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Ancient weaponry
ANCIENT WEAPONRY THE SLING http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/weapons/anisling.gif The sling seems to be something of an under-rated weapon. Many wargamers see the bow as the ancient missile weapon, used by competent soldiers, whereas ignorant barbarian peasants use slings. In truth, the sling is an effective weapon, and has many distinct advantages over the bow. The item itself is much smaller than the bow, easier to carry and conceal. I have made a few slings, and find that when folded and bound up by their own strings, they become a soft tiny bundle which can be slipped into a pocket and forgotten about. To do this with a bow, one would need special pockets. http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/weapons/slbundle.jpg The sling is very easy and cheap to make. Most in the past were made of leather, some being rush or twisted cord. The amount of material needed is minimal, and anyone who knows what a sling should look like could make one in a few minutes. Bows take far more materials, and rarer materials too. Bows take more maintenance, can break when you fall over, take far more time and skill to make, and are more cumbersome. A slinger could carry half a dozen spare slings easily, while an archer would worry about damage to his one bow. A sling might be carried without ammunition, with the thought that some could be found when needed. Bows take very specialist ammunition which needs to be well-made in advance, and maintained. An archer would want to recover as many of his arrows as possible after use. Arrows are expensive, and can warp in damp weather. Arrows are long things need to be carried in an awkward quiver which flops about as the carrier runs. A pouch of sling stones can be a neat bundle, a more manageable load. It is well known how bows are affected by weather. Battles have hinged on whether one side, with superior archers, has been able to make use of its bows effectively. Even quite light wind will blow arrows off course badly, and rain will spoil bow strings, and drag arrows down from the air. Slings, while still adversely affected by wind and rain, suffer not nearly so much from bad weather. This may explain why armies with archers often valued having slingers as well. Slingers are generally more mobile than archers. They find it easier to shoot on the move and have the great advantage of needing only one hand to shoot, which allows them to use a shield in their free hand to protect themselves. It is possible to load a sling one handed, and I find that the best way to do this is to kneel down quickly and use the ground as a third hand: put the sling down letting go of one string, get a stone, put the stone in the sling, then pick up the sling again by the loose string and stand up again. While doing this, you would want to have a shield for protection, since you have to take your eye off the enemy. One can sling while kneeling, but the shot will not be as powerful or accurate. Archers in ancient armies often wore armour; they needed it more. While some archers did sometimes carry shields, these could not be used for parrying while shooting. All this may explain while slingers were often deployed as skirmishers on the field rather than in huge formations. Arrows can be seen raining down upon an enemy, and even when they are flying on a fairly flat trajectory, are visible to an enemy expecting them. Sling stones are much more difficult to see in flight, especially from a distance. It is also more difficult to judge which way they are going, as they are seen as a dot rather than a line. Sling bullets, which are cast lead shot, are especially difficult to see. It has been speculated that this difficulty of seeing the stones in flight might be both advantageous and disadvantageous. A cavalry formation charging into a shower of arrows, might be broken up or slowed down when the riders look up to see the arrows and try and avoid them. Slings would not break up formations this way so readily, but might gain from allowing less evasion. One advantage that the bow has over the sling is that bows can be used more easily in deep formations of troops. Archers could angle their bows to shoot safely over the heads of their fellows in front of them. While slinging over the heads of friendly troops is possible, it is much more dangerous and was seldom attempted. In later periods, when fortifications had slits for shooting from, bows and crossbows were better suited to this than slings. One further comparison with the bow which should definitely be made is that of the skill needed to operate the weapon well. A man might be taught how to use a bow to a useful standard quite quickly. Judging the range of an oncoming line of troops might be difficult, but at least the archer could shoot an arrow well enough to make it look threatening. Slings are different. To get good range with a sling takes practice. With one of my slings, I might sling a stone a bit bigger than a golf ball only seventy yards or so. Ancient slingers with much more skill than me could get a stone over twice this distance. There are peasant boys in Africa who use slings to herd sheep and goats. They sit in the shade of a tree, and if they see an animal straying, they sling a stone in front of it to scare it back into the flock. To gain this sort of skill, I am told it is necessary to start young. Good slingers in antiquity were in demand. Particularly famed for their skill with slings were the men of the Balearic Isles (islands in the Mediterranean including Majorca, Ibiza and Minorca). These slingers practised their skill from a very early age, their original purpose being to hunt and to scare pests. Their skill brought them employment from the Romans. Sling bullets, or glandes, were made of lead, and were usually cast in moulds. The flash from casting can sometimes be seen on excavated examples. Thousands of sling bullets have been found. A group of sling bullets from Corbridge on Hadrian's Wall shows signs of hammering. Interpretation of finds in archaeology is, of course, a problem. None of the Corbridge finds showed any signs of impact, so it is possible that these are not sling bullets. Most bullets approximate to a shape which is variously described as plum, almond, or bi-conical, depending on which archaeological report one is reading. The size of bullets varies remarkably, with 30-35mm being fairly typical. One collection of bullets from Windridge Farm, St. Albans has examples weighing from 28 to 78 grams. The heaviest from Vindolanda is 118g, and of the Corbridge examples, 142g has been recorded. The heaviest bullet from the Near East is 185g. A low to