Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIII

[Haruspex_Pariah]

The act of carrying a personal weapon is irrelevant to the status of combatant.
An unarmed cook or musician who is part of the military is a legitimate target, even if you "bring" the battlefield to him by breaking into a rear area.

I guess that makes sense. I must be thinking about law enforcement, where the threshold for shooting us different.

[TripleD]

Been seeing a lot of back and forth regarding "Breath of the Wild"'s breakable weapons, and weapon/armor degradation systems in general.

It's almost too broad a question to answer, but how easy would it be to "break" a martial weapon to the point where you would have to replace it?

Obviously this varies wildly based on time period, type of weapon, and material, but any ballpark estimates from an area you are familiar with would be interesting to hear.

[Pauly]

Been seeing a lot of back and forth regarding "Breath of the Wild"'s breakable weapons, and weapon/armor degradation systems in general.

It's almost too broad a question to answer, but how easy would it be to "break" a martial weapon to the point where you would have to replace it?

Obviously this varies wildly based on time period, type of weapon, and material, but any ballpark estimates from an area you are familiar with would be interesting to hear.

Speaking as a chef, I us metal weapon equivalents on a daily basis and my knives see more action than most swords.

Metal knives essentially do not degrade or wear out from use. Since moving to CS knives from SS knives I have never had a knife wear out. SS knives do wear out, but that's because you need to remove more metal from the edge in the sharpening process, so when I was using SS kitchen knives I would replace them every 2 or 3 years because the blade was losing shape, and I was sharpening them on my stones every 2 to 4 weeks depending on the edge conditions.

I wasn't replacing them because they weren't functional, but because the blade geometry was no longer optimal.
In a commercial kitchen chef's knives take a lot of abuse, they get dropped, they get used to tenderise, they get used to open cans, they getsed to break small bones.

So it-isn't combat stress but it is daily stress of hard work. 6 days a wek abuse for 48 or 50 weeks a year adds up. So the idea that a metal weapon will slowly degrade over time is bunkum. Excessive sharpening will change blade geometry, but even that can be remedied by grinding a new curve to the blade, which will shorten the blade a bit.

What does happen is that blades fail catasrophically i.e. snap. Catastrophic failures happen in 3 main ways.
1) defect in manufacture.
2) the blade is used to do something it isn't designed to, i.e. It gets overstressed
3) a sharp shock snaps a brittle blade, modern Japanese VG10 steel knives are well known for their propensity to snap if dropped, even though they have many other positive features.

[snowblizz]

Maces that predated plate armor were basically a metal (or stone) ball on the end of a stick. Plenty of examples from around the world from South America, to the Pacific Islands to Babylonia/Sumeria to the Indian sub-continent.

The designs that came about in Europe to deal with plate armor were significantly different. They had spikes, flanges and faceted heads. All of these design features are there to impart energy into rounded metal surfaces. You do not see these designs in regions that did nit have plate. At best you have small knobs on the head.

In a (private) museum in Lima, Peru I saw a gold mace with long spikes, a morningstar really. It was pre-columbian. I told the guide that labelling it "cudgel" was somewhat accurate but the item was clearly a mace or morningstar.

Been seeing a lot of back and forth regarding "Breath of the Wild"'s breakable weapons, and weapon/armor degradation systems in general.

It's almost too broad a question to answer, but how easy would it be to "break" a martial weapon to the point where you would have to replace it?

Obviously this varies wildly based on time period, type of weapon, and material, but any ballpark estimates from an area you are familiar with would be interesting to hear.

It happens regularly. Swords are brought to combat because you expect to lose your main weapon at some point. Mounted knights would be recommended a list of weapons of at least 5-6 weapons to bring. Without being able to go into details I can't speak of, the general principle seems to be it did happen, and it was something specifically considered in eg assises of arms and equipment as the wealthier soldier is expected to have more stuff brought with him, and they didn't do that for the fun of carrying loads of weapons.
A more immediate concern over outright weapon breakage would be simply losing your weapon, torn from your grasp, stuck somewhere etc etc.

[snowblizz]

There is very little evidence of leather being used as armor in Europe.


G

I ran across such a claim in a book about medieaval battlefields. But it was very vague, a 13th century writer saying a 11th century invasion of Wales had the commoners clad in leather. I've been meaning to post about it here and see if something more solid can be tracked down. Unlike the later books in the series this one didn't have a proper sourcelist, but I'll check what little names I can find in the text later.
So supposedly Harald Godwinsson when invading Wales in 1063 with hsi brother Tostig equipped huscarls with light leather armour and light shields to counter the wlesh guerilla tactics. According to Gerald de Barry writing around 1200. That as much as the book tells me. Be interesting if anyone can nail that more solidly.

