to fall into the "expensive family heirloom" category, this sounds like a bad idea unless the result is something other than damage done to the utensil.

[warty goblin]

so silver is the default metal for supernatural nastiest but silver is soft.
So how much worse would a silver dagger be then a steel one?
would it just break easily or would it cut poorly if you can give it an edge at all.
Could it cut flesh or would even that enough to deform the blade.

What about if it was just silver plated (assuming pre-Renaissance silver plating tech) would that be meaningfully better or would it just be scraped off.

I believe this comes from the old belief that iron was an impure form of silver. Iron of course in a lot of folklore and mythology was a fairly potent charm in its own right.

Anyway, silver. It's soft, heavy and in my very limited experience, tends to bend when subjected to stress. Expect poor performance in martial applications.

In Sapkowski's Witcher novels (and the games) the titular character uses a silver plated blade for monster slaying, but at its core it's very much steel. I believe in one of the books Geralt comments that the silver blade works just as well on people, but it wears the expensive silvering off.

[Galloglaich]

The thing about silver that is the source of the legends, is based on something real, namely that silver has very strong anti-microbial properties. As in exterminate fungus, bacteria, viruses and everything. It even kills the dreaded 'flesh eating bacteria'. This is why they threw silver coins in wells, and for that matter, why silver utensils were popular among those who could afford them. Copper has similar properties.

G

[Straybow]

So, enemy atrocities don't inspire anybody to actually fight? How many Americans joined the military right after 9/11?

Not that many that wouldn't have joined anyway. I don't think you'll find a single make-love-not-war liberal who did an about face and turned into Rambo. The ones I know who change their college plans into enlistment plans were just kids when the towers went down. They changed their plans in a spirit generalized patriotism rather than event-driven PR.

You don't think that maybe, just maybe widely distributed photos of prisoner abuse turned the population against the Coalition? Maybe made the locals a little more likely to not tell the troops about an IED, or suspected insurgent?

That is a far cry from "creating an enemy" by playing into the enemy's PR. Again, photos may have swayed a few already of like mind to take the last step and join the local band of whackos. Probably an equal number saw the photos and cheered the humiliation of their enemies.

PR is a huge deal in wining the support of the population, both your own and the enemy's and the support of the population is HUGE in fighter on either side of a guerilla war. ... Lots of commanders who were on the ground in Iraq have written about how the insurgency was strengthened by stories of US atrocities, and how it lost popular support because of insurgent atrocities. I'm not pulling this out of my butt.

Yes, stories of atrocities had as much of an effect as actual atrocities might have (and making naked prisoners form a pyramid is pretty tame on the "atrocities" scale). The PR is preaching to the ones who already believe but haven't made the final commitment to strap on a bomb vest. The guys who get persuaded to become such pawns are the weak of mind.

[Mike_G]

Not that many that wouldn't have joined anyway. I don't think you'll find a single make-love-not-war liberal who did an about face and turned into Rambo. The ones I know who change their college plans into enlistment plans were just kids when the towers went down. They changed their plans in a spirit generalized patriotism rather than event-driven PR.

That is a far cry from "creating an enemy" by playing into the enemy's PR. Again, photos may have swayed a few already of like mind to take the last step and join the local band of whackos. Probably an equal number saw the photos and cheered the humiliation of their enemies.

Yes, stories of atrocities had as much of an effect as actual atrocities might have (and making naked prisoners form a pyramid is pretty tame on the "atrocities" scale). The PR is preaching to the ones who already believe but haven't made the final commitment to strap on a bomb vest. The guys who get persuaded to become such pawns are the weak of mind.

I'm just going to have to disagree with pretty much every word of this. Military enlistment went through the roof after 9/11, just like it did after Pearl Harbor. I was already working the ambulance back then, and we saw a huge influx of new EMTs. Fire departments saw a huge rise in applicants. People wanted to be a part of a group that served right after that.

I'm frankly stunned at how little credit you give to the ability of PR to change minds.

[Straybow]

I'm just going to have to disagree with pretty much every word of this. Military enlistment went through the roof after 9/11, just like it did after Pearl Harbor. I was already working the ambulance back then, and we saw a huge influx of new EMTs. Fire departments saw a huge rise in applicants. People wanted to be a part of a group that served right after that.

I'm frankly stunned at how little credit you give to the ability of PR to change minds.

