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Comment by lwn | Hacker News Reader

I've visited a castle in Germany once, where they had special short swords for defending the staircases. The staircases in that castle were too small to wield a regular sword.

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That sounds eerily similar to the myth from the linked article. Although there is a chance that some enterprising blacksmith came up with a clever marketing scheme for those to convince the nobility that they really needed such a set of short swords.

'Just in case pillagers come up the stairs, and I'll throw in a Zweihänder for half the price too, in case your attacker steps out of reach of your regular sword!'.

I love this. Naive feudal lords as the historical equivalent to high net worth preppers.

What could be more prepping than building a whole stone castle? It’s the historical equivalent of a bunker for most part of modern (and ancient) history

Building castles to cover captured terrain was pretty common (unless of course there already was one around, in which case you besiege and take it, if you can). Of course, building a stone ond rakes time, so they'd build a temp one first, and then, ic theh manage to keep the territory, update it. So if it's prepping, it's a very common and prudenf version of it.

I wonder how many castles were built like codebases. Start with a little MVP and accumulate stuff over time that eventually gets refactored and eventually seems well thought out

Apparently many of them, insofar as they started small and became large encrusted monoliths over time.

Ehm. The article does not actually give any evidence, so this argument is becoming rather absurd.

Zweihander means two handed swords quite literally, so in this case i guess it would be einhander haha

Was there period documentation? Or a just so story about short swords?

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