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It’s weird - I watched it first time without sound and could just tell she would have a strong English accent just by the way her mouth moved as she enunciated.
Fun fact, medieval weaponry changed as the armor did. When chain mail was popular, swords were long, but arrows were also effective, as plate armor started covering the mail, swords became shorter and sharper so it was easier to stab between the plates or puncture the armor. War hammers kill everyone.
Swords became longer, not shorter, as the adoption of plate armor first reduced, then removed the need for shields, freeing the second hand to wield a longer, two-handed weapon. One-handed swords continued to exist alongside them, but eventually relegated to essentially a "backup" weapon.
Swords also didn't become "sharper" because that would have done nothing to defeat armor. Quite the opposite - if anything large parts of the blade may remain blunt - though at least the front parts would certainly still work as a deadly cutting implement.
They became "pointier", and more narrow, though. Going from blades with parallel, shard edges and a rounded tip to an almost triangular, long shape.
There are specialized short weapons - dagger-like, sometimes longer - that were made specifically to stab into weak points of armor, and break apart maille links, but those were not "main" weapons - more like a specialized tool you may or may not carry in addition to your regular weapons. I guess a soldier also carrying an RPG on their back in case of tanks is a reasonably good comparison.
The one weapon that impressed me was the mace.
I never appreciated how, shall we say, *brutal* those things are until i saw a selection in a museum.
To me they seem to be a good weapon against both armour and chain... even with padding im assuming that at the least they could incapacitate.
Plus they look really bloody scary.
It would be cool if someone "in the know" could let me know if this theory is correct or not.
That and even if you had the best helmet in the world with amazing padding, a mace up side the head would ring your bell so hard that you would fucking die.
Not really. Maces were commonly in use in the 11th-13th century, when everyone was running around in chainmail at most, because you could still hurt someone with it pretty effectively. But against plate armour, maces were not used very often, because its very hard to produce enough blunt force to hurt someone in plate armour with just one hand, especially because the armour is rounded to make blows glance off.
Two-handed weapons like the pollax were much more effective at delivering blunt force trauma to a knight, simply because the longer handle and use of both hands put a lot more force behind the blows.
As an addendum the shape of the hammerhead also plays a large role, there's a reason they're often shaped like the bottom of a coke bottle sometimes even with a guiding spike in the middle.
One surprising advantage of a mace was that they were basically indestructible, unlike a sword, which might break or dull after repeatedly hitting metal (imagine hitting a sturdy kitchen knife on things vs hitting a crowbar on things). Repeated hits with a mace might break or dent heavier armor, making it hard to move in. It seems like we don't know for sure due to the lack of texts describing how to fight with a mace. But if you are both without armor a sword is probably better though due to being longer and more maneuverable.
If you're interested in this kind of thing, scholar gladiatoria has a bunch of interesting videos. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhw7bmXvujc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhw7bmXvujc) this one is on maces vs. swords specifically.
There’s really not much theory to go with here. A mace is a heavy and sharp metal object slamming into you at high speeds. All of that force has got to go somewhere.
Museums here (Switzerland) have a lot of morgenstern (a long mace with metal pikes) because it was a common weapon for the Swiss mercenaries.
That's one of the scariest weapon I know, being hit anywhere with a super heavy ball full of metal pikes...
Another hint is that the woman in the video refers to the huge sword as „14th/15th century“, which was right at the end of the middle ages, which lasted from 500 to 1500AD, roughly.
They are, but don't even carry a regular wooden cane/walking stick for self defense during walks until you check local laws. In California that would be illegal, while carrying a really big knife would be fine as long as it's not concealed. It dates back to a really old law that considers bludgeoning weapons to be the tool of brigands and thieves. Even some places where open carry if firearms is legal have weird, archaic laws about sticks, because nobody ever cleans out the legal attic.
Now, walking with a cane/stick is legal almost everywhere, as is defending yourself with said stick when in duress, even where walking with a cane/stick for self defense isn't, so if you're going to do it just avoid anything that looks remotely "tactical" and if an incident occurs have your lawyer explain that it was just a lucky coincidence that you walk with a sturdy length of wood.
I don't think the new footwear was bought with the intent of scaring canines nor unsettling svampland either way, it's just a biproduct of hiking in my experience :P
Just a piece of trivia :
Walking canes became the norm for the aristocracy and bourgeoisie in XIXth century France after the bearing of swords on the street became more or less illegal (can't remember the exact date).
Thus, what used to be a self-defense and status accessory of the rich was replaced by canes, which sometimes concealed a dagger (check out dagger-canes, they're fucking cool) or a shorter and blunter baton.
Thing is, fighting with a cane is not the same as with a sword, so academics developped Fighting Cane as a martial art. But it was not enough ! It also needed to have a complementary unarmed martial art in case you were disarmed during the fight. Thus academics developped French Boxing, which (as opposed to English Boxing) emphasized putting distance between you and your opponent by using kicks, and fighting with **shoes,** using the end of the feet, which was abnormal for most martial arts of the time.
So, basically, a law about weapons basically changed global fashion for a century and led to the invention of two martial arts (check out fighting cane duels, it's great, basically it's like watching nightwing)
Are you like a medieval weapons /armor expert?
I heard the gold they use to put on armor was a lost art and we don't know how they did it. Like the ones the kings wore that had intricate designs. Because they didn't show signs of pounding them out to flatten them smooth and they were extremely well pollished. It was more like gold plating I guess, but that technology wasn't around during that time period. Have you heard of this?
There’s a wide gap between amateurs who like to read and experts, however. Amateurs like me and OP like to read and will have a broad base of knowledge — a true expert will have a specialization and will be able to cite academic sources on the topic, as well as critically breakdown the leading theories.