mid-range bullet from the Windridge Farm collection is probably the best indicator of a typical sling bullet. I wonder if the larger bullets might not be for staff slings or artillery. There are two principal types of sling bullet, which, after much imaginative thought, archaeologists have called Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 is more common, pointed at both ends, with an oval cross-section. Type 2 is acorn-shaped, literally - it looks like a model acorn in lead. Some spheres of lead have been found and tentatively interpreted as sling bullets, but this is yet to be established. http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/weapons/slglandes.jpg Facimile Roman sling bullets, or glandes. These are castings in lead made from actual glandes found on a military firing range in Northumberland. They are all type 1 stones. The larger weigh 74g (2.61oz) and the smaller weigh 39g (1.38oz). They are hard and dense, and one falling on your head from even a short distance would hurt a lot.Names, symbols, and messages were often cast onto sling bullets. Sometimes the name of the maker was on the bullet, sometimes the owner's, or the owner's unit, sometimes his enemy. The messages are interesting. The Greeks especially went in for these. They said things like "Take that!" and "Megacles hit you". The messages could be quite up to the minute, since the bullets were often cast on campaign. In Britain, sling bullets were used mainly in the iron age and early Roman period. The Greeks were the main users of lead shot. I have come across one reference to bullets being used at the battle of Marathon (Greeks 3, Persians 0, home win). Some examples were excavated at the site of the battle. Xenophon mentions Rhodian slingers being asked to volunteer to fight in the Greek army against Mithridates. These slingers, who did not fight in formal units, were said to use bullets which gave them twice the range of the less-skilled Persian slingers who used fist-sized stones. Both Roman and Greek writers say that the sling could out-range the bow. The advantage of range is repeatedly stressed. This could, it seems to me, be because the sling had a greater effective range, arrows losing their power to air-resistance after a while, and falling out of control onto their target, whereas a sling stone might build up a more dangerous speed just from falling. The effective range of slings seems to be in excess of 360 yards. Assyrian reliefs show slingers attacking cities from further away than the archers. Perhaps this is because the archers were used to shoot straight at defenders on the walls, while slingers dropped stones into the city, or perhaps it is just another clue to the greater range of slings. Writers tell of the terrible wounds that slings would inflict, especially bullets. The Romans developed a special pair of tongs designed for getting bullets out of people. Arrows, unless barbed and deep in the victim, are easier to extract. There was also a belief, presumably false, that sling bullets got white hot as they flew through the air. Julius Caesar writes about clay shot being heated before slinging, so that it might set light to thatch. Sling units were employed in the auxiliaries in the Roman army in the Republican period. The use of the sling was part of the basic training of all soldiers, who were also trained to throw stones up to one pound in weight by hand, a method which was considered more readily employed, which I can well understand - it takes a fair few seconds and preferably both hands to get a sling out and ready. Pompey in the civil wars favoured the use of very large units of slingers. They were used beside archers, at sea, and in sieges. Scipio used them against elephants, and Caesar comments that the sling was particularly effective against them. Contrary to popular belief, the sling is not whirled above the head several times, building up speed, before the stone is released. A sling might be whirled a couple of times slowly if the slinger had time, to get the feel of the weight of the stone, and while sizing up the target, but it is one big movement which sends the stone on its way. Anyone who makes a sling will find that they can whirl the loaded sling round and round far faster than they can cope with when it comes to releasing the stone. Also, slings are generally used over-arm, like bowling a cricket ball, rather than side-arm, like skipping a stone across water. A side-arm action allows for greater accuracy regarding elevation (up and down) but less regarding windage (left and right). A slinger who makes an error using a sling sideways is in danger of hitting his friends to his left or right. A slinger slinging over-arm will err only to sling into the ground in front of him, or over the heads of his foes; and he needs less room to sling, and can sling from behind a wall. A good sling stone makes a big difference to the range and accuracy of a sling shot. In my experiments, I have noticed angular stones turning at surprising angles in the mid-flight, and I have always been more accurate with rounded stones. Stones found on beaches of certain types of rock have proved, though rounded, too rough and grippy; they leave the sling too late and crash into the ground a few yards ahead of me. Stones grubbed up from river banks have often been muddy and have sometimes slipped out of the sling early, flying high in the air, again to land a few yards ahead of me. I have never accidentally slung backwards - there is always some forward motion to the stone. Dry smooth and rounded stones are best, which goes a long way towards explaining why hoards of good sling stones have been found in iron age hill forts like Maiden Castle. It also explains why people went to the trouble of making fired-clay sling ammunition, which is also found in Britain. I have seen Assyrian sling stones of about 2¼" diameter, which were carved into a rough sphere. http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/weapons/slstones.jpg Some stones I selected for use with my hand sling, of about the right size. Although they are all about the same size, they vary in weight from 105g to 160g (average 131g), so the heaviest is over half again as heavy as the lightest, suggesting that stones, even those as these found in the same place, are inconsistently dense. They are not too rough and grippy, but not too slick either.There does not seem to be one way of holding a sling. The grip I favour has one string wrapped around my ring finger, and the other held between my thumb and centre joint of my forefinger. Ancient depictions show other holds. Assyrian reliefs show one string apparently looped around the whole hand, and the other held by all four