[Pauly]

In a (private) museum in Lima, Peru I saw a gold mace with long spikes, a morningstar really. It was pre-columbian. I told the guide that labelling it "cudgel" was somewhat accurate but the item was clearly a mace or morningstar.
.

I am familiar with the Inca war mace, made of copper, and all the extant weapons I am aware of as well as all the artistic depictions show a disc or star shape macehead, often with little knobs. I have never seen spikes on, or depicted on, an Incan war mace. There was the star mace, but as far as I am aware that didn't end in spikes.

Since gold is not a functional weapon for warfare, My belief is that what you saw had ceremonial and/or religous purpose.

[Kiero]

Ah, no. Crossbows actually pre-date plate armor by centuries. The first Church and Imperial laws against the use of crossbows actually pre-dated full coverage with ("chain") mail armor.

Crossbows pre-date medieval plate armour by millenia. The gastraphetes was very clearly a crossbow, occuring at some point before 399BC.

[Incanur]

Weapons may have broken rather often, at least under the right circumstances. William Patten wrote that in the pursuit at Pinkie Cleugh 1547, English cavalry had easy access to the swords the Scots had dropped in their fight, so some of them broke three or four swords before returning. Patten also mentioned cavalry striking blows at helmeted heads. He didn't explicitly connect the two, but they could be way the cavalry broke so many swords.

Beyond swords, some styles of lances were expected to break, at least after a few charges. And pikes could likewise break or get hacked up by edged weapons.

Also, technically bronze plate armor predates any sort of crossbow by a thousand years or more.

[Mike_G]

I think the fact that the first marksman didn't have much experience shooting muskets or aiming without a rear sight was probably an issue. As a result he was still making guesses about how much he needed to compensate up or down and left or right at the very end of the experiment. Murphey's Muskets has videos where he's managed to achieve much better results with smoothbore muskets. Given that, Col. Hanger's claim that a good shot with a good musket could hit a single target at 80-100 yards seems to hold true.

I'm not buying it. They guy in the video even says he isn't using the historical loading drill.

Not with a standard ball. There's just too much windage. Priming from the cartridge means you are using imprecise amounts of powder for primer and charge. I don't think the weapon would be precise enough at 100 yards if you bolted it to the table, unless you had a tight fitting, patched ball, which would slow down loading and wasn't really done by line infantry. Maybe you could train individuals, and have them load more precisely, but that's not how infantry training in the 18th century went.

No rear sight is a big deal. You need two points to define a line, and those two points are the back sight and front sight. Just using the bayonet lug, you're guessing. Guessing is fine when you are trying to hit a company sized mass of men at close range, but not for picking off an individual at a hundred yards

I can put rounds on target at 500 yards all day with iron sights. I know the training that marksman had, and if he is all over the place at fifty yards, I just don't think the weapon is accurate enough for anybody to hit a small target reliably at 100.

The volley tests were interesting. Accounting for the fact that they didn't count hits against white space, the results seem somewhat similar to historical trials which involved volley fire against a battalion target. But they still drastically outperformed what was typically expected in combat.

Combat is always going to have worse results. They tried to stress the shooters, lay some smoke and so on, but until you make a guy think he might be killed, you can't replicate the adrenaline factor, which throws fine motor control to crap.

I think it was a good a test as you're likely to get.

[Vinyadan]

About swords, there's the spring factor. Each time metal is bent and it returns to its normal form when released (like a spring does), it actually gradually damages itself. Do it enough times, and any spring will break. I think it has something to do with the fact that a spring is a way in which energy is stored and released, but I don't know how it actually works.
The same goes for the blade of a sword. A great number of smaller bendings will break it or cause fatigue cracks. As it was said earlier, however, impurities or construction defects were surely a faster reason for a sword to break.
About high-quality swords and trying to break them, you should really read the difficulties of Roland in the Chanson de Roland:

Spoiler

Show

CLXVIII

Then Rollanz feels that death to him draws near,
For all his brain is issued from his ears;
He prays to God that He will call the peers,
Bids Gabriel, the angel, t' himself appear.
Takes the olifant, that no reproach shall hear,
And Durendal in the other hand he wields;
Further than might a cross-bow's arrow speed
Goes towards Spain into a fallow-field;
Climbs on a cliff; where, under two fair trees,
Four terraces, of marble wrought, he sees.
There he falls down, and lies upon the green;
He swoons again, for death is very near.
CLXIX

