Medieval weapons general

Well, it's not about the weapons in particular, but Roman centurions tended to be more effective not just because of superior training, but because they went on the offensive with their shields, rushing in in formation. They were fucking awesome.

a sword has a sharp edge and a point. the sharp edge is used to cut things and the point can stab things. that will be 5 florins for my services

>>34947302

I know the gladius was designed to be short because a roman soldier could stab forward (he couldtnt swing his sword because soldiers beside and behind him) so did a roman formation just zerg rush the enemy and then stab them?

How did medieval soldiers fight? Thanks to movies and shit it seems like medieval battles were chaotic free for alls I don't think a long sword would be conducive to fighting in a formation

>>34947492
Pretty sure most formation fighting was done with spears. Swords cost a lot more and take longer to teach.

What do you want to know exactly?

>>34947492
>medieval

This is an era that spans at least 500 years (if not more, depending on which historian you ask). It's like asking how armies fought around the world from 1517 - 2017. You need to be more specific about the era, place, etc.

>>34948006
not OP, but do you know if I can legally walk around in Texas wearing medieval armor and carrying a sword?

>>34947492
>I know the gladius was designed to be short because a roman soldier could stab forward (he couldtnt swing his sword because soldiers beside and behind him)
No, the gladius is short because that's what they could comfortably do back then with the metallurgy they had. As soon as they could make swords longer, they did (see the spatha).
Besides, the gladius was mostly used to thrust, but it could be used and was used to cut at the arms mostly, we have historical texts about this during the wars against Greece for instance.
The main weapon of the roman soldier was the scutum anyway, the whole strategy of their infantry derived from the large shield and that's why they could have a short sword rather than a spear like most other cultures.

Also "medieval soldiers" is way too vague, you had light cavalry, heavy cavalry, missile units, line infantry, etc. What matters as always is combined arms. Problem with most of the Middle-Ages era is the feudal system which meant that an organized and united army wasn't a common thing also, numbers went quite low compared to the Antiquity. Battles were rare compare to skirmishes anyway.

Maybe look at the Oakeshott types here:
http://myarmoury.com/features.html

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>>34947230
Watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyAc5HbUuqw
and this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcs9QSeNURE

>>34947230
Long time frame you're asking about but the brief is: armor is created to protect, swords are reinvented to bypass that armor, repeat until guns are predominant

>>34949219
>>34947492
Branching off of what he said, the gladius was short due to the limitations, but it did have some uses being that size, the fact that it was short meant that soldiers could use it in the tight streets of rome without too much of an issue. also the reason the tip is very fine then goes to a broad area is to both make a bigger wound when stabbing, and so it could fit inbetween the chains of the chain mail armour as to be able to do damage against someone in armour.

I think this is relevant, I recently discovered the International Medieval Combat Federation. Though they use blunted weapons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKKSI1OPGa4

>>34947230
https://www.youtube.com/user/scholagladiatoria

have fun

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>>34947492
Going by Polybius, the pre-Marius Roman soldier used his sword for both cut and thrust. The Greeks they fought are also to have been appealed by the amount of limbs the Romans kept hacking off, not exactly a sign of the thrust ruling supreme. This also fits the swords in question, as the Gladius often has a rather wide profile. A wide profile requires a somewhat thin blade to keep the weight sane, and a wide, thin blade tends to make for a capable cutter. From this also follows that the formations may not have been all that tightly packed together, at least not as standard, they may have bunched up for mutual cover against arrows or so as needed. This would IMO also provide a better continuity back to the fragmented, multi-layered formation of the early (yet post-hoplite phalanx) Roman army.

Later gladii do seem to end up a bit slimmer in proportion, but their tips remain the same, or if anything end up even less acute than before, which I would interpret as the sword remaining a cut and thrust design, the overall proportions certainly keep suggesting such. It may also be worth noting that when the Romans replace the gladius for infantry use, they instead adopt a sword which is a cutter first and foremost, and only somewhat cares about thrust.

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>>34949219
>As soon as they could make swords longer, they did (see the spatha).
They didn't start handing the spatha out to the infantry for quite a while though, and the spatha appears to be perhaps at least somewhat pre-dated by Celtic blades of greater length, and considerably pre-dated by larger-than-gladii Celtic blades. With a lot of Roman weaponry supposedly being forged by the celts of Noricum, that would suggest that the Romans could in fact make, or get, longer blades. Their choice of a shorter gladius could simply be because they preferred it like that, just as many landsknechts choose short katzbalgers for their sidearms.

Now if there was a metallurgical reason here, it could perhaps have been less about what the smith could forge, and more about the process metallurgy, ie it may have been that the extra metal simply cost a bit more than people were prepared to pay for a basic infantry weapon you'd end up needing in huge numbers.

>>34950882
Unfortunately the nature of it all, pure blunt concussion, means there's not not inconsiderable pressure there to make every weapon a mace in disguise, which doesn't work all too well if you want to see how other weapons work. Apart form that, well, it may be applicable to foot tournament melee at least.

>>34949219
>The main weapon of the roman soldier was the javelins
Fixed.

>>34947230
>I'm counting on /k/ to give me knowledge about medieval weaponry particularly edged weapons.

well, that's your fatal error right there.

/k/, as a whole knows absolutely fuck all about medieval arms or armour.

KM does, and he's already in the thread.
most others? oh, its like watching a train wreck unfold in slow-mo.