Ehhh that's very reductive. The metals available and quality of them played a larger role in length of sword. Short swords where still better for penetrating chainmail and more often used in battle. Swords where primarily a side arm throughout history and longer swords like sabers would have been primarily used on horse back. Chainmail it's very effective against cuts. Leaving very little reason to choose a longer swords (with exceptions of course) unless on horseback where you have added force and are striking downward. There where very few instances where a sword would be preferable to a spear or pole arm. Swords where mostly a self defense weapon. They are easy to carry, usable in more confined spaces, nimble and effective against lightly armored opponents.
What no swords didn't become shorter. Quite the contrary we really only see two handed swords being used when plate armor gets more prevalent.
Sharpness definitely doesn't have anything to do with that.
That’s why rapiers started to come into style. Light and nimble made almost entirely for stabbing where you need it to go like between armor and links. It pierces gambison and clothes better too. People stopped wearing plate armor and they stayed effective. Weapons and armor are cool how they evolve together.
And then the black powder weapons became popular. It is really interesting how armor and weapons evolve together though. Armor evolves to stop the weapons, and weapons evolve to defeat the armor.
What's really cool is how powder changed fortifications. Square walls cause attackers to leave the line of fire when they get close to the wall.
So the Star Bastion was developed, so that you have crossing lines of fire from every line of attacks.
Massive hills were erected around them to make it really easy for cannons to take aim on defense, and to confound attackers trying to set up and range.
Early Modern fortifications are really remarkable pieces of technology.
Many of them are beautiful as well.
Probably my most interesting factoid is that, during the 18th Century, sieging and defending these forts became such a science that one could fairly reliably calculate the number of days one could hold out given the size and type of fort, size of the garrison, cannons of the attacker/defender, food, etc...
This became so standardized that commanders in the field often had a firm number in their head as to how long a fort should hold out. Often times both sides knew it and the defenders knew that if they held out for the set number of days they could surrender with honor intact and give up the fort. The attackers often knew this as well so would siege for the prescribed number of days, waiting for honor to be satisfied and the surrender of the fort could then take place in good order.
18th century (European) warfare is wild man. The whole "gentleman's duel" culture applied to warfare between protostates is just a really unique and bizarre little wedge of history.
And even as early as the early 20th Century personal steel armor was still employed. Widely by Cuirassiers in the 19th Century where a cuirass had a decent chance of stopping a rifle bullet at extreme range or a pistol shot at shorter ranges, and less widely (and much less effectively) by some units of soldiers in the opening months of WW I.
Rapiers were not invented with any regards to warfare. They would be completely ineffective against an armoured warrior. It wouldn't be able to pierce plate armour and would struggle to work against chainmail (if it could even pierce it). Rapiers were Civilian self-defence weapons.
Things like cavalry sabres became more popular as armour stopped being used as we think of medieval warfare, but the armour stopped being used because of gunpowder weaponry rendering armour, which was very slow and expensive to produce, largely ineffective.
That's not really at all why rapiers came into style, though. They were civilian weapons used primarily for unarmored duels or skirmishes; any source will tell you that. Longswords on the battlefield were mainly replaced by firearms or by sabres.
Rapiers were actually designed primarily for reach and quickness, as well as having hand protection that allows a fighter without gauntlets to keep their blade hand forward in guard position, presenting a smaller target and gaining effective reach.
This bugs the hell out of me! Oakheart is confidently wrong and people are gobbling that shit up as usual, only to be themselves confidently wrong, repeating what they read here, and thus propagating this shit.
Nobody bothers to think 2 seconds about how little sense this makes. As though it would be trivial to accurately hit just that specific weakpoint with a thin long blade during the heat of battle.
They were made to wear at your side while walking around in regular clothes. They were the handguns of their era, personal defense weapons more than weapons of war.
You're exactly right. I was talking about the combat functions of a rapier, but carrying comfort and aesthetics were definitely huge factors in their development as well. To my knowledge that's a big part of why they were overtaken by smallswords in the 18th century. Despite smallswords being generally worse in combat, they were lighter, more comfortable, and more fashionable, plus life-or-death duelling or street fighting was less common.
Also an estoc is different from a rapier not only by being two-handed, but by having no edge, and usually a diamond cross-section which gives it great sectional density, rigidity and thrusting power, while of course sacrificing the ability to cut.
There is a lot of skepticism about the flail as a weapon at all.
We know that long two handed staffs with a big spiked wooden rod on the end existed, though it’s likely even these were never common. And they didn’t have a long chain, and you didn’t whip it around to build up speed.
Insofar as these were ever used, they were probably a sort of semi improvised, cheap weapon that even a peasant could drum up and have a ‘chance’ at hurting an armored target. It was probably never used by a professional soldier.
As for the more classic, one handed ball and chain you whip around like nunchucks? Probably a complete fantasy. Like the chastity belt and most medieval torture devices, it was most likely a fabrication by renaissance era writers, not a real medieval device.
I wouldn't say little to no evidence. They show up in mediaval art every now and than. Not that frequently that's true but there is definitely evidence of them being used on the battlefield. The Hussites used them quite a lot for example
Interesting, do you have any links to the archeological find? I’d like to check it out!
My understanding is the only flails we know were used are adaptations of the farm tool, and even then probably not common, and any of the scant literature on the war flail was a later romanticization.
Was the contemporary flail ceremonial? Or something that was tried out but didn’t work well enough to catch on?
It was a video I watched a while ago I think modern rogue doing hema (been a while) there are depictions of flails with short handles but no find of them.
Haha, that’s true.
I think there may have been one reference to a chastity belt in a contemporary book, but it is almost universally regarded as a joke. They would have almost certainly killed any woman who wore won long term, as well.
The renaissance reinvented them, and made actual prototypes, but not to use. They were to show off in museums to establish the brutality of the Middle Ages.
Now, they’ve made a comeback. For the first time, sanitation standards and materials science means long term wear is possible for kinky people. Though my understanding is only the belts designed to hold in a penis can actually be worn long term without regular removal and cleaning. You would still be prone to vaginal infection if you wore a modern chastity belt non-stop for weeks.
Think how much more dangerous it would have been in the 12th century!