fingers, with the end poking out of the closed hand. Rhodian slingers have been pictured with the fixed string tied round the wrist. With all these grips, one string is held and released at the top of the arc, releasing the stone, while the other string remains fixed one way or another, to the slinger. http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/weapons/slopengrip.jpg My preferred sling grip. The fixed end is attached to my ring finger, seen here done with a loop, and the thumb grips a knot on the free end against the side of the index ginger.The power of slings is famous. When iron plate-armoured Spaniards went into South America against the Aztecs, only the slings of the Aztecs were feared. The stone-tipped arrows would glance off or shatter against the armour, but the sling stones would damage the Spaniards by sheer smashing force. I have demonstrated the power of a sling by slinging a lump of chalk rock against a large tree. The stone does not bounce of the trunk. Instead, where the stone impacts, a cloud of dust appears, and wafts away, being all that remains of the rock. No actual ancient slings survive. Sling stones are found in a variety of contexts, indicating that they were used for hunting very often, and not just for warfare. Civilians in Roman times were allowed to use slings when other weapons were forbidden. Lead bullets turn up only in military contexts, suggesting that they were used for warfare only. The use of the sling declined during the Roman Imperial period and this decline continued after the fall of the Empire. The last outpost of sling use was Britain. The reason for this change is probably the most usual reason for all military changes in the pre-gunpowder period: fashion. At first, there were proud units of specialist slingers who gained great skill with the weapon. Later, the sling became used more and more by "amateurs" as a secondary weapon, and it began to be regarded as a barbarian weapon beneath the dignity of professional soldiers. To conclude, the sling is a potent weapon which deserves greater respect from wargamers. It might be used in games other than ancient battles. Perhaps in a post-holocaust setting, soldiers might meet some apparently unarmed people, who later attack with slings in the woods, and then dodge away into the trees, while the soldiers waste their precious ammunition in gun-fire retaliation. Slings are spiffy. << |
THE STAFF SLING http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/weapons/slstaffend.jpg The staff sling is one of the more obscure weapons of the ancient world, though it does not have the usual accompanying obscure name. It is a sling on the end of a staff. I cannot tell you how common they ever were, but they seem to have been used from very ancient times, right through into the gunpowder age.http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/wea...taffbundle.jpg Here you see the end of the staff, bound up for transport. The string binds the cup to the head of the staff into a convenient neat bundle. It occurs to me that in close combat, a staff sling could be used as a fairly effective staff. Indeed, though I know of no historical record of this, one could even have a spearhead (perhaps detachable) on the other end of the staff sling, in case of close encounters. In ancient armies, staff slingers would either have other weapons, or would avoid close combat at all costs, but in a fantasy world of adventure, I see no reason not to combine staff sling and short spear into one weapon, although ideally one would take a moment to wind up the string and attach the spear head or take the cover off it. I took the Metro down to Tynemouth for my first experiments. From there, I slung stones out to sea. There were plenty of stones to pick from. I quickly discovered that I could with ease sling very large stones in comparison with the ones I used with my little hand sling. I was picking stones the size of apples, perhaps a bit larger than a tennis ball, or the size of a smallish orange. Since all my shots went out to sea, I cannot tell you what range I was getting with my shots, but I doubt I was getting much further than 120 yards. Some shots might have been as little as eighty yards, but I really could be very wrong with my estimates. One thing that made me doubt my guesses was when I decided to go for accuracy rather than range, and targeted a man-sized rock that was 50-80 yards away from me. My first shot hit it plumb in the centre, bounced, flew back the way it had come, went directly over my head (missing me by several feet but I ducked anyway), and landed twenty yards behind me. Either some very strange physics was at work, or my estimates of distance were very poor.http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/wea...ffendloose.jpg http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/wea...ffendtight.jpg The end of the staff, showing the open loop on the free end of the string, the fixed end of the string set in the groove just below the hook, and the profile of the hook carved into the staff's end. The end of the staff, showing the loop of the free end hooked onto the hook, and the strings pulled taut as they would be during the start of the slinging action. I took a knife with me to Tynemouth, so that I could carve the hook into a different angle, in case I was finding that the sling released too early or late. I never needed this knife. One possibility is that I carved the perfect hook first time. My feeling is that the greatest likelihood is that the angle of the hook is not very critical. You can see from these pictures that my hook is fairly gentle and smooth. This gives me a smooth release which feels right. Below you see a box with some highlit words in blue. By clicking on these you can download a rather large MPG movie file, which, all going well, will show you moving pictures of me on Newcastle Town Moor using my staff sling. I was on my own when taking this footage, and only had one sling stone left when I came to make this recording. This is my excuse for the fact that the head of the staff goes out of shot at the top of frame. I hope one day to get a better take of the staff sling in action. Nevertheless, you can see from the file that the technique is very easy and smooth. I should admit that the stone from the cast you see didn't go very far, because it went directly forwards, and not high into the air The impression I get is that the main advantage of a staff sling over a hand sling is that the weight of the projectile can be so much greater, rather than that range is greatly increased. When using a staff sling, a man could not also use a shield, which is a definite disadvantage. In sieges, staff slings were used quite a bit for lobbing big stones into fortified places. In the gunpowder age, grenades were cast this way. At longer ranges, the damage a projectile does is largely a function of its mass, since it is falling out of the sky, rather than being powered forwards by the strength of the slinger. . |