High are the peaks, the trees are very high.
Four terraces of polished marble shine;
On the green grass count Rollant swoons thereby.
A Sarrazin him all the time espies,
Who feigning death among the others hides;
Blood hath his face and all his body dyed;
He gets afoot, running towards him hies;
Fair was he, strong and of a courage high;
A mortal hate he's kindled in his pride.
He's seized Rollant, and the arms, were at his side,
"Charles nephew," he's said, "here conquered lies.
To Araby I'll bear this sword as prize."
As he drew it, something the count descried.
CLXX

So Rollant felt his sword was taken forth,
Opened his eyes, and this word to him spoke
"Thou'rt never one of ours, full well I know."
Took the olifant, that he would not let go,
Struck him on th' helm, that jewelled was with gold,
And broke its steel, his skull and all his bones,
Out of his head both the two eyes he drove;
Dead at his feet he has the pagan thrown:
After he's said: "Culvert, thou wert too bold,
Or right or wrong, of my sword seizing hold!
They'll dub thee fool, to whom the tale is told.
But my great one, my olifant I broke;
Fallen from it the crystal and the gold."
CLXXI

Then Rollanz feels that he has lost his sight,
Climbs to his feet, uses what strength he might;
In all his face the colour is grown white.
In front of him a great brown boulder lies;
Whereon ten sword-blows with grief and rage he strikes;
The steel cries out, but does not break outright;
And the count says: "Saint Mary, be my guide
Good Durendal, unlucky is your plight!
I've need of you no more; spent is my pride!
We in the field have won so many fights,
Combating through so many regions wide
That Charles holds, whose beard is hoary white!
Be you not his that turns from any in flight!
A good vassal has held you this long time;
Never shall France the Free behold his like."
CLXXII

Rollant hath struck the sardonyx terrace;
The steel cries out, but broken is no ways.
So when he sees he never can it break,
Within himself begins he to complain:
"Ah! Durendal, white art thou, clear of stain!
Beneath the sun reflecting back his rays!
In Moriane was Charles, in the vale,
When from heaven God by His angel bade
Him give thee to a count and capitain;
Girt thee on me that noble King and great.
I won for him with thee Anjou, Bretaigne,
And won for him with thee Peitou, the Maine,
And Normandy the free for him I gained,
Also with thee Provence and Equitaigne,
And Lumbardie and all the whole Romaigne,
I won Baivere, all Flanders in the plain,
Also Burguigne and all the whole Puillane,
Costentinnople, that homage to him pays;
In Saisonie all is as he ordains;
With thee I won him Scotland, Ireland, Wales,
England also, where he his chamber makes;
Won I with thee so many countries strange
That Charles holds, whose beard is white with age!
For this sword's sake sorrow upon me weighs,
Rather I'ld die, than it mid pagans stay.
Lord God Father, never let France be shamed!"
CLXXIII

Rollant his stroke on a dark stone repeats,
And more of it breaks off than I can speak.
The sword cries out, yet breaks not in the least,
Back from the blow into the air it leaps.
Destroy it can he not; which when he sees,
Within himself he makes a plaint most sweet.
"Ah! Durendal, most holy, fair indeed!
Relics enough thy golden hilt conceals:
Saint Peter's Tooth, the Blood of Saint Basile,
Some of the Hairs of my Lord, Saint Denise,
Some of the Robe, was worn by Saint Mary.
It is not right that pagans should thee seize,
For Christian men your use shall ever be.
Nor any man's that worketh cowardice!
Many broad lands with you have I retrieved
Which Charles holds, who hath the great white beard;
Wherefore that King so proud and rich is he."
CLXXIV

But Rollant felt that death had made a way
Down from his head till on his heart it lay;
Beneath a pine running in haste he came,
On the green grass he lay there on his face;
His olifant and sword beneath him placed,
Turning his head towards the pagan race,
Now this he did, in truth, that Charles might say
(As he desired) and all the Franks his race;—
'Ah, gentle count; conquering he was slain!'—
He owned his faults often and every way,
And for his sins his glove to God upraised.
AOI.

[Professor Chimp]

When I think of the swords I know that were used by various medieval Middle Eastern and Indian peoples like the scimitar, shamshir, talwar, pulwar and a few more, I can't help but notice that these are all curved, single-edged swords.

Their European contemporaries however, all seem to predominantly use straight, double-edged swords.

Is there a reason why medieval Middle Eastern and Indian civilizations favored the curved, single-edged sword over straight, double-edged ones? Because I know their predecessors in ancient times did use some.