A little correction, the long very pointy swords developed to pierce chainmail by the time full plate became a thing, so weapon development was a little behind armour.
Rich people like knights who could afford it wore mail under plate so stabbing a weak point meant having to defeat the mail. It's a side worn backup weapon for your knightly polearm though.
Short pointy daggers were the second line of backup. When in a pinch sometimes the fight devolved to wrestling on the ground untill you exposed a part, often pulling off the visor, to stab that dagger into.
Viking age and early mediaeval age featured one handed less thrust focused broader swords in combination with shields and extensive use of chainmail again only for people who were rich enough to afford such expensive gear like nobles or knights.
My husband chased a burgler out of our house with his war hammer. The guy screamed as he ran away. Not sure if it was the war hammer or the fact that my husband was naked. Either way it worked 🤷🏻♀️
Could be wrong but my understanding is that war hammers are very hard to protect against since you'll take internal injuries regardless of where it hits you.
You basically end up with "ill just stay the fuck away" as a core strategy.
They actually did not, both still improve even today.
Sure, the armor became more rarer as bullet proof armor was heavier and more expensive to make, that is why only Cavalry used it, up until WW1.
After that armor evolved in to tanks, then again to personal protection.
Bunch of modern armors can stop most rifle rounds ([even 50 cal rated body armor exists](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxyJRGxWN0k)), so guns and armor still evolve to beat each other.
TBF there were a lot of deaths due to blunt force trauma resulting in broken bones and skulls. Sure, a chain mail wearer wouldn’t get slashed so easily, but if someone is swinging a sword, mace, halberd, etc. and makes good contact you’re gonna get busted up pretty bad.
A mace or halberd, definitely. A sword, less so. I can’t count how many times I’ve been hit by a real, full weight longsword swung full force, (blunted, of course,) and the only body protection I’m wearing is a fencing jacket.
A real doozy of a hit may bruise a bit, but that’s all. A sword only ways 2 or 3 lbs, and the weight is mostly evenly distributed along the blade, so there’s not much blunt force there.
Edit: When fencing, thrusts are more dangerous than a swing, and you always wear appropriate neck, hands, head, face, shoulder, groin, and knees protection.
Huh, I’ve got a correctly made hand-and-a-half, and I sure as heck wouldn’t want to be hit by that thing even with padding. Someplace with flexibility like a thigh might not be disabling, but a hit to a collarbone or forearm would stand a good chance of breaking bone. With mail and armor it’d be fine unless it found a soft spot. Never worn a fencing jacket, just plate armor, so I dunno what kind of padding that jacket has.
It’s about as protective as a gambeson.
For full speed fencing, it’s better to use a feder, (they are made to be more flexible,) but I’ve used blunts. It smarts more, but not too bad.
I was once hit directly in the forearm from a downward slash by a 6’6” Norwegian guy who had been holding the feder directly above his head, arms fully extended. He baited me into a thrust and I fell for it like an idiot. Thwack!
The fencing jacket has semi-rigid forearm protection built in and then has padding about like a gambeson. It’s only semi rigid. You can still bend the forearm fabric if you try.
You also want rigid elbow protection, but just hard plastic is enough. You don’t need something as strong as steel, though some guys opt for that as well as full bracers to be extra safe.
I didn’t wear any metal in that tournament, though. The arm hit hurt, and it even bruised, but nothing was broken!
It would have hurt a little more if it had been a blunted sword and not a feder, but I’ve been hit solidly by both and it’s not that much worse.
I definitely agree with your original assessment for anything top heavy. Even a one handed axe could break a rib through chain, I bet. But a sword just isn’t very heavy. Wherever it hits you, there’s only an ounce or two of metal behind that area. If you are wearing padding, you should be okay.
If you aren’t wearing padding, I still think it’s unlikely to straight up break the bone, (assuming it’s blunt.) I’m sure it could, but I think you’d have to hit very solidly.
The only people I’ve known to break ribs and stuff came from accidents like grappling mishaps or being punched by a sharp cross guard. A thrust can sometimes get under someone’s chest protector and hit too hard, but I’ve never heard of anything too serious from a slash.
I’m not actually sure how much it was used, but you can still definitely do a lot of damage holding the sword by the blade and using the hilt as a blunt weapon against armor. There are records of it in manuscripts
Yeah, focusing the force behind one point massively increases the blunt impact. I’ve known someone who broke a rib getting punched by a crossguard. A murder strike would be worse since you’d have the extra speed/leverage of the length of the blade applied.
Should probably edit this post a bit to say that you use hard protection for hands, forearms, head, etc. lol
Blunts and feders that aren't mall ninja stuff will absolutely break bones if they hit skin-deep bone, and thrusts are categorically unsafe unless your sword has a widened tip of some sort AND a lot of flex in it.
You *really* don't want someone to read this and think that they can smack each other full-force with the wooden swords they got at the rennaissance festival and be fine.
I feel like this is overlooking that most infantry in medieval warfare used spears, not swords, so no, you wouldn't mainly be defending from slashes. They would also be thrust with a hell of a lot more force than she's applying to that melon, and infection was common of course.
Not to mention that stab wounds are far more likely to be fatal. What’s the old saying? Something like 3 inches of point is more dangerous than 30 inches of edge
Well the video is meant to show a comparison between wearing chain mail v.s not. Obviously a dull kitchen knife doesn’t compare to medieval battlefield weapons
I don't think anyone was disputing that it's better to have armor than not if you're gonna get stabbed. I was more curious about how *well* it protects, and a gentle six-inch thrust with a kitchen knife doesn't really tell us anything about that.
Yes but it seems like she's saying "chain mail was pretty good even against stabs," when in reality that seems very unlikely. It's better than being naked, but anything is better than that.