THE FRANCISCA The francisca is a throwing-axe used, as the name suggests, by the Franks. The head is a distinctive shape, which makes it distinguishable from a battle-axe. Although I had heard many times of this weapon, I had never felt that I understood it. The problem was this: why would anyone use one instead of a javelin? If it was a battle axe which could also be thrown then this might be an explanation, but if it was a throwing weapon only, then the advantages of javelins recommended themselves so strongly that it was difficult to believe that a people such as the Franks could adopt such an apparently ineffective weapon, even if they had some tribal pride in it. Javelins are lighter and easier to carry than franciscas. A man might carry a bundle of javelins, whereas he is unlikely to carry more than one francisca. Javelins can be thrown from horseback, can be thrown quickly, can be thrown well even with no run-up, have decent range, good accuracy, good penetration and will always land point-first. By contrast, a francisca can't be thrown very quickly, gains a lot from a run-up, and spins around in flight, making the whole process rather approximate, and will seldom hit the target point-first. My view of the francisca changed rapidly when I went on a dark-age re-enactment weekend in the Lake District. A few of us had made franciscas, and were trying them out for the first time. The first thing we learned is that the head is so heavy (being chunkier than a battle-axe) that the thing is pretty useless in melee - it is just too unwieldy. The next was to confirm near enough everything I said in the last paragraph. The big revelation came when we started throwing them into an empty space of ground. Franciscas bounce. If a javelin is parried with a shield, and does not come through, the danger to the target is over. Similarly, if a javelin is seen in flight, it can easily be side-stepped by anyone with enough room to do so, and it will hit the ground and stop. Not so, the francisca. When a francisca hits the ground, it bounces randomly like a rugby ball. The heavy head and long curving haft combine to make this weapon hurl about unpredictably for a few seconds, sometimes leaping over a man's height into the air. If ever one did hit a shield point-first, then it might behave as a javelin, but a more likely strike would bounce off the shield alarmingly. The weight of the whole weapon would ensure that it made a frightening noise against the shield first. Imagine, then, a large group of Franks attacking a formed-up group of foes. If they all threw at once, shortly before contact, then charged in with swords, then they might well find themselves charging into a formation which has be broken up by many whirling unbalanced sharp implements. Few of the enemy would be badly injured by the volley, but whereas a disciplined soldier could well stand in firm formation against a volley of javelins, I strongly suspect that it would take much more nerve to stand steady with half a dozen bouncing franciscas crashing into him and his neighbours. Our experiments then showed us that the francisca might well be a very effective weapon, to be used a bit like the pilum: thrown as a volley at fairly close range, during a charge against formed-up foes. Whereas the pilum is a weapon which specialises in depriving the enemy of the full use of his shield, the francisca seems better at depriving him of his formation, which would suit a troop type which hopes to charge straight into the enemy formation, and hack it up from inside, such as a barbarian warband. Warbands, one imagines, also used ferocity and terror as a weapon to put their opponents to flight, and franciscas seem well suited to this. |
THE KATANA http://www.swordsoftheeast.com/Produ...tana-ninja.jpg The katana is the traditional Japanese sword. It has a long handle, and is designed to be used either one or two handed. It has a slight curve. Japanese culture considers it to be one of the most beautiful things in the world. A huge amount has been written about the katana. Much of this has been written by people determined to prove to the world that the katana was the most awesomely fabulous weapon ever, and that anyone with a katana would easily slaughter anyone with any other weapon. This is of course nonsense. The skill of the fighters is a major factor in any fight. When Portuguese swordsmen fought Japanese katana-wielding samurai, the result was a draw. The katana man would kill his foe with a single blow, if he could get the single blow to land, but the rapier man would often win by inflicting a dozen stabbing thrusts, between deflecting the blows from the samurai. Much is written about the way in which katanas were made, stressing how the metal of the blade was folded over and over by experts, and welded into a strong blade made up of hundreds of layers. It is true that the best katanas were well made, but it is also true that many katanas were rubbish. You cannot expect every one of countless thousands of swords, over many centuries, to have been made by the finest craftsmen, using the finest materials. It is also true that other weapon-smiths around the world used pattern welding. The Saxons and Vikings had many tricks to improve their swords, including making square section rods, then twisting these in to spiral vortexes and then hammering them back square; plaiting three or five of these together; welding on a different hardness of metal for the edge of the blade. By comparison, the Japanese method starts to look primitive. Much has been written about the tiny details of the katana, such as the particular design of the hand guard. In some periods and places these are oval, in others octagonal, and so forth. An expert can look at a katana and sometimes tell when and where it was made. I am not this sort of expert. Once, I was very lucky to be visited by a collector of katanas, and he brought his swords. He lined them up, leaning them against the wall in their scabbards, in chronological order. The newest of them dated to the Second World War, and the oldest to the twelfth century. The first thing that struck me was how amazingly similar they all were. They were all about the same length, give or take a couple of inches, and all essentially the same shape, barring tiny details. In every case, the blade was held onto the hilt with single simple round wooden peg. The most significant difference in shape I could