[Tiktakkat]

I guess that makes sense. I must be thinking about law enforcement, where the threshold for shooting us different.

Well, one thing to bear in mind is that there is often a significant difference between what the "internationally accepted Laws of War" are and what people want the "internationally accepted Laws of War" to be.

Those differences exist between the actual treaties, what certain courts to redefine the treaties as, what various nations have as rules of engagement (or equivalent thereof), and what people write in opinion pieces/show in movies.

[Unoriginal]

I ran across such a claim in a book about medieaval battlefields. But it was very vague, a 13th century writer saying a 11th century invasion of Wales had the commoners clad in leather. I've been meaning to post about it here and see if something more solid can be tracked down. Unlike the later books in the series this one didn't have a proper sourcelist, but I'll check what little names I can find in the text later.
So supposedly Harald Godwinsson when invading Wales in 1063 with hsi brother Tostig equipped huscarls with light leather armour and light shields to counter the wlesh guerilla tactics. According to Gerald de Barry writing around 1200. That as much as the book tells me. Be interesting if anyone can nail that more solidly.

Leather armor might have existed, but the thing is, in most of the cases a gambeson was just better, as it offered good protections and let you add metal pieces if you ever got hold of them.

It's almost too broad a question to answer, but how easy would it be to "break" a martial weapon to the point where you would have to replace it?

Obviously this varies wildly based on time period, type of weapon, and material, but any ballpark estimates from an area you are familiar with would be interesting to hear.

Difficult to say. One has to remember that weapons and armors were maintained with care in order for them to last longer, and that even weapons and armors that saw battle could be given as inheritance to the next generation, who'd also use them on the battlefield.

That being said, armors being damaged beyond repair is a thing that happened, especially when confronted with ranged weapons or blunt weapons made to bend armor. As for weapons, it also happened, but I'd say that it'd have been more common to just lose it or deciding after the battle that it was too banged up to be sharpened again.


A lot of this depends on the quality and materials involved, though. The Celts, for exemple, had blades that needed to be bent back into shape between fights, due to the soft iron they used. A gambeson were going to get cut or otherwise damaged if a weapon reached it. Chainmal could get holes that needed to be patched up afterward. The wooden shafts of polearms could break more easily than the head. And few things could handle being trampled by an horse well.

Speaking as a chef, I us metal weapon equivalents on a daily basis and my knives see more action than most swords.

Metal knives essentially do not degrade or wear out from use.

You're not using them against part-metal, moving targets, though. And they're made with modern techniques.

About high-quality swords and trying to break them, you should really read the difficulties of Roland in the Chanson de Roland

Dude. what.

La Chanson de Roland is not an objective, accurate account of what happened, it's fiction. Roland failed to break his sword because it was a Christian relic, and miraculously indestructible. Literally.

[rrgg]

I'm not buying it. They guy in the video even says he isn't using the historical loading drill.

Not with a standard ball. There's just too much windage. Priming from the cartridge means you are using imprecise amounts of powder for primer and charge. I don't think the weapon would be precise enough at 100 yards if you bolted it to the table, unless you had a tight fitting, patched ball, which would slow down loading and wasn't really done by line infantry. Maybe you could train individuals, and have them load more precisely, but that's not how infantry training in the 18th century went.

No rear sight is a big deal. You need two points to define a line, and those two points are the back sight and front sight. Just using the bayonet lug, you're guessing. Guessing is fine when you are trying to hit a company sized mass of men at close range, but not for picking off an individual at a hundred yards

I can put rounds on target at 500 yards all day with iron sights. I know the training that marksman had, and if he is all over the place at fifty yards, I just don't think the weapon is accurate enough for anybody to hit a small target reliably at 100.

He was still using military paper cartidges, he just wasn't going through the exact postures outlined in the drill manual. If you want to see some sloppier loading, he has a video where he shows off tap loading with a brown bess. He's also done shooting with various .69 caliber Springfield muskets, including an original from 1812, and noted that they're a fair bit more accurate than the brown bess, but the brown bess is still accurate enough most of the time.

As far as shooting while mounted on a table goes, the tests in Graz, Austria tried just that with a number of 200-400 year old originals and most of the smoothbores had a maximum spread of about two feet across at 100 meters. And that was with intentionally using lower quality weapons because they didn't want to damage their nicer examples.

Rear sights help a lot. But they've been around almost since guns were invented and yet a lot of people still opted not to used them. You even have examples from the late 19th century of Bedouin tribesmen who acquired modern rifles and then opted to remove the rear sights because they felt that they got in the way. I think shooting without rear sights is something you can probably get the hang of after a while.