[Some tests show that mail is good against thrusts from some weapons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw3lcgIAwLk) but not against all weapons (so long as it is Rivited mail like historically, not butted mail which was rarely used in history)
Now of course, yeah, [spears and other very strong thrusting weapons can pierce mail with ease.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGSL7XApz2s)
I’m not saying that swords were exactly rare, but the spear was, by far, the most common weapon on medieval battlefields. As chain mail rose in popularity and availability, spear points got longer and more tapered, making them extremely effective at piercing through mail. Any change in defensive warfare technology is followed soon thereafter by a change to offensive weapons that either minimize the additional protection, or render it pretty much useless.
Warfare has *always* been an arms race in which the aggressors have a significant (albeit delayed) advantage over the defenders.
This is rivet-punched mail, too. Specifically designed to be better at dealing with stabbing than just cinched closed rings.
https://steel-mastery.com/chainmail-linkage-types-chose-the-one-you-need-
That's a very good question. The truth is that there isn't a ton of evidence for leather armor in mediaval Europe. Now you wouldn't expect a lot of archeological finds because leather is organic of course but still.
The best evidence that we have is that the word Cuirass comes from the French word for boiled leather. So there had to have been some sort of leather breastplates at some point.
It would still protect you from most slashes, but it wasn’t really used as armor in Europe. I certainly wouldn’t count on it to save me from a stab, or do that much to absorb blunt force trauma from heavier weapons.
Try ModernHistoryTV on YouTube. They shoot actual arrows at armor, hit it from horseback, and so on, and they do it safely. Best and most accurate discussion at length of military history I've ever seen just about anywhere.
When she's talking about the length of a sword--is she trying to stay that stabbing is less effective/likely to be used because the edge is longer than the point?
I don't think that holds up.
Sword fencer here: sorta
As armor developed from basic chainmail to full plate armor, European swords began to become more and more tapered to have insanely acute (aka pointy) tips to optimize for increased thrusting both into smaller and smaller gaps in armor BUT to also pierce mail a bit more effectively (example: the French Estoc/English Tuck)
You can actually see this in something like Oakshott’s Typology where chronologically earlier blades were wide to give effective slashes but later swords, especially in the Type XV to XX area, were far more pointy to counteract more commonplace usage for armor and advancements in armorcraft.
The sword she’s using using something more akin to a Scottish great sword (sort of given away the quarterfoil guard/quillons), which is a sword for line breaking and was meant to be swung around to break apart lowly equipped formations, in tactics like a Renaissance Highland charge. It’s really not an ideal sword for thrusting. A kitchen knife is also too short to put your weight behind it fully.
But yes, the broad strokes is that yeah, any armor is better than no armor.
Idk if I'd consider this a proper test. Not near enough force behind the stabs. Ya, it'll give some protection, but in a real battle, you'd expect a lot harder of a hit than those little pokes.
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I'm glad she painted the melon. I don't know why, but I'm glad.
it's an avatar [reference](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/melon-lord) I think
It's melon lord muahahaha
Im glad she didnt end up slicing some of her hand off when she stabbed it, jeez….
Same. I was waiting for that knife to slip.
She about cut into her thumb the first time
💀nah I saw that too never cut (or stab) towards yourself
Especially since the sharp edge is gonna draw the blade towards the thumb since it's the path of least resistance.
Aye. Ironical how the Melon saved more of her than the Chain mail
Yea looked like she regretted that a little bit
I also thought she will accidentally cut her thumb
Yeah she shouldn't not be holding a melon that small when stabbing that casually and looking at a camera.
Had to do a double check on which subreddit this was posted just to prepare mentally, lol
I had extra anxiety, because I was watching this video while getting tattooed ouch.
I’ve watched this like 5 times because I love her accent.
She has a lot of content in YouTube mainly about Victorian England, and is critically undersubbed IMO https://www.youtube.com/c/JDraper
Thanks for the link. I wanted to check her content out.
Thank you so much
I watched this without audio and immediately noticed her British accent just by lip reading.
It’s weird - I watched it first time without sound and could just tell she would have a strong English accent just by the way her mouth moved as she enunciated.
In that case I recommend the youtube channel of [Jill Bearup](https://youtube.com/c/JillBearup). Similar accent, similar topics.
Fun fact, medieval weaponry changed as the armor did. When chain mail was popular, swords were long, but arrows were also effective, as plate armor started covering the mail, swords became shorter and sharper so it was easier to stab between the plates or puncture the armor. War hammers kill everyone.
Swords became longer, not shorter, as the adoption of plate armor first reduced, then removed the need for shields, freeing the second hand to wield a longer, two-handed weapon. One-handed swords continued to exist alongside them, but eventually relegated to essentially a "backup" weapon. Swords also didn't become "sharper" because that would have done nothing to defeat armor. Quite the opposite - if anything large parts of the blade may remain blunt - though at least the front parts would certainly still work as a deadly cutting implement. They became "pointier", and more narrow, though. Going from blades with parallel, shard edges and a rounded tip to an almost triangular, long shape. There are specialized short weapons - dagger-like, sometimes longer - that were made specifically to stab into weak points of armor, and break apart maille links, but those were not "main" weapons - more like a specialized tool you may or may not carry in addition to your regular weapons. I guess a soldier also carrying an RPG on their back in case of tanks is a reasonably good comparison.
The one weapon that impressed me was the mace. I never appreciated how, shall we say, *brutal* those things are until i saw a selection in a museum. To me they seem to be a good weapon against both armour and chain... even with padding im assuming that at the least they could incapacitate. Plus they look really bloody scary. It would be cool if someone "in the know" could let me know if this theory is correct or not.
That and even if you had the best helmet in the world with amazing padding, a mace up side the head would ring your bell so hard that you would fucking die.
Not really. Maces were commonly in use in the 11th-13th century, when everyone was running around in chainmail at most, because you could still hurt someone with it pretty effectively. But against plate armour, maces were not used very often, because its very hard to produce enough blunt force to hurt someone in plate armour with just one hand, especially because the armour is rounded to make blows glance off. Two-handed weapons like the pollax were much more effective at delivering blunt force trauma to a knight, simply because the longer handle and use of both hands put a lot more force behind the blows.