see was that some of them had a more pronounced angle in the blade at the point it met the hilt. As far as the eye could tell, however, they were all functionally the same. The tiny variation in size could be accounted for by the individual personal preferences of the original owners. I was allowed, in fact encouraged, to pick them up, draw out the blades, and to try swinging them about. This was very informative. Here is the main thing I have to say about katanas: though they vary in appearance very little, they vary enormously in handling. Their balance varied about as much as it is possible for it to vary. Some were dirty great cleavers, with heavy blades, and a centre of gravity around the centre of the blade. Others were tip-heavy, which would be good for delivering a powerful blow with little movement, or for parrying heavy blows. Others were very hilt-heavy, which would be useful for fast parrying of light blows but which would take the punch out of blows delivered. Some were thin and whippy, others very rigid. Clearly the way they were made would have a marked effect on the way they were used. There were periods when one style of katana was the most preferred kind, and so presumably one style of use dominated, but individual preference still had the power to determine the balance of the weapon. I’m afraid I cannot give you a breakdown of dates and balance types. So, bear in mind, when you consider the katana, that some were excellent, some rubbish, some like cleavers, and some more like rapiers. |
THE SPEAR http://www.scottishmist.com/assets/w...esum_Spear.jpg The spear may be unique in that it may be the only weapon that every single culture used in warfare. Many nations had their own favourite weapons, some had weapons which only they used, but pretty much everyone came to the same conclusion: that a long pointed stick was an effective weapon of war. Indeed, one sometimes reads of “spears” being used to mean “soldiers”. There isn’t a huge amount of functional variation in spears. All spear shafts are straight, and all spearheads are pointy. The shaft of a spear was made of a type of wood which was fairly tough (unlike pine) and which had a grain which ran nicely up and down it, with no lateral faults (unlike oak). A common wood to be used was ash. Handles on spears were pretty rare. They were not necessary, and most men seemed to prefer to be able to slide their hands up and down the shaft freely. Some spears had but the one pointy bit. Many had “butt-spikes” or “ferrules”, which were simple cone-shaped additions to the rear end of the spear. These had many uses. They were back-up spearheads in case the main head got blunted or fell off. They made it easy to stick a spear in the ground. They were often favoured for despatching fallen men, especially as a large formation marched over the fallen. The main functional variation of the spear was its overall length. Many have argued over what length spears were. The evidence is not always conclusive. Many spears come from graves, but the wooden part of the spear has usually rotted away, and the distance between the head and butt-spike is not proof of the spear’s length. Perhaps a long spear was broken to fit in the grave. It seems unlikely that someone burying a man with his twelve-foot spear would dig a grave twelve feet long for him. Pictures of spears are not perfectly reliable either. Often spears are shown as short, so that a statue can fit in a pediment, or a relief on a frieze, or a painted figure in a band of design going round a vase. Despite this, it does seem that there were two main lengths of spear, which I shall call long and short. The length of the long spear was limited by how long a spear a man could control in one hand. If the spear were any longer than this, then it would be so unwieldy that it would become a liability. I was once a member of a dark-age re-enactment society. We made full-weight spears out of wood and iron, and some of the weaker members of the society found it difficult to wield the longer spears. Whereas many of the stronger men could use an eight-foot spear with little trouble, no one could wield the nine-footer which someone made. Eight feet seems to be the longest a man can use. This accords with historical records and archaeology, although I repeat that the evidence is a bit variable. Greek hoplites seem to have used eight-foot spears. Herodotus insists that the Greek spears were longer than the spears of the Persians. It seems that the Persians were using short spears. The shortness of a spear is limited by the advantage that a spear has over other weapons. The thing which makes a spear worth having is that it is quite long. If a spear is as short as a sword, then one should instead be using a sword, since a sword can cut as well as thrust, and is much more strong, wieldy, and versatile in a scrap. To be useful in battle, a spear must be long enough to keep sword and axe and mace-users at bay. Short spears seem to have been about the length of the height of the user. A six-foot man would have a six-foot spear. Again, this seems to accord near enough with the pictorial, written, and archaeological evidence. Persian spears, of the period of the Persian invasion of Greece, seem to have had counterweights on the butt ends of them, rather than butt-spikes. There are much longer sticks with points on the end, and these are called pikes (the ancient Greeks might have said sarissa). Pikes are quite different weapons, because they are so long, that the user cannot wield them as a man might wield a spear, and to make the pike effective it has to be used in great numbers and dense formations. Pikemen must present a forest of spears to the enemy. Pikes were held in both hands. Pointed sticks designed for throwing were called “javelins” and I shall not deal with them here either. Note that above I said that a man cannot wield in one hand a spear greater than eight feet in length. In the ancient world, armies used shields, and so spears were usually wielded one-handed. Only a one-armed man would use a spear one-handed if he had no shield to hold in the other. The shield is an excellent tool for self-defence, and it was so effective, that almost all cultures used it. Certainly all the armies fighting mass battles in the ancient Mediterranean world had shields. If the enemy is showering you with arrows or sling-stones, you want a shield. A formation of spearmen without shields is very vulnerable. If a formation of spearmen without shields came up against another, the slaughter would be terrible, as each man would have easy target, and be an easy target. Consequently, almost everyone used a shield, and held the shield in one hand, and his spear in the