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Oh, and OP, to get a half-decent idea of how people fought at the end of the middle ages and early renaissance, I recommend Hall's "Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe".

For 14th century France there's this little text: http://www.mediafire.com/file/piad7mmbmprdida/Techniques_of_seigneurial_war_in_the_fourteenth_century.pdf

>>34951497
The number of javelins a legionnaire could carry seems very low compared to the amount of ammunition missile troops could expand simply to soften the enemy up for the melee troops. So by what evidence or argument do we hold the pilum as more important than the gladius?

>>34947230
edged weapons are for edgy people

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>>34951705
So the blunt weapons then would be for those who are themselves not quite the sharpest tools in the armoury?

>>34951634
>pilum
You are forgetting that it was not only javelin of Roman army. They also had this little funny pub born brother who doesn't get enough credit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndNT3cjwugs
So Romans have best javelins in the world on the two opposite sides of the size spectrum. Most powerful armor/shields penetrating design ever (pilum) and most compact lethal design (plumbata). Also Romans had best protective gear against javelins barrage for their times.

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>>34949219
>The main weapon of the roman soldier was the scutum
This meme phrase will never die

>>34951916
So better get used to it instead of providing a proper rebuttal?
I'll put a smug anime girl next time to atone.

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>>34951815
Less widely used than the pilum from what I've understood, thus making it an even poorer candidate for the main weapon of the early Imperial legionnaire. If the Vegetius quote I saw is to be trusted then a full load of them would also be a mere five, which also seems a rather low amount to really rely on.

Calling one javelin the best in the world (even in its size class) seems like a questionable thing to me. Many like to make such claims about this or that sword for example, rarely based on much through and never so far based on sufficient evidence. Perhaps the javelin side ois different, but it'd be a more or less unique case if it was. And even if it was, the relative performance of the Roman throwing weapons matters little here, the question is if the results they produced in absolute terms was so great as to render the gladius secondary. Given that, say, the English longbow with a much larger supply of arrows couldn't carry a fight on its own, but won battles as part in a well co-ordinated combined arms effort I find this unlikely.

I'd call it a dart rather than a javelin as well, but I guess that's of little importance here.

>>34947492
The gladius, as a lot of people already said, probably wasn't short for any reason but technological limitations.
It wasn't particularly short for its time, and as time went on, people started using longer swords and didn't look back from that. A medieval arming sword is fantastically effective in formation and the extra length is nowhere near enough to ever get in the way.

As for medieval soldiers, it's a very complex topic that brings up more questions:
When, where, and who?
Are we talking about the 11th century or the 15th? Are we talking about England or Hungary? Are we talking about knights, urban militias or mercenaries?
One thing that makes the medieval period quite fascinating is that there was a huge variety of weaponry and fighting styles.

Regarding the longsword (as in, the two-handed sort), there are two things that need to be noted that it was a backup weapon. While it seems to have been really effective, the fact that you could wear it on your hip meant that it was secondary to a larger weapon. It was to be used when your primary weapon was broken or otherwise lost, or in situations where it's the better option.

>>34947980
Paradoxically, the longsword is probably one of the easiest weapons to understand the very basics of. Even more paradoxically, using a one-handed sword with an offhand weapon (shield or buckler) is far more difficult both mentally and physically. I've never tried spear and shield stuff, but I imagine it too is probably rather tricky to do properly.

By the mid-13th century swords were pretty commonplace for multiple reasons, primarily because the total number of swords kept rising (they didn't vanish into thin air after an arbitrary amount of time, after all), and because the process of making them was being continually refined, reducing the price.
For example, English longbowmen on campaign during the 100 years war probably all carried swords.

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>>34952003
The Pilum probably can't be referred to as the objectively "best" throwing spear simply because there are some other rather impressive designs used by other cultures.

Take the Iberian "Soliferrum" (that's the roman term for it) javelin. They seem to have been of an all-metal construction. What that means in practice I dunno, I think you can safely assume having one hit your shield would be a pretty awful thing though.

>>34951496
I'm pretty sure that the length of the Gladius was probably limited by the fact that they had to make them in far greater numbers than the longer Celtic swords.

Regarding Katzbalgers, Baselards and weapons like that, it was probably the case that they weren't the only sidearms they carried, provided they could get their hands on more than one. There's evidence for example of dudes carrying a longsword and a Katzbalger.

>>34952549
>Regarding Katzbalgers,
Things is its users often carried pike or greatsword as main weapon longsword would be redundant.
>knights carried longer swords (arming swords, long swords) as sidearm
Knights fought mounted and dismounted, they need long sidearm for mounted combat. Also they often encountered fully armored opposition (another knights), longsword > katzbalger like when fighting knight (half-swording), when cutting heavy designs like katzbalger are perfectly adequate against partially armored target with breastplate (landsknecht)

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>>34952998
>fully armored opposition
>half-swording

>>34950882
HMB and Bohurt and the like are fun but they are not indicative of medieval martial arts at all.

I'm a HEMAfag and don't get me wrong I have nothing against them, it is indeed fun as fuck to wail on each other in armour, but that's what it is, and a bit of team tactics involved too.

>>34949219
all surviving roman training manuals stress the thrust and heavily discourage slashing as inefficient- they want the opponents dead quick with thoracic punctures not running around the phalanx chopping romans for 15 minutes while they beed out