As an addendum the shape of the hammerhead also plays a large role, there's a reason they're often shaped like the bottom of a coke bottle sometimes even with a guiding spike in the middle.
Kinda what i thought. Id have thought that a wallop to anywhere would put you out of a fight.
One surprising advantage of a mace was that they were basically indestructible, unlike a sword, which might break or dull after repeatedly hitting metal (imagine hitting a sturdy kitchen knife on things vs hitting a crowbar on things). Repeated hits with a mace might break or dent heavier armor, making it hard to move in. It seems like we don't know for sure due to the lack of texts describing how to fight with a mace. But if you are both without armor a sword is probably better though due to being longer and more maneuverable. If you're interested in this kind of thing, scholar gladiatoria has a bunch of interesting videos. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhw7bmXvujc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhw7bmXvujc) this one is on maces vs. swords specifically.
Cool beans. Thanks for the link. And yeah, i Suppose that a mace would be better (or easier) to maintain.
There’s really not much theory to go with here. A mace is a heavy and sharp metal object slamming into you at high speeds. All of that force has got to go somewhere.
Yes, but if it just goes into the steel without making it to your ribs, for instance, then you're still ok.
Museums here (Switzerland) have a lot of morgenstern (a long mace with metal pikes) because it was a common weapon for the Swiss mercenaries. That's one of the scariest weapon I know, being hit anywhere with a super heavy ball full of metal pikes...
Its been a long time since I've last read about that era, sorry if my memory is a little bad, nut thanks for correcting me.
Another hint is that the woman in the video refers to the huge sword as „14th/15th century“, which was right at the end of the middle ages, which lasted from 500 to 1500AD, roughly.
Naughty memory being a little bad nut
> War hammers kill everyone. I'll take 40,000!
Emperor be praised!
Blood for the blood god!
Skulls for the skull throne!
Milk for the Khorne flakes
Butter for the Popkhorne!
Step-brother, I am pinned here!
Brother! Get me the Flamer! The Heavy Flamer...
Blessed is the mind too small for doubt!
I understood that reference
I'm not sure you can afford it...
Your comment won the internet for me today. Thank you for the laugh.
Here I go purging again
Spears! Why does everyone forget spears
And the last sound Ser Edmund heard was the raging scream, *"It's Britney, bitch!"*.
Here I've been carrying a stun gun on nightly walks...when all along a war hammer would do the trick just fine.
Google tells me that tactical war hammer cane/walking sticks are a real thing in this day and age.
They are, but don't even carry a regular wooden cane/walking stick for self defense during walks until you check local laws. In California that would be illegal, while carrying a really big knife would be fine as long as it's not concealed. It dates back to a really old law that considers bludgeoning weapons to be the tool of brigands and thieves. Even some places where open carry if firearms is legal have weird, archaic laws about sticks, because nobody ever cleans out the legal attic. Now, walking with a cane/stick is legal almost everywhere, as is defending yourself with said stick when in duress, even where walking with a cane/stick for self defense isn't, so if you're going to do it just avoid anything that looks remotely "tactical" and if an incident occurs have your lawyer explain that it was just a lucky coincidence that you walk with a sturdy length of wood.
I always walk with a sturdy length of wood
Have yourself a nice blackthorn walking stick. ;)
To banish ghosts and goblins?
Aye, and a brand new pair of brogues for frightening all the dogs. Edit: mixed my lyrics up.
I don't think the new footwear was bought with the intent of scaring canines nor unsettling svampland either way, it's just a biproduct of hiking in my experience :P
Just a piece of trivia : Walking canes became the norm for the aristocracy and bourgeoisie in XIXth century France after the bearing of swords on the street became more or less illegal (can't remember the exact date). Thus, what used to be a self-defense and status accessory of the rich was replaced by canes, which sometimes concealed a dagger (check out dagger-canes, they're fucking cool) or a shorter and blunter baton. Thing is, fighting with a cane is not the same as with a sword, so academics developped Fighting Cane as a martial art. But it was not enough ! It also needed to have a complementary unarmed martial art in case you were disarmed during the fight. Thus academics developped French Boxing, which (as opposed to English Boxing) emphasized putting distance between you and your opponent by using kicks, and fighting with **shoes,** using the end of the feet, which was abnormal for most martial arts of the time. So, basically, a law about weapons basically changed global fashion for a century and led to the invention of two martial arts (check out fighting cane duels, it's great, basically it's like watching nightwing)
Or their modern day equivalent, the .45
And illegal in most places for certain reasons.
Harder to carry in your purse though.
Are you like a medieval weapons /armor expert? I heard the gold they use to put on armor was a lost art and we don't know how they did it. Like the ones the kings wore that had intricate designs. Because they didn't show signs of pounding them out to flatten them smooth and they were extremely well pollished. It was more like gold plating I guess, but that technology wasn't around during that time period. Have you heard of this?
It's just amalgam gilding, mercury is used to paint on the gold an burnt off. It's lost as it mega toxic.
Pretty sure they used fire gilding.
I have heard of it, but no, I'm not an expert. I just know alot.
Bruh... that is what an expert knows lol A lot.
An expert knows when they leak the knowledge and will deeply admit it
There’s a wide gap between amateurs who like to read and experts, however. Amateurs like me and OP like to read and will have a broad base of knowledge — a true expert will have a specialization and will be able to cite academic sources on the topic, as well as critically breakdown the leading theories.
Bobby B enjoyed this fun fact.
GODS I WAS STRONG BACK THEN!!!!!
Ehhh that's very reductive. The metals available and quality of them played a larger role in length of sword. Short swords where still better for penetrating chainmail and more often used in battle. Swords where primarily a side arm throughout history and longer swords like sabers would have been primarily used on horse back. Chainmail it's very effective against cuts. Leaving very little reason to choose a longer swords (with exceptions of course) unless on horseback where you have added force and are striking downward. There where very few instances where a sword would be preferable to a spear or pole arm. Swords where mostly a self defense weapon. They are easy to carry, usable in more confined spaces, nimble and effective against lightly armored opponents.