other. Exceptions, though rare, should be mentioned. One is the type of soldier, generally from later periods, who wears a great deal of armour, and another is the man who has a shield slung in front of him on a strap. This second type seems to have been common amongst the bronze age civilisations, such as the Sumerians and Minoans, who used very large shields. In the vast majority of instances, shield-using spearmen clashed with their foes, using a spear one handed. The spear would have been short enough to wield in that one hand, and could be used to parry enemy weapons, especially if the enemy was using spears. A common clash was between two formations of spearmen. There are many writers who insist that spears were used over-arm. I believe these writers to be wrong. The pictorial evidence is very poor. Where spears are shown to be used over-arm, it seems that this is for dramatic effect rather than for authenticity. Archaeology will tell us nothing on this issue, and I have come across no written record from antiquity which strongly backs up the over-arm theory. I shall now present my case for the under-arm use of spears. The two competing handholds are as follows: 1. Over-arm: the spear is held in the centre, with the right hand. The hand is held at about head-height, with the elbow of the right arm out to the side. The right thumb of the user is on the head-side of his hand, and his four fingers curl over the top of the spear. 2. Under-arm: the spear is held in the right hand, with the thumb on the top of the spear and the spear held typically at around waist height. The fingers curl under the spear shaft. The spear shaft rests along the underside of the forearm with the butt-spike by the right elbow.With the over-arm hold, the spear is held in the centre. This means that half the length of the spear is wasted, and serves merely as a counter-weight to the front half. No man would be strong enough to hold a spear horizontally over-arm by one end. This goes dead against the whole idea of a spear. A spear is a device for keeping your enemy at a distance. He cannot come close to hit you with a club or sword, because as he advances to his fighting distance, he gets skewered. An eight-foot spear is turned into a four-foot spear if it is held over-arm. If two formations of spearmen clashed, one using spears underarm, the other over-arm, then the fools using their spears over-arm would face their enemies’ spears before they themselves were in striking range. With the over-arm hold, the rear end of the spear acts as a counterweight to the front end. If a foe were to strike the spearhead sideways with a sword, then the counterweight would act against the spear-user. The front end of the spear would act as a lever, twisting the wrist of the spearman, and the swinging rear counter-weight end would act to exaggerate this effect. To close with a spearman, a sword user has to knock the spearhead aside and rush in at his foe. The over-arm grip would make this enormously more easy. With an under-arm grip, the spearman has his spear braced along his forearm, and has much more control of the spearhead. The spearhead may be knocked aside, but it will resume position a great deal more quickly. If a high thrust over a shield is wanted, this can be achieved by bringing the right elbow up to shoulder height. Also, if the swordsman advances, then the under-arm spear user can retreat a great deal faster, to bring his spearhead between them, as he has the ability denied to the over-arm user, of pulling back his spear, and sliding his right hand up the shaft, to shorten the weapon for close use. With the under-arm grip, a spearman can thrust with his spear downwards at the feet of his foe, or upward at his face. The strongest thrust he can do it at waist height, and he can disguise his intentions easily. He can hold his shield in position during all of this. Using an over-arm grip, the feet of the foe are out of reach. Greaves, protection for the lower leg, were very common in the ancient world, being part of the standard hoplite panoply. This suggests that the lower leg was a common target. Not only are the feet out of reach, but the thighs are difficult targets. A thrust at waist height is difficult, and the spear point will be travelling downwards, and will glance of a shield more easily. The only really strong thrust will be at the face and neck of the enemy. The neck was seldom armoured in ancient times. Greeks and Romans usually had no armour there at all. This thrust will be easy to see coming. Worse still, the spearman thrusting over-arm will of necessity expose himself as he does this, leaning forwards out of formation, and turning his shield to the left to give himself room for the thrust. If an enemy spearman to the right of the over-arm user saw the thrust coming, he would have an easy victim: a man who has stepped with his weight onto his front foot (thus preventing any evasion by footwork) with an exposed shieldless side. As I mentioned, most ancient spears had butt-spikes, and spears were used in large formations. An under-arm grip allows the butt-spike to be controlled, tucked away where it will do no one any harm. Anyone standing behind an over-arm spearman will be faced with a butt-spike going in and out at every thrust, and unpredictably sideways whenever an enemy knocks the spearhead. If spears were use over-arm, then a lot of people would have had somebody’s eye out by mistake. Spears can be used for parrying, but only if used under-arm. The under-arm spear can be used very effectively to rake the enemy’s spears aside. Each man in a formation can act to protect not just himself, but his neighbours this way. Such group strength will win the day against men who cannot act to help their neighbours. Under-arm use of spears also means effectively longer spears, so parries can start further out from the user, which is a big help, and one spear can guard a larger volume of space. The armour that soldiers wore seems to have been designed for under-arm spear use. Hoplite and legionary armour involves stiff broad pieces which come over the shoulders. These make holding an arm up very awkward, uncomfortable, weak, and limited. Armpits were generally not armoured. If a man were using a spear over-arm, his right armpit would be exposed all the time during a fight. Many shields had cut-aways in the side which allow a spearman to keep his shield nicely in front of him, and his spear in fighting position – as long as it is underarm. Shields were either round or taller than they were wide. If thrusting over a shield all the time, why make life awkward with a tall shield, and why not protect yourself better with a wide shield? Hoplite shields were very unusual, in