Wiki comes down pretty heavily on Einstern's side of the argument here.

Knights wearing "maille" under plate armour is mentioned quite explicitly as occurring before the development of real suits of plate armour.

... no.

 

Okay, if you want it.

I have background in history and own a lot of history books pertaining to pre-18th century weaponry. By Hoffmeyer, Zygulski, Oakeshott and others...

I'm sorry if I offended you. You seem to feel strongly on the subject, but still quoting "yourself" and "videos" and "museums" cannot be confronted by actual imagery from the time period mentioned.

 

Translation: Waaaaaaaaaaaawaswaweawaawa.

You've lost the argument, you've provided no proof, and you clearly have not actually read the sources you purport to have read because if you had, you would not be so ignorant. For fuck's sake, is a graceful concession too much to ask for?

You're a damn sore loser, and that's a damn bloody shame. When your arguments have declined to the level that all you're doing is putting "quotes" around the other's words, then, well, I'm sad to say, you've lost.

 

You would be surprised... In my history books it is pretty much interchangeable. After all Iron composes 98+% of steel.

 

If that's the sort of history books you're using, it's no surprise all your arguments are so terrible.

Would you be terribly opposed to the ideas of telling us just which history books you're getting your ideas from? I'd be most interested in looking up their authors.

 

Okay... Read Oakshott's Archaeology of Weapons, or Hoffmeyer From Medieval Sword to Renaissance Rapier... There is a lot of books available.

 

Are you actually going to provide a source, or are you going to keep on vaguely referring to a bunch of books you've never read in the hopes that I'll lose interest and drop the debate? This is especially amusing as Oakeshott makes a point of in his books dispelling myths such as that of plate armour being heavy and clumsy.

Give me quotes and pages. Now. Or I'll take this as a concession.

edit: So I just looked through Oakeshott's Archaelogy of Weapons: Arms and Armour from Prehistory to the Age of Chivalry. Not. A. Single. One. Reference. To armour or weapons of the sort knights used being "heavy" or "clumsy."

 

Yeah my little commentary on the shields over on Spacebattles was based on the TV show shields, given that they weren't sufficiently described in the books to judge.

The other equipment was well described, though, and can be critiqued. I think the larger shields would make more sense with their equipment, which puts them closer to loose order, ranged skirmishers like Roman Legionaries, Thorakites, or the like. If you're fighting for long periods of time in a missile/javelin stand off - of the sort that the Samnites developed and the Romans perfected, such a large shield would be ideal.

I think it's interesting to note that the only two reasons why legionaries were allowed to leave formation was to gather more projectiles to throw, or to save the life of a citizen.

Large shields like that would be fairly unwieldy in melee, though, and I'd certainly prefer a spear to a short-sword in melee. Of course, short swords did make for a useful sharp-implement for the push and pull action of iron age warfare. Essos seems to be quite behind Westeros, after all.

This thread (specifically, the posts by Kensai, though I don't agree with everything he says) has some interesting information on spears.

And another interesting thread (with sources that I'd recommend you look up - some of them are even free) which is a more generalized look at iron age warfare and the Roman Empire in particular.

 

Maybe move this discussion to it's own thread?

 

Swords were not the primary weapon of the knight, but they most certainly did not suck. They are very light, very flexible, and in the case of the traditional two-edged, cross-shaped swords of Europe, hilariously versatile, especially the larger longswords and greatswords. They were very fast weapons - look here. The fighters are unarmored, but the video is very good at displaying the sheer speed of a skilled man wielding a sword - every time they stop? That's because a disabling blow has been dealt, and in a real fight, the loser would be so very dead. I leave it to the viewer to determine the amount of incapacitations/second in that video, but if you're getting single digits you probably didn't do all that well in maths.

You can use swords to stab and cut, you can use them with one or two hands in conjunction with a shield or other weapon, and you can use them as a short spear or as a warhammer (at least if you have a pair of plate gloves - it was a somewhat common technique to grip a sword by the blade and strike with the crossguard and pommel). It simply does not excel at any of those roles the way a specialized weapon like a pollaxe or warhammer does.

A good sword is perfectly capable of taking out a man in full plate in the hands of a very skilled man - he just needs to get a shot at the armpits or the back of the knees, or some other weak spot, and it should preferably be a strong, two-handed thrust to get through well-made riveted steel mail. It was certainly not the best weapon for taking out a heavily armored man, but it was ubiquitous and the backup weapon of ninety percent of all knights in history for a very good reason.

I get what you mean, don't get me wrong, but the word "suck" is a very strong word that should never be associated with swords.

At least not the kind of swords we're talking about, ehehe.

 

I only said suck to easily denote which side of the argument I was siding with because I couldn't be bothered to look up actual names. I'm sorry that you wrote 4 paragraphs about swords because of it.

 

I thought that was essentially what you meant (remember I said "I get what you mean...") but I still thought that "swords suck" was a bit of a strong phrase, so I thought I'd clear some things up in case people thought I thought about swords that way.

Anyhow, this derail has taken up way too much of the thread's posts, methinks.

 

Question. What is this thread doing in the Review board?

EDIT: Okay then. Fascinating discussion, by the way.

 

That was a temporary placeholder when I dissected its original thread.

Now everyone feel free to continue to your hearts desire... It's no longer a thread derailment.

 

Sometimes it happens, but almost exclusively, it occurs when the author is describing the early parts of the Industrial Revolution at the end of XVIII and beginning of XIX century. After that period, when describing the proper - if it can be called that - Industrial Revolution of the second part of XIX century, authors usually try to keep the proper terminology.