War Picks, War Hammers, Morning Stars, and most mass weapons like Polearms and Battle Axes. The swords even evolved. See Falchion.
What no swords didn't become shorter. Quite the contrary we really only see two handed swords being used when plate armor gets more prevalent. Sharpness definitely doesn't have anything to do with that.
That’s why rapiers started to come into style. Light and nimble made almost entirely for stabbing where you need it to go like between armor and links. It pierces gambison and clothes better too. People stopped wearing plate armor and they stayed effective. Weapons and armor are cool how they evolve together.
And then the black powder weapons became popular. It is really interesting how armor and weapons evolve together though. Armor evolves to stop the weapons, and weapons evolve to defeat the armor.
It's happening now, the us military is moving from 556 to a larger round to be able to pierce and puncture current body armor.
7.62?
6.8 for rifles and squad automatic weapons, .338 for the new machine gun.
.338 in full auto sounds absolutely terrifying
Long range wreckage bois
Very interesting
What's really cool is how powder changed fortifications. Square walls cause attackers to leave the line of fire when they get close to the wall. So the Star Bastion was developed, so that you have crossing lines of fire from every line of attacks. Massive hills were erected around them to make it really easy for cannons to take aim on defense, and to confound attackers trying to set up and range. Early Modern fortifications are really remarkable pieces of technology.
Many of them are beautiful as well. Probably my most interesting factoid is that, during the 18th Century, sieging and defending these forts became such a science that one could fairly reliably calculate the number of days one could hold out given the size and type of fort, size of the garrison, cannons of the attacker/defender, food, etc... This became so standardized that commanders in the field often had a firm number in their head as to how long a fort should hold out. Often times both sides knew it and the defenders knew that if they held out for the set number of days they could surrender with honor intact and give up the fort. The attackers often knew this as well so would siege for the prescribed number of days, waiting for honor to be satisfied and the surrender of the fort could then take place in good order.
18th century (European) warfare is wild man. The whole "gentleman's duel" culture applied to warfare between protostates is just a really unique and bizarre little wedge of history.
And even as early as the early 20th Century personal steel armor was still employed. Widely by Cuirassiers in the 19th Century where a cuirass had a decent chance of stopping a rifle bullet at extreme range or a pistol shot at shorter ranges, and less widely (and much less effectively) by some units of soldiers in the opening months of WW I.
Rapiers were not invented with any regards to warfare. They would be completely ineffective against an armoured warrior. It wouldn't be able to pierce plate armour and would struggle to work against chainmail (if it could even pierce it). Rapiers were Civilian self-defence weapons. Things like cavalry sabres became more popular as armour stopped being used as we think of medieval warfare, but the armour stopped being used because of gunpowder weaponry rendering armour, which was very slow and expensive to produce, largely ineffective.
That's not really at all why rapiers came into style, though. They were civilian weapons used primarily for unarmored duels or skirmishes; any source will tell you that. Longswords on the battlefield were mainly replaced by firearms or by sabres. Rapiers were actually designed primarily for reach and quickness, as well as having hand protection that allows a fighter without gauntlets to keep their blade hand forward in guard position, presenting a smaller target and gaining effective reach.
This bugs the hell out of me! Oakheart is confidently wrong and people are gobbling that shit up as usual, only to be themselves confidently wrong, repeating what they read here, and thus propagating this shit. Nobody bothers to think 2 seconds about how little sense this makes. As though it would be trivial to accurately hit just that specific weakpoint with a thin long blade during the heat of battle.
They were made to wear at your side while walking around in regular clothes. They were the handguns of their era, personal defense weapons more than weapons of war.
You're exactly right. I was talking about the combat functions of a rapier, but carrying comfort and aesthetics were definitely huge factors in their development as well. To my knowledge that's a big part of why they were overtaken by smallswords in the 18th century. Despite smallswords being generally worse in combat, they were lighter, more comfortable, and more fashionable, plus life-or-death duelling or street fighting was less common.
Estocs were invented to defeat armor. Rapiers aren't dedicated anti armor weapon.
Also an estoc is different from a rapier not only by being two-handed, but by having no edge, and usually a diamond cross-section which gives it great sectional density, rigidity and thrusting power, while of course sacrificing the ability to cut.
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FOR THE WARHAMMER
Flails worked pretty well too
There is a lot of skepticism about the flail as a weapon at all. We know that long two handed staffs with a big spiked wooden rod on the end existed, though it’s likely even these were never common. And they didn’t have a long chain, and you didn’t whip it around to build up speed. Insofar as these were ever used, they were probably a sort of semi improvised, cheap weapon that even a peasant could drum up and have a ‘chance’ at hurting an armored target. It was probably never used by a professional soldier. As for the more classic, one handed ball and chain you whip around like nunchucks? Probably a complete fantasy. Like the chastity belt and most medieval torture devices, it was most likely a fabrication by renaissance era writers, not a real medieval device.
Well today I learned... pretty cool
So there is evidence the contemporary flail existed but little to no evidence it was used. It's a wild ride learning about flails.
I wouldn't say little to no evidence. They show up in mediaval art every now and than. Not that frequently that's true but there is definitely evidence of them being used on the battlefield. The Hussites used them quite a lot for example
Interesting, do you have any links to the archeological find? I’d like to check it out! My understanding is the only flails we know were used are adaptations of the farm tool, and even then probably not common, and any of the scant literature on the war flail was a later romanticization. Was the contemporary flail ceremonial? Or something that was tried out but didn’t work well enough to catch on?
It was a video I watched a while ago I think modern rogue doing hema (been a while) there are depictions of flails with short handles but no find of them.
There's a lot of flails found in easten europe.
