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Originally Posted by RMS
I won't go any farther discussing this, but will point out for clarity that I'm not knocking their goals or what they're doing and have no doubt that they're as close as anyone comes in the modern world to being professionals with those weapons. This isn't a knock on them, but just acknowledgment of the limitations of such attempts, and the fact that most of their knowledge, generally, comes from trial and error and is not developed to the point of a true professional (ie. someone who's putting their life on the line in real battle) with generations of direct experience to fall back on.
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In the case of many of these, its directly derived from traditional sojutsu instruction that, as far as I know, has never lapsed in Japan from the period when its a functional art. Now you can always argue that stylization has crept in, but at that point, no one in the modern world knows anything about fighting with a melee weapon by that standard.
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As you note down thread, bronze is actually very good at holding an edge and I'm sure you realize that you don't work bronze. You cast it. In fact, it only fell out of common use due to supply shortages of tin for large areas, so iron (initially untempered) was adapted. It's quite a ways into the Iron Age before steel evolved to the point of actually replacing bronze across the board. Plus, Bronze has the advantage of not rusting away on you! Aside: I always wandered if Glorantha bronze rusted or not...
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I'll admit I thoroughly mangled that part of the argument by conflating iron and bronze in that paragraph; the issue with bronze was not its functionality but its cost. Bronze does corrode (because copper does) but if properly cast its far more resistant to it than most steels, let alone simple cast iron.
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No doubt, it's extremely hard to learn. Becoming a ground based, skilled archer is a very difficult task to learn. I've done both independently (riding and shooting), am pretty natural with both, and still find it nearly incomprehensible how anyone could pull both off at the same time. I can barely imagine hitting a target with a gun while riding at anything faster than a walk on a horse, not to mention all the training it'd take to make a horse not panic in that situation: horses are very skittish. In fact, one of the
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Well, at least with horse pistols one had one advantage; they only needed one hand to fire. I do agree it was probably not a trivial task, and I suspect from what I've read that if not fired into mass targets, hitting was, shall we say, probably hit or miss (I've never seen an indication whether horse pistols were used exclusively with ball, or sometimes fired shot; if the latter, that certainly would have helped as its a bit more forgiving).
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things about spears/lances in real like that I think many people don't understand is that a horse won't charge into someone (like in the movies). Even at their most advanced, a knight wasn't charging full bore into formed heavy infantry. A horse, no matter it's training, simply won't do that...not to mention that it'd be suicide for the knight.
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Oh, of course not. As best I can tell it was en passant attacks.
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I'd argue that the Roman army did in fact keep it's organization. In fact, when it lost it was when it was defeated. Armies don't have to be literally shoulder-to-shoulder to be organized, and in most instances the Romans did fight very close to that, even though they used a sword instead of a spear.
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I think I wasn't clear; what I was suggesting was that the Roman Army was, in fact, rather distinctive just _because_ it did so so well. In fact, it appears its tactical doctrine virtually depended on that. The benefit of a shield wall was known even then, and the particular tactics used made the most of it. What I'm questioning was how many _other_ armies were nearly as good about that, including most that came after them.
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I wouldn't classify most medieval armies as professional, at least not until late in the period.
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And that was my point; that consistent formation fighting was not the whole issue there.
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It's not a liability. One advantage of a (1 handed) spear is that it can hit at
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I'm afraid I have to disagree, at least when used with a shield. Even moderate length spears become rather unwieldy when used up close; the haft has to go somewhere and when not braced with the other hand, the somewhere is often not ideal for using it as a weapon. As I mentioned elsewhere, if used by those who used them primarily alone, I expect staff-like techniques made up some of the difference (as it does in sojutsu), but its hard to picture this working well with a shield still present. I don't think it is at all a coincidence that the pilum was used a throwing weapon rather than one used normally in melee.
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several ranges. In fact, it can be effective at both a shorter and longer range than a typical broad sword. It does not have as much power to damage someone with heavier armor on, which is a problem in later period. You're correct about longer 2 handed spears, such as carried by Hellenistic phalanxes and late medieval pikes. Of course, those are already handled quite nicely in RQ3 (and maybe 2 - don't remember there).
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I'm not speaking about the really long ones here; obviously those would be completely disfunctional at close ranges--but at moderate length ones in the 4-6' range. All the demonstrations I've seen suggest that most one handed techniques for spears in that size or longer are simply not very wieldy with one hand (obviously they _can_ be used with one, or shield and spear wouldn't be possible, but its notable that in that situation the usage is aided by the extra defensive capability of the shield to make up for some of its shortcomings).
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The term you're looking for there is angular inertia, in case you're interested.  Yes, there are weapons that appear to be a sword that leans towards an axe. As I understand it, these develop from a shorter sword and are actually there to strengthen the blade of longer swords before metallurgy catches up and long straight blades can be produced.
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That may be part of the explanation, but in some cases that doesn't seem the whole one; there are also heavy early swords that appear to be simply axes with most of the haft removed.
(Of course none of this is is ever really tidy; polearms are hard to evaluate if the spear or the axe is their primary progenitor in some cases, as some appear like spears with more axelike blades, or axes with unusually long hafts, or even both. To some extent weapon categorization is often arbitrary).
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I started to respond to this, just for the first part and then did the rest. I'm ready to let it drop as it's gone well beyond by interest in the discussion. It's very evident that you're far more interested in carrying these discussion than I am!
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My apologies if I've gone at greater length than was you interest; for what its worth I thought you raised a number of good points.
Weapon damage
October 22nd, 2007
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