that they had the handle for the left hand at the edge of the shield rather than in the middle (see shield essay). This makes sense if the spear is being used under-arm, since it means that the shield does not get in the way of the spear so much, but is bafflingly daft if the spear is used over-arm, because it would serve simply to further expose the wielder. A spear used under-arm is easy to set in the ground against a cavalry charge or the like. It is also easy to ditch in favour of a sword when the melee gets frantic and mixed. A spear is easy to deploy underarm. When on the march or standing at rest, a spear would be held vertically, and the spearman simply has to lower the spear into position, and thrust it out in front of him. Greek texts refer to orders given to the men to “lower” spears and advance. To deploy a spear over-arm, a man has to throw the spear upwards, quickly get his arm underneath it, and catch it again (unless he was holding it upside down, with the butt spike in the air, but this is never pictured, and would mean that the main spearhead would get blunted on hard ground). Another snag with the over-arm grip is that it is very tiring. Just holding your arm up and out to the side can get tiring, without the weight of a spear on it. With the under-arm grip, the spear is held close in to the body, is much easier to hold, and it is much easier to take a rest. During the slightest of lulls in the fray, the spearhead can be lowered to the ground, and from there, it can rapidly be redeployed. To appreciate the weight of the above arguments, it is necessary to imagine large numbers of spearmen clashing in formation. The front row of each formation would try to present the enemy with spearpoints, and a wall of shields. From re-enactment experience, I can say with confidence that the person most likely to kill you is not the man opposite you. If you are half-competent with your shield, then you will always be able to move it to block your opponent’s thrusts (with the possible exception of thrusts aimed at the feet, and these are only possible with under-arm use). As you fight, you will be watching for an opportunity to make a kill – to thrust through a gap in the enemy’s shieldwall. Your enemies are doing the same. When you see a chance to thrust into a gap and take it, then you are for that instant exposed to some extent (utterly exposed if using over-arm). If an enemy has predicted your thrust, then he will spear you as you make it. You defend yourself against the man in front of you, and defend your neighbours from him, while watching for a chance to spear one of his neighbours. With underarm use, his neighbours are in easy reach, and his neighbours’ neighbours are in possible reach. With over-arm use, his neighbours are possibly within reach. Sometimes, the furious charge of one side in a battle would sweep away the enemy. It takes nerve and confidence in one’s fellows to stand fast as the enemy rushes on screaming out war-cries. Where both sides keep their nerve, however, then two other possibilities arose. One was that both sides would get to spear-using distance, and then halt and fight it out. In such circumstances, under-arm users would have the advantages spelled out above, and more. Spears are sharp. A hard thrust into a shield would cause it to blunt, or worse, to stick. Once your spear is stuck in an opposing shield, you cannot thrust, or parry. You could yank the spear out, perhaps killing the man behind you with your butt-spike, or ditch it. You would want to avoid this. With under-arm spear use, spearmen can prod. Over-arm spearmen cannot. Prods are very useful. By prodding an opposing shield off-centre, you can turn it, creating an opening for one of your neighbours to thrust through. By prodding at an enemy’s shield, you can force him to pay attention to parrying you. You may not kill him this way, but you occupy his attention, and that has many uses. You can poke and prod about to work your spear into position, and then make a quick thrust. An over-arm spearman has to wait for his moment and then commit himself. If he hits a shield, which he often will, then he will very likely get his spear stuck. Another possibility, often referred to in ancient literature, is that a “pushing match” develops. This sometimes involved not just the men of the front row, but of the whole formation, favouring the deeper one. It is reasonably easy to understand how such a pushing match might develop if spears were being used under-arm. It is next to impossible to imagine how it could happen, if men used spears over-arm. With under-arm spear-use, the spears themselves might be a way to push at the enemy. Spears of the first rank or two could be pushed into enemies and enemy shields, and used to shove the enemy back. If the spearmen got very close, such that they were pushing with their shields against the shields of the enemy, then their spears would be impotent, and perhaps ditched in favour of swords. Conversely, if spears were used over-arm, then they could not be used for shoving the enemy back. Furthermore, I don’t see how the two sides could close to shield-pushing range, without horrendous slaughter (and seeing this slaughter coming both sides would hang back). Once to shield-pushing distance, each side would have its spears above shield height, where they would be in the perfect position to thrust into the faces of the men opposite, and those men probably wouldn’t be able to parry. The bloodshed would be very rapid indeed, which contrasts not just with common sense, but also with the literary records which talk of these contests lasting some considerable while. There is one instance in which an over-arm use is better than an under-arm use. This is when the spearman throws his spear. A spearman would only carry one spear, and this was a melee weapon, not a missile weapon. However, if he had the time and the space, and was going to ditch his spear anyway, in favour of a sword or axe or knife, then he might very well throw his spear, and this would be far more effective over-arm. I hope that I have made a convincing case for under-arm spear use. To date, I have encountered very strong opposition to my case, from academics who have never wielded anything heavier than a pen. They argue that spears were used over-arm because 1. That’s the way they’d always imagined them to be used. 2. Some pretty pictures on pots show this. 3. There’s no proof in the ancient texts that they were used under-arm. The modern classical tradition holds that spears were used over-arm, much as it holds that hoplite cuirasses were linen. Classicists have had expensive educations telling them of these things, and they do not want those educations