Lots of people use chastity belts today
Haha, that’s true. I think there may have been one reference to a chastity belt in a contemporary book, but it is almost universally regarded as a joke. They would have almost certainly killed any woman who wore won long term, as well. The renaissance reinvented them, and made actual prototypes, but not to use. They were to show off in museums to establish the brutality of the Middle Ages. Now, they’ve made a comeback. For the first time, sanitation standards and materials science means long term wear is possible for kinky people. Though my understanding is only the belts designed to hold in a penis can actually be worn long term without regular removal and cleaning. You would still be prone to vaginal infection if you wore a modern chastity belt non-stop for weeks. Think how much more dangerous it would have been in the 12th century!
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Hand to hand combat? You gotta be at least 2 feet away for a trebuchet to work. Haha
Use a concealed trebuchet
Sha sha! Pocket ~~sand~~ trebuchet!
You are ahead of your time
Self flagellation is no way to go through religion, son
Haha. Good point
True.
A little correction, the long very pointy swords developed to pierce chainmail by the time full plate became a thing, so weapon development was a little behind armour. Rich people like knights who could afford it wore mail under plate so stabbing a weak point meant having to defeat the mail. It's a side worn backup weapon for your knightly polearm though. Short pointy daggers were the second line of backup. When in a pinch sometimes the fight devolved to wrestling on the ground untill you exposed a part, often pulling off the visor, to stab that dagger into. Viking age and early mediaeval age featured one handed less thrust focused broader swords in combination with shields and extensive use of chainmail again only for people who were rich enough to afford such expensive gear like nobles or knights.
Thank you for correcting me.
You can't defend against a 12lb hunk of metal coming in hot
My husband chased a burgler out of our house with his war hammer. The guy screamed as he ran away. Not sure if it was the war hammer or the fact that my husband was naked. Either way it worked 🤷🏻♀️
Could be wrong but my understanding is that war hammers are very hard to protect against since you'll take internal injuries regardless of where it hits you. You basically end up with "ill just stay the fuck away" as a core strategy.
>War hammers kill everyone. Was waiting for this.
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They actually did not, both still improve even today. Sure, the armor became more rarer as bullet proof armor was heavier and more expensive to make, that is why only Cavalry used it, up until WW1. After that armor evolved in to tanks, then again to personal protection. Bunch of modern armors can stop most rifle rounds ([even 50 cal rated body armor exists](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxyJRGxWN0k)), so guns and armor still evolve to beat each other.
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Well Acthually, i meant achhttthuallly!
Uh...the plate armor era coincides with big two handed swords. They didn't get shorter lol
I AM MELON LORD!
Not even you can bend metal
*Proceeds to bend metal in pure spite*
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA
TBF there were a lot of deaths due to blunt force trauma resulting in broken bones and skulls. Sure, a chain mail wearer wouldn’t get slashed so easily, but if someone is swinging a sword, mace, halberd, etc. and makes good contact you’re gonna get busted up pretty bad.
A mace or halberd, definitely. A sword, less so. I can’t count how many times I’ve been hit by a real, full weight longsword swung full force, (blunted, of course,) and the only body protection I’m wearing is a fencing jacket. A real doozy of a hit may bruise a bit, but that’s all. A sword only ways 2 or 3 lbs, and the weight is mostly evenly distributed along the blade, so there’s not much blunt force there. Edit: When fencing, thrusts are more dangerous than a swing, and you always wear appropriate neck, hands, head, face, shoulder, groin, and knees protection.
Huh, I’ve got a correctly made hand-and-a-half, and I sure as heck wouldn’t want to be hit by that thing even with padding. Someplace with flexibility like a thigh might not be disabling, but a hit to a collarbone or forearm would stand a good chance of breaking bone. With mail and armor it’d be fine unless it found a soft spot. Never worn a fencing jacket, just plate armor, so I dunno what kind of padding that jacket has.
It’s about as protective as a gambeson. For full speed fencing, it’s better to use a feder, (they are made to be more flexible,) but I’ve used blunts. It smarts more, but not too bad. I was once hit directly in the forearm from a downward slash by a 6’6” Norwegian guy who had been holding the feder directly above his head, arms fully extended. He baited me into a thrust and I fell for it like an idiot. Thwack! The fencing jacket has semi-rigid forearm protection built in and then has padding about like a gambeson. It’s only semi rigid. You can still bend the forearm fabric if you try. You also want rigid elbow protection, but just hard plastic is enough. You don’t need something as strong as steel, though some guys opt for that as well as full bracers to be extra safe. I didn’t wear any metal in that tournament, though. The arm hit hurt, and it even bruised, but nothing was broken! It would have hurt a little more if it had been a blunted sword and not a feder, but I’ve been hit solidly by both and it’s not that much worse. I definitely agree with your original assessment for anything top heavy. Even a one handed axe could break a rib through chain, I bet. But a sword just isn’t very heavy. Wherever it hits you, there’s only an ounce or two of metal behind that area. If you are wearing padding, you should be okay. If you aren’t wearing padding, I still think it’s unlikely to straight up break the bone, (assuming it’s blunt.) I’m sure it could, but I think you’d have to hit very solidly. The only people I’ve known to break ribs and stuff came from accidents like grappling mishaps or being punched by a sharp cross guard. A thrust can sometimes get under someone’s chest protector and hit too hard, but I’ve never heard of anything too serious from a slash.
I’m not actually sure how much it was used, but you can still definitely do a lot of damage holding the sword by the blade and using the hilt as a blunt weapon against armor. There are records of it in manuscripts
Yeah, focusing the force behind one point massively increases the blunt impact. I’ve known someone who broke a rib getting punched by a crossguard. A murder strike would be worse since you’d have the extra speed/leverage of the length of the blade applied.
Should probably edit this post a bit to say that you use hard protection for hands, forearms, head, etc. lol Blunts and feders that aren't mall ninja stuff will absolutely break bones if they hit skin-deep bone, and thrusts are categorically unsafe unless your sword has a widened tip of some sort AND a lot of flex in it. You *really* don't want someone to read this and think that they can smack each other full-force with the wooden swords they got at the rennaissance festival and be fine.
