Swords have little use on a medieval battlefield anyway. You use different weapons and tactics.
Just curious - could you explain this in a bit more detail? It's surprising.
Just curious - could you explain this in a bit more detail? It's surprising.
Swords are great against lightly armoured and unarmoured targets, like peasants, archers and civilians. Swords remained in use as a side arm and civilian weapon, and a popular duelling weapon, which may also be why so many medieval manuscripts are about one-on-one fights. Carrying a polearm with you everywhere you go is a lot more cumbersome than having a sword hanging on your belt.
But swords were absolutely used on the battlefield. Romans and vikings used them a lot. Knights had them of course, and even they became increasingly less useful against other knights, they often didn't really want to kill each other anyway. Pikemen generally had a short sword as backup weapon (the Katzbalger), and there's of course the massive two-handed swords used by Landsknechts to break up pike formations (supposedly; nobody knows for sure). But again knights in plate armour, you'd better get something that can knock holes in it. If you want to kill him, that it.
You might compare the sword to a pistol. You don't usually send a mass of soldiers into battle with just a pistol; you give them assault rifles (or polearms). But officers and civilians tend to carry a pistol, and maybe some soldiers have one for backup.
A sword may not be an ideal weapon against an armored opponent, but half-swording with one is still very effective...
Also its important to note, the sword pedagogically-speaking is the root weapon of HEMA systems. So the fact these folks train with a sword as their primary weapon makes sense. Manuscripts support historical training following the same pattern. I teach you how to use a sword, then I teach you how to use a pole-axe...
I elaborate more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948675
>You might compare the sword to a pistol.
This is a good point, I think people often overlook how knights and samurai on foot share the same battlefield weapon configuration: <primary weapon> + <longsword/Katana> + <dagger/Tantō>
That's exactly why I said "nearly". That, and the Mordhau.
they are useless for penetration. The rest of effects are in place. The beauty and usability of sword comes from it being very convenient weapon to focus and amplify the power of your movement in much wider envelope of possible positions and movements - much better than any other type of weapon. Hammer/axe comes close but it trades in significant part of the envelope for penetrating abilities in other part of the envelope.
Swords were partially ceremonial and partially "nobility" weapons. Walking around with a spear in town is tiring, because its big, heavy and awkward.
On the other hand, swords can be sheathed. They were expensive to manufacture, so they denoted wealth. And finally, they were effective weapons at the end of the day.
Pistol vs Machine Gun is the best way to compare a Swordman vs Spearman. It is said that you can train a Spearman in a week to beat even expert Swordsmen (with years of training) regularly.
Spears / Polearms were cheaper to manufacture, more effective in the battlefield, and easier to teach. Swords were more of a "city personal defense weapon", very similar to pistols today. I'm sure the HEMA players around here know how much that range advantage gives you.
A Halberd was perhaps the perfection of Medieval combat weaponry. A long spear-tip for stabbing, a strong blade for cutting, and a hook for pulling people off of horses. Halberds could definitely do a lot more than swordmen, at much cheaper costs.
I mean, what is a swordman supposed to do against a heavy-Calvary charge? Halberdiers also outrange Swordmen, and have stronger formations. The two-handed poleweapon can be swung with massive leverage that can break shields and cut through even plate with ease. While the stabbing point can be dug in to brace against calvery charges. It was an effective weapon at all stages of medieval combat.
The only swordmen on the medieval battlefield were the legendary "Double-paid" Zweihanders (The Doppelsöldner). But the massive swords these Doppelsoldners used were approximately the same size as a halberd.
http://i.imgur.com/KPEFFD4.jpg
But they were expensive, and the full-metal massive swords that they wielded were heavy, expensive, and required extensive training. (ie: more expensive) It was more effective in the long term to just train more Halberdiers, and the Zweihanders left the battlefield by the 1500s.
In any case, the "Longsword" is much shorter than these Zweihanders, and is at a considerable range disadvantage against spearmen. Mind you, King Author of legend killed Mordred with a Spear.
Swords were probably carried by Soldiers in case their primary weapon broke. They are excellent sidearms (like Pistols today), but I personally am much more comfortable with a pole-weapon (Spear, Pike or Halberd) than I am with a Sword. And I started with Foil Fencing mind you.
Indeed, there is a reason that both are generally referred to as 'sidearms' in military parlance.
Can you elaborate on this? What were they doing with swords instead?
edit: beaten to it, that's what i get for loading a whole bunch of tabs when i first get into work...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hlIUrd7d1Q
Swords pretty much work against plate armor, because they trained to precisely drive the point toward the joints.