[Berenger]

When I think of the swords I know that were used by various medieval Middle Eastern and Indian peoples like the scimitar, shamshir, talwar, pulwar and a few more, I can't help but notice that these are all curved, single-edged swords.

Their European contemporaries however, all seem to predominantly use straight, double-edged swords.

Is there a reason why medieval Middle Eastern and Indian civilizations favored the curved, single-edged sword over straight, double-edged ones? Because I know their predecessors in ancient times did use some.

The curved blade is better for slashing, cutting motions, the straight blade sacrifices some of this ability but enables you to stab the opponent. Slashing motions are preferrable from horseback (since you risk the loss of your weapon and injury of your hand if you stab it deep into the enemies body during a ride-by attack). So there is that.

But I think you are mistaken in your original observation. Simple as that. While the straight sword is certainly "the" archetypical weapon and symbol of the european knight in the overwhelming majority of (modern) depictions, in reality all sorts of curved blades saw widespread use on european battlefields. The reverse is true of the Middle Eastern and Indian warriors, they are heavily associated with curved blades, but there is plenty of evidence that multiple types of straight blades were in use. I'm sure some of the regulars in this thread have the names and pictures of such weapons at hand.

[Galloglaich]

When I think of the swords I know that were used by various medieval Middle Eastern and Indian peoples like the scimitar, shamshir, talwar, pulwar and a few more, I can't help but notice that these are all curved, single-edged swords.

Their European contemporaries however, all seem to predominantly use straight, double-edged swords.

Is there a reason why medieval Middle Eastern and Indian civilizations favored the curved, single-edged sword over straight, double-edged ones? Because I know their predecessors in ancient times did use some.

Yes, in a word cavalry. Curved blades of that type, i.e. sabers, are very good for draw-cutting and therefore ideal for cavalry to cut somebody when riding by (either a person on foot or another rider)


HOWEVER,

in the Middle Ages most Arab troops used strait swords. Like this:

Spoiler: Mamluk Swords

Show

Mamluk Swords

These were similar to European swords of the same era but with less pronounced pommels or hand protection.


It's a common myth / misassumption that sabers of various types (talwar, saif, shamshir et al) were being used by Arabs and Turks in the Crusades, but actually those weapons (regional variations of sabers of various types) did not become widespread in the Middle East or South Asia until after the medieval period, basically in the 16th Century, which was also the same time such weapons spread throughout Europe starting from (probably) Ukraine and Hungary. Thus the shashka, szabla, and various other types of European sabers appeared in all their regional variations.

Prior to the late 15th or early 16th Century, the main saber in use in Asia was the Chinese Dao, brought (the hard way) by the Mongols, a simpler type a saber in most of it's typical forms. In Central Europe you also had the Dussack / Tesak family of short curved or saber-like blades which goes back to the early iron age.

Something like this



By the 15th Century you started also seeing some single-edged infantry swords in the hauswehr / bauernwehr / rugger / langes messer / krieg messer family start to show up curved, though most remained strait.



These look superficially similar to certain forms of the Chinese Dao but they are not really from the saber lineage. (With the caveat that the Dao had it's own infantry branches)


You also similarly have the whole falchion family of blades in Europe which are somewhat like a saber in superficial appearance but are really not sabers either.

Spoiler: Falchions

Show

G

[Berenger]

A thought about the reason for the attribution of straight blades to 'western culture' and curved blades to 'eastern culture': a straight sword with a pronounced guard resembles a cross, a curved one with a somewhat exaggerated bent resembles a half-moon. The term 'straight' may also convey a sense of bluntness and honesty while 'crooked' things are recognized as sly or devious. But this leads into the history of 'racial' / cultural / religious prejudices, stereotypes and politics, so I will leave it at that.

[Galloglaich]

A thought about the reason for the attribution of straight blades to 'western culture' and curved blades to 'eastern culture': a straight sword with a pronounced guard resembles a cross, a curved one with a somewhat exaggerated bent resembles a half-moon. The term 'straight' may also convey a sense of bluntness and honesty while 'crooked' things are recognized as sly or devious. But this leads into the history of 'racial' / cultural / religious prejudices, stereotypes and politics, so I will leave it at that.

Yes, I think this was consciously emphasized from the 16th Century onward and particularly in the Victorian era as a kind of propaganda point used by both sides.

But it seems to be kind of baseless, as sabers were enormously popular in Europe from the 16th century onward and the Muslims still continued to use strait swords even to this very day. Tuareg Takoba swords of North Western Africa for example





and the Kasshkara of Eastern Africa seen across North Africa from the West (Chad) to the East in Sudan.