 

Right, so because this has been split into a new thread I thought I might as well share a few PMs.

--- and in the spirit of things, I will reply to the latest PM here.

I take it you think the Greek fought naked, then?

*sigh*

Yes, I've noted that art can be useful, but relying on it the way you did was pure idiocy.

That's one hell of a memory problem you have there.

And the power of selective quoting strikes again.

Tell me, in what situation did that thrusting sword pierce plate? It is one thing to pierce plate under controlled conditions, another entirely to do it on a battlefield.

The Janissaries started using matchlock guns as early as the 1440s, actually. And cutting swords did not start reappearing in the 1450s: they've always been used by cavalry and started to rise to prominence once again when heavy cavalry went the way of the Dodo. The saber and the cutlass, started rising to prominence well over a century past the invention of the matchlock, to my knowledge, while the only other cutting swords I know of used by Europeans (as opposed to the scimitar, which were only used by arabs) was the falchion, which was not a weapon intended for use by cavalry.

Also, if that statement is gold, your statement about plate armour is fucking diamond. Well, actually, it's several liters of snake venom, I should say, since that substance is more valuable than diamond. Especially considering that past 1450, plate started becoming more common in the form of cheap, (relatively) mass-produce munitions-grade plate armour. Yanno how Swiss mercenaries in this era are typically depicted with plate armour?

Have you ever heard about this thing called irony? You may wish to study it.

People who live in glass houses should not go about throwing stones - until several PMs into our conversation, you did not provide a single non-artistic source whatsoever.

Because it's not shaped like a cross, which happened to be a powerful cultural and religious symbol? Again this reliance on art.

*nods sagely*

Obviously, people who have prepared their entire life for waging battle and who are not suicidal and have millennia of the experiences and teachings of other people like them to draw on are not concerned with practicality.

Have you any evidence that they fought exclusively with such weaponry?

And, of course, it must be noted that in that battle the Teutons were fighting easterners, whose armor as a rule has been less advanced than that of Europe.

In fact, the Teutonic Order has a history of fighting against less-advanced heathens from the east, such as pagan Lithuanians and orthodox Russians. Strange, isn't it, how the very enemies they fought against were the sort who were unlikely to possess the sort of advanced armor that swords were useless against?

I'll get on that tomorrow, since I don't have the time right now - it's 11 PM here in Sweden and the mace is a more obscure weapon than the sword and less people bother documenting it. For now I'll respond to the rest of this PM.

This from the guy who called plate armour heavy and clumsy.

I see.

"I ignored them both" having to be read as "you apparently closed your eyes and didn't read anything I said."

What Dieter's grave shows is a bit of mail showing at the weak points in the armour. I've noted that it was common enough to wear mail, attached to the padding beneath the armour, in strips to cover the weak points, and that having a full mail hauberk underneath your armour would be hilariously redundant and more than double the weight of your armour.

But apparently, common sense isn't something you're very familiar with.

 

It also happens when there was nothing but steel. Which is mostly iron. There is a reason it is called the IRON AGE not the steel age. The modern differentiation between steel and cast iron is the result of the Industrial Revolution.

No one uses pure iron when the item must perform work.

 

Humans have 98% of their genome in common with apes. Mules have over 99% of their genome in common with horses and donkeys. A mighty stallion's genome is almost identical to that of a small pony mare.

Clearly that means it's not worth differentiating between humans and orangutangs, or mules and horses or draft horses and ponies.

 

Hey EinStern, I have a question. I know the Roman Legions during the height of the empire had cavalry, but were there units akin to what we would think of as "knights"?

I ask because, in all my searching I can't seem to find a class of warrior in that society that would wear more armor than the others and do, well, what we consider knightly things. Like tourneys and ransoming other knights that they beat the shit out of.

If you know anything about that, I'd be very interested in hearing it.

 

Nope. The Romans did have equites, but these were in general light cavalry. From the early Republic to the middle of the Imperial era, cavalry could in general be compared to mounted infantry - their horses were not all that good. They used spears and shields, but they had neither war saddles or stirrups.

In the late Imperial era, heavy cavalry started emerging, but the Western Roman empire collapsed long before the time of the Knight.

That said, the Eastern Roman empire, or the "Byzantine empire," is famous for its Cataphracts, who, while they didn't fill the part of the knight in the feudal structure of medieval Europe, were armed and trained in a comparable fashion.

Cavalry was one of the weak points of the Roman army - and while it was not as non-existent or pathetic as some like to claim, it wasn't really all that good. The Romans were not adept at combined arms tactics, preferring to rely on their Legionaries. The auxiliary forces were just that - auxiliary.

In addition, Romans did not like glorifying individuals within their army, and their army was almost exclusively made up (post-Marian reforms, anyway) of the middle class.

Hmm. I'm not being very clear, I don't think.

Let me put it like this; the Knight is very much the result of Manorism and the later Feudalism. Knights only came into being due to the way Feudalism worked - a Knight was a low-ranking lord who swore to protect his followers in exchange for their service. Much of Feudal society was designed specifically to make the Knights what they were. The Roman Empire and the Republic did not work like that - the Republic was, well, a Republic, a democracy, and the Empire was a totalitarian dictatorship - all men owed their loyalty to the Emperor above all others, while in a Feudal society, only a fairly small group of people held fealty directly to their nominal king. Most people held fealty to low-ranking nobles such as knights and barons.

It's... complicated, suffice to say, (which is probably just about the only thing you got from my rambling) but it's no coincidence that Knights and their analogues (i.e, the Samurai) only pop up in societies which follow a Feudal system of government.