So, you personally know a peacenik who became a grunt, citing 9/11 as inspiration? Or maybe somebody associated over the internet making such a claim? Sounds like a story worth repeating. But that's the anecdotal side.

Second, volunteering at home for EMT, FD, even PD is nothing at all like signing up to see the world, meet new people, and kill them.

This graph shows active duty flat from 2000-2003. It's wikipedia, but it claims to be from the Congressional Research Service. This is all branches lumped together, but if kids were really enlisting as ground-pounders in WW2-type numbers it should show clearly.



I'm having trouble finding official figures, but I've seen a report from 2005 claiming that enlisted strength in the Army was going down after 2003, to about 0.5% below 2001 level. Only junior officer ranks were growing and the Army had too many of them for the jobs needed in theater.

[Straybow]

My point isn't to bat around numbers, it is that PR works both ways. The image of the US raising an army to go squash AQ is portrayed all over, but really the US just used the army they had. (To paraphrase a Vice President.)

The army had to fight congress to get the manpower needed.

[Autolykos]

They changed their plans in a spirit generalized patriotism rather than event-driven PR.

There isn't that much of a difference, IMHO. "Patriotism" is just the result of getting lots of PR about your country being the greatest getting heaped onto you and starting to believe it. If you just embraced the professed values of your country, there would be no need for patriotism. You can fight for them anywhere, anytime, regardless of your passport.

Second, volunteering at home for EMT, FD, even PD is nothing at all like signing up to see the world, meet new people, and kill them.

It expresses much of the same commitment as joining the army, just in another way. Young hotheads are more ready to die gloriously for their cause, while the more level-headed fellows rather live humbly for it.

[Mike_G]

So, you personally know a peacenik who became a grunt, citing 9/11 as inspiration? Or maybe somebody associated over the internet making such a claim? Sounds like a story worth repeating. But that's the anecdotal side.

Second, volunteering at home for EMT, FD, even PD is nothing at all like signing up to see the world, meet new people, and kill them.

This graph shows active duty flat from 2000-2003. It's wikipedia, but it claims to be from the Congressional Research Service. This is all branches lumped together, but if kids were really enlisting as ground-pounders in WW2-type numbers it should show clearly.



I'm having trouble finding official figures, but I've seen a report from 2005 claiming that enlisted strength in the Army was going down after 2003, to about 0.5% below 2001 level. Only junior officer ranks were growing and the Army had too many of them for the jobs needed in theater.

http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/in...recruitme.html

[Straybow]

That article only says that recruitment fell off quickly after a surge in the months following the attack. It doesn't quantify that surge, and doesn't really support your claim.

When we look at hard figures we see that a decade-long reduction of more than 200,000 active duty army was changed into a very slight increase in manpower starting in 2000, which might be attributed to terror attacks on the military overseas. That rate of increase roughly doubled for 2002, but then dropped back down to roughly 1% growth rate.

Year . Army . . Air Force . Navy . . Marines . Total
1991 . 710,821 . 510,432 . 570,262 . 194,040 . 1,985,555
...
1999 . 479,426 . 360,590 . 373,046 . 172,641 . 1,385,703
2000 . 482,170 . 355,654 . 373,193 . 173,321 . 1,384,338
2001 . 480,801 . 353,571 . 377,810 . 172,934 . 1,385,116
2002 . 486,542 . 368,251 . 385,051 . 173,733 . 1,413,577
2003 . 490,174 . 376,402 . 379,742 . 177,030 . 1,423,348
2004 . 494,112 . 369,523 . 370,445 . 177,207 . 1,411,287
2005 . 488,944 . 351,666 . 358,700 . 178,704 . 1,378,014
2006 . 496,362 . 352,620 . 353,496 . 178,923 . 1,381,401
2007 . 519,471 . 337,312 . 338,671 . 184,574 . 1,380,082
2011 . 565,463 . 333,370 . 325,123 . 201,157 . 1,468,364

Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

There is no great surge of recruiting in 2002. We see a larger increase in 2005-6 (countering a large decrease the prior year) and a large jump of almost 5% for 2006-7. That can't be explained by an appeal to a terror event or similar PR mechanism. Interpolating between the figures given for 2007 and 2011, the average is almost double the rate of increase seen in 2001-2.