Both types incidentally have been involved in warfare in the last few years.

G

[snowblizz]

Both types incidentally have been involved in warfare in the last few years.

G

Why is the scabbard bulging like that at the botom?

A thought about the reason for the attribution of straight blades to 'western culture' and curved blades to 'eastern culture': a straight sword with a pronounced guard resembles a cross, a curved one with a somewhat exaggerated bent resembles a half-moon. The term 'straight' may also convey a sense of bluntness and honesty while 'crooked' things are recognized as sly or devious. But this leads into the history of 'racial' / cultural / religious prejudices, stereotypes and politics, so I will leave it at that.

Yes, I think this was consciously emphasized from the 16th Century onward and particularly in the Victorian era as a kind of propaganda point used by both sides.

This is most definitely the case. The heraldry of Finland bears this out.

Coat of arms of Northern Carelia, the "battleground" between east and west for a long time.


A similar statement can be seen from the coat of arms of Finland first used in 1583 on the tomb of Swedish king Gustav Vasa.

[Pauly]

You're not using them against part-metal, moving targets, though. And they're made with modern techniques.
.

My point wasn't that using a kitchen knife and using the sword are the same thing. My point was that the nature of blades is to fail catastrophically, they don't degrade or wear out.

Yes metal fatigue is a thing, but since we're not talking about modern milled steel, the inclusions and other casting flaws will cause a carastrophic failure well before that happens. It's only since the 1970s when Japan, soon followed by other countries, started mass producing defect free steel that steel free from inclusions became widely and cheaply available.

[snowblizz]

My point was that the nature of blades is to fail catastrophically, they don't degrade or wear out.

Umm yea they totally do. That's why you constantly have to resharpen the edge. If you manage to get a real bad nick you could very well ruin the entire blade. Because taking off metal is easy, but adding something back on is re-forge job. Plenty of old swords would undergo "shortening" because damage to the blade edge had to fixed somehow.

[Martin Greywolf]

When it comes to sabers, they have a rather complicated history that's also hard to research, especially for people who don't speak any Eastern European language. First thing first, single edged blades aren't specific for any part of the world, they were used wherever there were swords, be it China, India, Japan or Europe. We have examples of single-edged sword-length blades used by vikings, and I'm sure you could find one in pretty much every culture from iron age upwards.

Where it gets a bit complicated is once we start to curve them. This seems to have started somewhere on the central Eurasian steppes, since the same type of blade appears around 700 AD in both China and what would become Hungary (no Hungarians there for the moment, though). These have, at first, straight, single edged blade, but they, both in China and in the west, start to become curved rather quickly, and have the recognizable sabre shape around 800-900 AD. Example. By the by, these types mostly have sharpened and sometimes raised raised back edge.

In Europe, sabre continues to be used in Hungary without interruption. It slightly evolves, around 1000 AD, the point becomes much finer on the magyar sabers, probably to get through mail, Attila's sabre is an excellent example of this, since it's a period fake made by king Solomon. Southern Hungary adopts same saber type as Byzantine paramerion and Chinese liuye dao, but the weapon types aren't that exclusive, since trade is well and alive and nomads have an official presence in Hungary.

Around 1300-1350, Hungarians do with sabers what everyone does with arming swords - they make them longer and slap a hilt able to be held by two hands, and we get bastard sabers and later two handed sabers.

Meanwhile, falchions continue to be used in the rest of the Europe, probably as means of knights chopping through gambesons - these are strictly European curved blades, though the curve is different than saber, not made to slice, but to chop.

Now, around 1320 an interesting thing happens. Charles Robert, an Anjou king in Hungary, allies himself with Poland and Bohemia, and more importantly renewed so-called Czech road, trade route running from central Hungary to Bohemia. This is important, since Hungary used to be not exactly friendly with Bohemia, but now trade flourishes, and with it, ideas can flow. We can't tell for sure, but it's rather telling that many more eastern looking blade types appear in HRE after this point - messers, krieges messers and dussacks all seem to have taken an inspiration from sabre features. They didn't copy them by any means, just took an idea and did their own thing with it on their own blades. Also, in case of dussacks, they almost certainly came from Bohemia itself.

When sabers really come into their own is during Ottoman wars, when what used to be Hungary becomes a frontier line between two superpowers for a long period of time, which sucks immensely for people living there. Both Ottomans and Europeans fighting there take to local weaponry, and it spreads into the rest of Europe and becomes the default sidearm.