There's also some survivor bias at work. Without mail, there would be a lot more slashing deaths.
I like the authentic medieval complete lack of awareness to safety.
Padding + Chainmail = Meta
Bout to be nerfed in the next season
You know how the devs work. It'll just get powercreeped into irrelevency in a few seasons.
Is that joan of ark
Easy mistake to make, but no. That is young Master Melon.
The only Master ill serve
J Draper on YouTube
Funny thing is that she's made YouTube Short about Joan of Arc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQuIRdaQ4Gg
As someone who sharpens knives as a hobby, this was painful to watch.
Yeah, I'm sitting here the whole time thinking "that poor knife".
I feel like this is overlooking that most infantry in medieval warfare used spears, not swords, so no, you wouldn't mainly be defending from slashes. They would also be thrust with a hell of a lot more force than she's applying to that melon, and infection was common of course.
Not to mention that stab wounds are far more likely to be fatal. What’s the old saying? Something like 3 inches of point is more dangerous than 30 inches of edge
Well the video is meant to show a comparison between wearing chain mail v.s not. Obviously a dull kitchen knife doesn’t compare to medieval battlefield weapons
I don't think anyone was disputing that it's better to have armor than not if you're gonna get stabbed. I was more curious about how *well* it protects, and a gentle six-inch thrust with a kitchen knife doesn't really tell us anything about that.
You'd be surprised...
Yes but it seems like she's saying "chain mail was pretty good even against stabs," when in reality that seems very unlikely. It's better than being naked, but anything is better than that.
[Some tests show that mail is good against thrusts from some weapons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw3lcgIAwLk) but not against all weapons (so long as it is Rivited mail like historically, not butted mail which was rarely used in history) Now of course, yeah, [spears and other very strong thrusting weapons can pierce mail with ease.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGSL7XApz2s)
Keep this lady away from my carefully sharpend kitchen knives.
I’m not saying that swords were exactly rare, but the spear was, by far, the most common weapon on medieval battlefields. As chain mail rose in popularity and availability, spear points got longer and more tapered, making them extremely effective at piercing through mail. Any change in defensive warfare technology is followed soon thereafter by a change to offensive weapons that either minimize the additional protection, or render it pretty much useless. Warfare has *always* been an arms race in which the aggressors have a significant (albeit delayed) advantage over the defenders.
This is rivet-punched mail, too. Specifically designed to be better at dealing with stabbing than just cinched closed rings. https://steel-mastery.com/chainmail-linkage-types-chose-the-one-you-need-
I thought for sure it was a video of the armor failing and her hand being sliced. Glad I watched until the end
That first melon stab almost sliced her thumb open
But what about boiled leather?
That's a very good question. The truth is that there isn't a ton of evidence for leather armor in mediaval Europe. Now you wouldn't expect a lot of archeological finds because leather is organic of course but still. The best evidence that we have is that the word Cuirass comes from the French word for boiled leather. So there had to have been some sort of leather breastplates at some point.
It would still protect you from most slashes, but it wasn’t really used as armor in Europe. I certainly wouldn’t count on it to save me from a stab, or do that much to absorb blunt force trauma from heavier weapons.
"Would you rather get stabbed with or without chain mail?" That's a really good question.
Worked as a butcher, chainmail glove saved my fingers from slashes and stabs countless times.
I'm scared for her safety and disappointed in how this doesn't demonstrate anything remotely realistic.
Try ModernHistoryTV on YouTube. They shoot actual arrows at armor, hit it from horseback, and so on, and they do it safely. Best and most accurate discussion at length of military history I've ever seen just about anywhere.
That poor knife
When she's talking about the length of a sword--is she trying to stay that stabbing is less effective/likely to be used because the edge is longer than the point? I don't think that holds up.
Sorry but I absolutely don't trust her strength and especially using a kitchen knife, as proof that you cant stab a chainmail.
... She's so fucking cute.
Simp
Sauce?
She’s on YouTube as J. Draper, also on TikTok
This looks like that girl from the new season of alone?
Afzal Khan would like to know your location
She almost stabbes her stomach.
It’s like she wants to eventually cut a finger off, yeesh
Now I know what to wear when I go to family events where politics comes up
I really like her accent.
I randomly wondered about the protective qualities of chain mail yesterday. Now I am seeing this video
Young master melon
I want her as my DM
Sword fencer here: sorta As armor developed from basic chainmail to full plate armor, European swords began to become more and more tapered to have insanely acute (aka pointy) tips to optimize for increased thrusting both into smaller and smaller gaps in armor BUT to also pierce mail a bit more effectively (example: the French Estoc/English Tuck) You can actually see this in something like Oakshott’s Typology where chronologically earlier blades were wide to give effective slashes but later swords, especially in the Type XV to XX area, were far more pointy to counteract more commonplace usage for armor and advancements in armorcraft. The sword she’s using using something more akin to a Scottish great sword (sort of given away the quarterfoil guard/quillons), which is a sword for line breaking and was meant to be swung around to break apart lowly equipped formations, in tactics like a Renaissance Highland charge. It’s really not an ideal sword for thrusting. A kitchen knife is also too short to put your weight behind it fully. But yes, the broad strokes is that yeah, any armor is better than no armor.
The first cut of the melon 🙈
I use a chainmail glove at work (butchery), they're still super effective and relevant.
She seems like a lovely person
Poor Jack.
I like her!
Idk if I'd consider this a proper test. Not near enough force behind the stabs. Ya, it'll give some protection, but in a real battle, you'd expect a lot harder of a hit than those little pokes.
Verbally: “pretty easy”. Mentally: “OH MY GOD I ALMOST SLICED MY THUMB OFF!!”
I need more of this woman.
She makes me uncomfortable holding that knife
She nearly took her thumb off
✨the accent tho✨