So, the WTC destruction didn't make a big jump in recruitment for long enough to make a difference. Find some hard figures and you can make a case for the prisoner abuse scandal serving to recruit massive numbers of AQ flunkies. Otherwise I'll stick to my assertion that the tales of massive recruitment drives are just as much a PR fiction as Bagdad Bob's daily war reports.

[Straybow]

They changed their plans in a spirit generalized patriotism rather than event-driven PR.

There isn't that much of a difference, IMHO. "Patriotism" is just the result of getting lots of PR about your country being the greatest getting heaped onto you and starting to believe it. If you just embraced the professed values of your country, there would be no need for patriotism. You can fight for them anywhere, anytime, regardless of your passport.

Second, volunteering at home for EMT, FD, even PD is nothing at all like signing up to see the world, meet new people, and kill them.

It expresses much of the same commitment as joining the army, just in another way. Young hotheads are more ready to die gloriously for their cause, while the more level-headed fellows rather live humbly for it.

Not at all. You can quit a civilian job at any time just by not showing up. Try that after signing up for the military. The civilian job doesn't require you to move to some nasty desert halfway around the world from your family.

Perhaps you don't think your country is the greatest in the world and think patriotism is passe. Some of us can justifiably think our country is, despite the media and associated weenies telling us that we produce too much carbon monoxide and eat too much food.

You are correct, patriotism doesn't require you to go fight the barbarians who wish to destroy your civilization. Nonetheless, those who choose to do so are acting on patriotism. The event of 9/11 did not create patriotism, it only highlighted the fact that the barbarians really do want to destroy our civilization.

[Autolykos]

You can quit a civilian job at any time just by not showing up. Try that after signing up for the military.

If you're actually committed to doing it, that point shouldn't even figure in your calculations. Why should you suddenly want to stop doing what you think is right? If I was in a civil job that is bothersome to me, but I think it's the right thing to do, I'll stay. If I was in the army and thinking it's the wrong thing to do, I should use my first chance to desert them. Just because one job tries to force you to stay doesn't mean it's the more "patriotic" thing to do. Glorifying sacrifice for its own sake is utterly pointless and fundamentally misguided. You shouldn't look at the cost and risk to yourself when judging the worth of an action, you should look at how much good it'll do. You can't really question that Fire Departments and Ambulances do a lot of good, but you could very well question whether some recent wars did any good at all or actually made things worse (just FTR: I'm not a pacifist, and think that wars can be justified and achieve positive outcomes. But I do not think that's the case for most that actually happened).
But enough of politics and personal philosophy for time being. We were actually discussing about what gives new recruits to guerilla (and armies). You seem to be saying that patriotism trumps PR in that regard. My point is that this isn't even a meaningful distinction as patriotism is mostly the result of propaganda. Either good propaganda about your country, or bad propaganda about the enemies. If it was actually caused by objective reasons, there would be way more people celebrating foreign countries than their own (as most of the world isn't your country). Unless of course you're saying that your country actually IS the best and the rest of the world is just stupid, which I find hard to believe.

[Spiryt]

But enough of politics and personal philosophy for time being. We were actually discussing about what gives new recruits to guerilla (and armies). You seem to be saying that patriotism trumps PR in that regard. My point is that this isn't even a meaningful distinction as patriotism is mostly the result of propaganda. Either good propaganda about your country, or bad propaganda about the enemies. If it was actually caused by objective reasons, there would be way more people celebrating foreign countries than their own (as most of the world isn't your country). Unless of course you're saying that your country actually IS the best and the rest of the world is just stupid, which I find hard to believe.

I think that the point is that you have some very weird definition of patriotism, that actually isn't valid at all, and describes some other things.

Patriotism is not propaganda or PR, those can only be a part.

It's not celebrating your country as 'best' either.

Your country, people around, your local society, and whatever, can actually suck in many ways, and you still love them, because they are your own, your family's your ancestors. This is your patria.

[Autolykos]

Hm, you might be right about this. I don't have that feeling at all, and I can't relate to this. I feel committed to my family and the friends I chose, and that's it.

[Brother Oni]

Hm, you might be right about this. I don't have that feeling at all, and I can't relate to this. I feel committed to my family and the friends I chose, and that's it.

If your nationality matches your location, then you probably have a very understandable reason for your views.

[Autolykos]

Yup, we learned that lesson the hard way. And I sure hope nobody else has to do that ever again. (EDIT: I'm actually half French, but I grew up in Germany - so that's my "primary culture").