Perhaps the most common myth is that mongols introduced saber to Europe - this is simply put, utter bull, since saber was used in both Hungary and Poland long before Genghis Khan was born, and they didn't really make sabers more popular, if anything, they made them less appealing.

As for the middle east, the sources there are scarce, but it seems that they were introduced to sabers at about the same rate Hungary was, every time a nomad culture came around there to serve as mercenaries, they used their own weapons. During most of the Crusades, predominant saracen weapons were straight swords, and this seems to have changed only after Ottomans came to power, at least for non-nomad soldiers. Even Venetians probably faced more sabers from Hungarian and Byzantine wars than from saracens.

Now, as for performance, both arming sword and sabre are about equal in cutting, slicing and thrusting capabilities (extreme majority of sabers isn't all that curved, and most of them have a solid thrusting point of one shape or another). Sabre is a bit better at slicing and arming sword at thrusting, but in general, they are pretty comparable. Sabre is, thanks to its wedge cross-section, much, much more forgiving when you mess up edge alignment slightly, which is why it got reputation for cutting well - it seems way better at it to people who aren't trained really well.

More important factor in why they became popular is to do with manufacture and maintenance - you need less skill and precision to make a single-edged sword than double edged one. A slight error in curvature doesn't matter that much in sabre, but will mess up an arming sword something fierce. Now, that's not to say that there aren't high-end sabre made by extremely skilled smiths, but we need to remember that most of the low grade weapons didn't last for us to examine. Of course, arming sword gives you sword with which you don't have to worry about grabbing it the right way with - also a sword that you can flip once one edge becomes somewhat blunt or damaged.

So, long story short, curved swords were always popular in some shape or form all over the world, it's just the modern depictions that try to give saber to muslims and arming sword to christians. In fairness to them, that is often how illuminations depicted them, especially ones outside of Hungary, and anti-Ottoman propaganda also used Ottomans with sabers imagery. Unfortunately, discussing that would trip us over "no politics" rule.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

About swords, there's the spring factor. Each time metal is bent and it returns to its normal form when released (like a spring does), it actually gradually damages itself. Do it enough times, and any spring will break. I think it has something to do with the fact that a spring is a way in which energy is stored and released, but I don't know how it actually works.
The same goes for the blade of a sword. A great number of smaller bendings will break it or cause fatigue cracks. As it was said earlier, however, impurities or construction defects were surely a faster reason for a sword to break.

Yes, but for the slightly more scientific explanation, there's two forms of deformation - elastic, where the item returns to (very close to) it's original shape, and plastic, where it's permanently deformed (if you take a steel rod, place the ends in grips then pull the grips apart, it'll stretch elastically, then eventually you'll get an angled thinner region called a Lüders band (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lüders_band), which is plastic deformation and which will grow in length the more you pull on the rod, until the strain becomes too much and the rod snaps).

But in both cases, you'll get small cracks generated in the item, and with repeated load cycles, those cracks will propagate through the material - the sharper the leading edges of the crack, the quicker it'll propagate (which is why DC-3 maintenenace crews drilled holes in the wings, to blunt the cracks and slow them down), and over a number of load cycles, you'll reach a point where you put too much load through the item for the weakest area to hold and you've got fatigue failure.

[Pauly]

Umm yea they totally do. That's why you constantly have to resharpen the edge. If you manage to get a real bad nick you could very well ruin the entire blade. Because taking off metal is easy, but adding something back on is re-forge job. Plenty of old swords would undergo "shortening" because damage to the blade edge had to fixed somehow.

Actually taking significant amounts of metal off in sharpening is something that happens with stainless steel blades. Carbon steel sharpens to a finer edge with much less removal of steel. This is due to the size of steel crystals (martensites iirc) that form in stainless steel are much larger than those that form in carbon steel. This is why food sticks like glue to stainless steel frypans, but blue steel CS frypans or cast iron skillets are almost perfectly non stick.

Before I switched to CS a chef's knife would last me 18 months to 2 years before the blade geometry was lost due to repeated sharpening. My current Sabatier is going on 6 years of daily use and has at least another year of life in it.

Even with over sharpening, the blade has not worn out. It just is no longer has optimal geometry. It still functions, it is is no danger of breaking. It was a very common historical practice, one still followed in kitchens around the world today, to regrind and continue using a blade that, for whatever reason, is no longer at an optimal geometry.

[Lemmy]

Actually taking significant amounts of metal off in sharpening is something that happens with stainless steel blades. Carbon steel sharpens to a finer edge with much less removal of steel. This is due to the size of steel crystals (martensites iirc) that form in stainless steel are much larger than those that form in carbon steel. This is why food sticks like glue to stainless steel frypans, but blue steel CS frypans or cast iron skillets are almost perfectly non stick.

