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Comment by anthk | Hacker News Reader

BIg swords weren't made to cut down an enemy in half. They were made to bring down a knight riding a horse.

You didn't club it, but bashed it down with a swing.

Also, the Middle Ages weren't as dirty as you think, the British wrote a Black Legend about them. The 20th century movies didn't help neither. I'm not talking about Monty Python, but the supossedly serious dramas set on that era.

For instance, I'm pretty sure the 13-14th centuries were completely different to the 8th or 9th ones in technology, development and culture.

This thinking school was almost in the Enlightenment era, but we can perfectly place it at the end of the Middle Ages as the kickstart of the modern rights born in the Enlightenment:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca

And, of course, before these there were the Italians and the Humanist movement.

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I suspect that the huge 2 handed swords favoured by the Landsknecht, were intended to intimidate people into not laughing at their clothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsknecht

Serious answer: They are for opening up blocks of pike men. You use the 2 handed swords to destroy the pikes and/or push them aside, then send your guys with short swords into the gap to destroy the pike block from the inside.

In Spain the big swords were called mandobles, they were used kinda like a maneuvereable spear with a far better angle cover to bash/defend.

Also maybe to crush down infantries under a rush.

Early Middle Ages were probably a point in history where Europeans were at their highest level in terms of overall health and quality of life.

Antiquity and Renaissance were both overcrowded, urbanized, with bad living conditions and worse food.

>Early Middle Ages were probably a point in history where Europeans were at their highest level in terms of overall health and quality of life.

No antibiotics, modern sanitation, internet, refrigeration orcentral heating, not much education, massive infant mortality and no way to travel faster than a horse. I don't see how that equates a high quality of life.

Would you swap places with them - given that you are far more likely to be a serf than an aristocrat?

"No antibiotics" - true "Modern sanitation" - only really necessary in cities. But 90% of populace lived in the countryside. My grandparents did just fine without any kind of modern sanitation. "Internet" - true, but also irrelevant for quality of life. "refrigeration" - completely unnecessary when you have fresh food. "central heating" - completely unnecessary as medieval houses weren't massive and could be heated just fine with a fireplace "not much education" - true... to an extent. "massive infant mortality" - true, but if you didn't survive infancy, you wouldn't worry about living in Middle Ages, would you? "no way to travel faster to a horse" - so not having something completely useless is relevant for quality of life?

All and all, your objections a) completely miss the point and b) are kinda weird.

So would you swap places?

I don't know. I'm used to life as is, but I wouldn't be hurt if places got swapped.

Food? Bread and cheap legumes and vegetables, if any. Meat was for the rich.

That is why I specified Early Middle Ages. Not much serfdom during that time, and there was a lot of food to go around due to low population density - and that included meat, and yes, even for the peasants.

Also, you are wrong. Meat stews were not just eaten, but the mainstay of the medieval peasants diet: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/may/medieval-peasant-die...

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