[snowblizz]

The recent discussion on polearms reminded me of the following:

Apparently a "Holy water sprinkler"


From Osprey MAA 191 Henry VIII's army. Had very little luck finding pics online of one to show my friend back when I was reading through the book.

But I was also curious, how would one use that? Is it practical at all? And would that be an effective weapon for a unit of 50 men. But looks so dang cool though.

[Spiryt]

Yup, we learned that lesson the hard way. And I sure hope nobody else has to do that ever again. (EDIT: I'm actually half French, but I grew up in Germany - so that's my "primary culture").

Uh, to put it mildly, 'no patriotism' is very weird lesson to learn from WWII....

I think that there's still confusion about terms there, 'patriotism' has nothing to do with 'xenophobia', 'hate' or 'eliminate Judaist capitalists and build brave new world'.

From Osprey MAA 191 Henry VIII's army. Had very little luck finding pics online of one to show my friend back when I was reading through the book.

But I was also curious, how would one use that? Is it practical at all? And would that be an effective weapon for a unit of 50 men. But looks so dang cool though.

There's little reason for it to don't be 'practical' - one can stab someone or break his bones very badly, and generally can be practical polearm.

Certainly wouldn't be practical weapon for whole units, but that wasn't really the point of such weapons.

Generally, as far as I'm informed such 'sprinklers' were somehow 'fancy' take on more simple, Reneissance peasant/common folk weapons - http://www.faganarms.com/european-mo...1600-9580.aspx

Those were somehow 'simple' idea - take solid, dense piece of stick, and add some iron nails.

I dunno if anyone really knows how prevalent such well made, steel sprinklers/morningstars were.

Certainly appear in art from time to time, and we have some preserved examples, but hard to tell more than that.

Spear/pike, would anyway be pretty universally 'main' weapon of serious infantry, while guys on the sides, around banner etc. could often wield something like that.

[Straybow]

We were actually discussing about what gives new recruits to guerilla (and armies). You seem to be saying that patriotism trumps PR in that regard. My point is that this isn't even a meaningful distinction as patriotism is mostly the result of propaganda. Either good propaganda about your country, or bad propaganda about the enemies.

I'm saying that actual events have less to do with recruiting than ideology and propaganda. AQ was recruiting in the '90s based on the filthy, infidel troops on holy soil who had been invited there by the King of Saudi Arabia. You must have the deep ideology of "those are filthy infidels" before that argument can even begin to hold water, and then you must disrespect the will of the King in using infidel allies to defend the Kingdom.

Guys who joined the US military didn't do so just because of 9/11, which by eyeball regression made less than a 10% bump in recruiting for the year (6k net increase for 2002 out of 70k-80k new recruits each year). What 9/11 did was motivate the entire administration and a majority of the population to agree to send troops to retaliate. That's a different matter entirely.

[Galloglaich]

As Spyrit alluded, these were quite common weapons, though they more often looked like the one he linked to. I.e. the rounded head was a rarer type, usually it was something like a cylinder shape.

The more common name for them is Morgenstern which means the same thing as morning star, but in the English language world the latter more often gets associated with single-handed spiked maces (which were a bit rarer actually)



you can see the business end of a couple of them here, as in many images of infantry from the 15th Cenutry

The morgensterns were practical, part of a class of militarized field-expedient peasant weapons which ended up becoming pretty serious tools of war, they were used extensively by such successful warriors as the Swiss, the Czechs, and the Germans. They worked in a similar manner to most polearms such as a halberd, just a bit cruder perhaps. A close cousin is the Flemish godendag, also the two-handed Czech flail often known by the german name flegel.



The purpose of all of these weapons was similar, to provide extra punch for infantry to hurt armored knights or other infantry, as well as to kill horses and / or pull cavalry off of horses.

Pikes would be used to keep the cavalry and enemy infantry at bay, crossbows and guns would be used to harm them from a distance, and weapons like these, and halberds and glaives and so on, were used to kill the enemy in shock engagements when they got close.

G

[endoperez]

There are also Chinese and Japanese variations.

Wolf teeth mace



Tetsubo, "iron mace", or kanabo come in various sizes, but the bigger ones are definitely two-handed.





Huge picture of a scary man - after seeing this, I'm not wondering why it's the preferred weapon of ogres in Japanese mythology. That's a scary thing.

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