Before I switched to CS a chef's knife would last me 18 months to 2 years before the blade geometry was lost due to repeated sharpening. My current Sabatier is going on 6 years of daily use and has at least another year of life in it.

Even with over sharpening, the blade has not worn out. It just is no longer has optimal geometry. It still functions, it is is no danger of breaking. It was a very common historical practice, one still followed in kitchens around the world today, to regrind and continue using a blade that, for whatever reason, is no longer at an optimal geometry.

But isn't stainless steel way too brittle to be used in combat? I know modern military saber as made of that material, but I assume that's because they are mostly ceremonial these days.

[Pauly]

But isn't stainless steel way too brittle to be used in combat? I know modern military saber as made of that material, but I assume that's because they are mostly ceremonial these days.

SS is way too brittle to make good blades from.

SS is favored now purely for apparent cleanliness.

[Lemmy]

SS is way too brittle to make good blades from.

SS is favored now purely for apparent cleanliness.

Wouldn't high carbon steel suffer from a similar problem? It's probably not a problem for kitchen knives, but it would make them lousy weapons, no matter how sharp they are.

[Pauly]

Wouldn't high carbon steel suffer from a similar problem? It's probably not a problem for kitchen knives, but it would make them lousy weapons, no matter how sharp they are.

The basic problem of SS is that the crystal formation is too big.

First problem for edged weapons is that CS just takes a much finer edge. Think of the edge sharpness like pixels in a photograph. The smaller the pixel size the smalle finer the detail, the smaller the steel crystal the finer the edge.

The second problem with SS is that it is inherently less springy than CS, again due to the crystalline structure.

Different SS alloys, high carbon, molybdenum and vanadium all can reduce SS's disadvantages, but CS is superior.

[Hoosigander]

I ran across such a claim in a book about medieaval battlefields. But it was very vague, a 13th century writer saying a 11th century invasion of Wales had the commoners clad in leather. I've been meaning to post about it here and see if something more solid can be tracked down. Unlike the later books in the series this one didn't have a proper sourcelist, but I'll check what little names I can find in the text later.
So supposedly Harald Godwinsson when invading Wales in 1063 with hsi brother Tostig equipped huscarls with light leather armour and light shields to counter the wlesh guerilla tactics. According to Gerald de Barry writing around 1200. That as much as the book tells me. Be interesting if anyone can nail that more solidly.

I believe the reference might be to Book II, Chapter 7 of Gerald of Wales' Description of Wales. The context is that Gerald is replying to Welsh boasts about the prophecy of Merlin, which predicts the Welsh will regain all the territory they lost to the English, by listing Anglo-Saxon victories against the Welsh. Harold is the last in a string of kings who are named.

"and just as later Harold last of all: who, on foot himself, with an army of infantry with light arms, and adopting the way of life of the country valiantly marched around and penetrated through all Wales, so that he did not leave anyone urinating against a wall." (interesting idiomatic way to say Harold left hardly anyone alive.)

Et sicut longe plenius Haroldus ultimus: qui, pedes ipse, cumque pedestri turba et levibus armis, victuque patriae conformi valide totam cambriam et circuivit et transpenetravit, ut in eadem fere mingentem ad parietam non reliquerit.

The pertinent part is "levibus armis" which just means "with light weapons." Perhaps there is another more detailed description of the invasion in Gerald of Wales' corpus, but this quote doesn't specify anything about leather armor.

[Tobtor]

From all the testing done to date, swords really couldn't cut or stab through mail armor, so there wasn't really any reason to upgrade from mail because of swords. Swords were being used against men armored in mail since probably 800 BC.

Swords aren't really armor-piercing weapons unless you are talking about special swords like the edgeless estoc / kanzer family, or longswords (et al) used with special techniques (i.e. halfswording).

I agree with all of your points in yuor post except the mail-armour part. True you cant really cut through it (though Thegn Thrand manageds to cut two-three rings reliably, even though they are a good quality steel and welted together, and quite thick). But I have seen many thrusts through historical accurate mail, as long as its a good quality sword.

One example is John Clement doing it with an Ulfberh+t sword in this video (around 30-35 minutes in).

Thats with a steel mail. In the 800BC they mails are iron (and true the swords are as well, but it is much easier to harden the sword tip than the entire mail armour). Thus you can easily (ok maybe not easily, but reliably) thrust through mail with a sharp, well made sword.