So, sending out a group armed with swords on the battlefield isn't going to do much. You want warhammers with backspikes that can pierce steel plate and crush bone, halberds that can hit so hard it crushes anything underneath armour, long pikes to keep the enemy at a distance, bows to pierce maille. The best weapon on the battlefield is actually mass. Get a group large enough close together and trample your opponents.
That's how most battles were won. In viking and early medieval times you would use large shields and short spears, create a shield wall and run over your opponent. Later on heavy cavalry appeared who could easily run over them. Cavalry dominated until the English started using the longbow en masse to kill the mounts of the cavalry. Swiss pikemen started using 6+ meter long pikes in tight bock formations. These pikes were so long that cavalry could be stopped dead before they reached the pikemen in a charge. It's like a wooden cumple zone. That pretty much spelled the end of heavy cavalry. Then soldiers started using halberds to get in between the pikes and crush pike blocks.
Swords were often carried on the battlefield but usually as a backup weapon, not as the primary weapon. Their cross shape granted them a lot of symbolic meaning in those religious times, but there are much better weapons available if you want to win large battles.
This sounds a bit like a Greek Hoplite Phalanx.
When people think pikemen, they think of very static formations, with little mobility. This is true of a lot of historical pike units, but the Swiss pikemen are the opposite of it. They drilled as small companies of ~100 men, and they were so successful because they made mobility as an unit into an art. A swiss pike block was drilled to change facing in seconds, and they liked to charge pikes levelled at near running speed. Many a condottiere got their last surprise when they were at the last stretch of their charge against an exposed flank or rear of a swiss block, and suddenly all the pikes rise, everyone turns, all the pikes come down again, and the swiss start charging the would-be attackers like madmen.
Early blackpowder was of poor quality, as were the handgonnes, and round balls are ballistically inefficient (and the actual projectiles were usually worse). So, probably pretty well, until you got too close.
P.S. The primary effect that I keep seeing mentioned is that they make a really loud noise and scare the crap out of everyone.
P.P.S As far as I can tell, the use of armor declines as the momentum of the projectiles (and number of firearms) goes up. Accuracy was the last attribute that was important on the battlefield. (Except for individual rate of fire.)
Besides, all that hot lead had to go somewhere. Maybe you wouldn't be hit by the guy in front of you, but you'd still risk getting hit by the one behind him or the ones next to him. Arrows may have been more precise, but at least you could see where they were going.
A sword may not be an ideal weapon against an armored opponent, but half-swording with one is still very effective...
As seen in Seven Samurai
Although its worth pointing out, there are Harnischfechten techniques for longsword commonly referred to as half-swording (and you almost NEVER see these in movies). Btw, the unarmed component is called Ringen.
P.S. There are two similar schools for HEMA, the German and Italian school, my terms used above are the German terms. Most of the difference is either style, terminology or quite subtle.
A reasonably good depiction is the Phalanx shown in the movie "300". The history of warfare is generally about increasing the standoff distance between two militaries. The side with longer spears generally did better, then the side with the better archers.
Even after gunpowder was introduced, the reload time was so long that after getting a shot off, armies would switch to pikes.
The "wall of men in formation" you see in the Napoleonic wars and the American Revolutionary and Civil wars was sort of the last use of that kind of traditional formation and movement. The widespread use of heavy artillery put an end to it much like the airplane put an end to trench warfare.
Edit: Added link I forgot.
1: http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-bluepri...
Also swords expensive compared to spears.
For much of their history, the Roman Legions used a kind of short, broad-bladed sword called the gladius. There were various types across the centuries, but generally they were quite a bit shorter than the swords we see in the movies, sometimes as short as 18 inches from guard to point. This was not a great one-on-one weapon; all other things being equal, a warrior with a traditional long-bladed sword would usually beat a shorter one.
But the Legions didn't fight one-on-one. They fought shoulder-to-shoulder, leading with big rectangular shields, and thrusting around the side, top, or bottom with the gladius. Quite a few of their of their enemies came from traditions that emphasized personal glory and used big, long swords that needed room to swing. These men had to space themselves out further to avoid hitting their fellows, and so each one would find himself facing two Legionnaires shoulder-to-shoulder. A bigger sword doesn't help much against odds like that.
(I am not an expert and I have probably got some details wrong; feel free to correct me.)
But many of those soldiers would also have carried a sword as a backup weapon and for use at closer range.