to be proven worthless. The spear was a weapon which was simple and effective. With it, men could combine their efforts against an enemy, and could keep that enemy at bay. A strong thrust was better than a cut at penetrating armour, and a spear was a good defence against cavalry. It was easy to make, and easy to learn to use. A limitation of the spear is that it is not a great weapon when used alone. A single swordsman has the advantage when facing a single spearman. Once he has closed with the spearman, he can hack away and the spear has become useless. The spearman can ditch his spear to get out a secondary weapon, but this takes time. Spears were not used other than in large formations. Once in close mixed melee, all ancient warriors preferred shorter weapons. In re-enactment fights, we found that it was worth bothering to use spears even if there were as few as three men in a line. The fights I took part in involved typically about a dozen a-side, hardly huge battles. Sometimes one side would charge effectively and win quickly, but most often the two sides would come together, and the spear-prodding stage would last for a few minutes (and several more if obstacles were involved). At some point, one side would see that it had the advantage. Perhaps the numbers of the enemy had been whittled down. Perhaps a gap in the line had been opened up, or one flank defeated. At this point, the side believing itself to be winning would ditch its spears and draw swords and axes and knives. Almost always, the only rational response to this would be to ditch spears as well, and then a fast and furious fight would start, and this would last for not many seconds. Of course, since we were not actually killing people, nor fearing being killed, our re-enactments were not perfect duplicates of what actually took place in the past, but in terms of the wieldiness of weapons, and the effectiveness of low-level tactics, I feel that they were informative. We did experiment quite a bit with the formation known as a “swineberg” or pig’s head. This involves one side's forming a wedge, with just one or two men at its point, which smashed into the enemy line. Since we didn’t fear being killed, the defending shieldwall almost never ran away when the charge came. A well-drilled shieldwall always defeated the swineberg in our fights. We concluded that to get the pig’s head to work in a real fight, it would be necessary 1. To have an obviously-raving psychopath at the head of the wedge, and 2. To put terror into the enemy. To make this essay complete, I should mention a few other uses of spears, although you should bear in mind that these were all much rarer than the uses described above. One use was with two hands. Some eastern martial artists use spears this way. Used two handed without a shield, a spear becomes very wieldy indeed, though the user is very vulnerable to missiles. Some formations of cut-and-thrust weapons, like swords on the end of poles, were used, but these are not strictly spears, and were used for hacking through armour as well as thrusting. By and large the double-handed spear without shield is a weapon of last resort, or of the single martial artist. An interesting feature of some Chinese spears used this way is a big tassel of cords below the spearhead, for distracting foes, and preventing blood from running down the shaft. It seems that two-handed spears used with shields were sometimes used by soldiers with very large shields, such as the Minoan tower and figure-of-eight shields. In these cases, the sheer size of the shield is exceptional and presumably the users of these shields relied on this size for defence, rather than any ability to wield the shield. Later pike users had smaller shields, slung from a strap. With pikes, however, the techniques of attack and defence are totally different from spears, so this does not concern us in this essay. I have seen modern depictions of soldiers from later periods, such as Norman knights, using large but not huge slung shields, and spears two-handed. I doubt that the evidence for this use is conclusive. It is also noteworthy that these are often soldiers fighting not in their main role (heavy cavalry) but in a secondary role. I have not dealt with exotic spears such as those edged with obsidian, or with sharks’ teeth. That is not where my expertise lies. The spear is a simple thing, and so most of the tiny variations are of little consequence. The various edges added to spears gave them some limited tearing/cutting ability, but the deadliness of them still came from the thrust. Some spearheads had little “wings” or cross-bars which stopped them going right through an opponent, so that they would be easier to pull out. Early metal spearheads had tangs rather than sockets, and so would not have been fixed so firmly to the shaft. Stone heads would have been more weakly attached – glued with resin and bound with leather. Some spears used two-handed in the very late periods by men with excellent armour had hexagonal or octagonal cross-sections, and metal studs, to improve grip. The simplicity of the spear is one of its strengths. Most spears were a very clean shape, so that they did not have hooks and such things that might catch on friend or foe. In ancient fighting, many men would have been killed while they were fumbling in some way. A man is vulnerable while his weapon is caught up in the clothes of his foe, and troops would want weapons that were not prone to this. In my re-enactment fights, I can only remember one instance of my fumbling with a spear during a fight. That was when I got it caught in a bush. By contrast, I can recall a hundred fumbles which occurred when I ditched my spear and raced to get some other weapon out. The swapping of weapons is a key moment. Spears do break. In re-enactment, most get broken when people fall on spears lying on the ground. In real fights, men would try to break their opponents’ spears, and a strong blow from a sword could damage a spear’s shaft. Formations of spearmen were often very deep, and many of the men near the back would never close to spear range. Also, many servants attended warriors at battles, and carried spare weapons. My belief is that a spearman at the front whose spear broke, could reach behind him and be fairly likely to have a replacement handed to him without much quibble. A basic spear, for the vast majority of soldiers in antiquity, was around five and a half to eight feet long, and had a metal spearhead with sharpened edges at one end, and usually a simple spike at the other. The various shapes of spearhead and butt-spike served to identify the culture of the user, but had little functional variation. The longer spears were better at keeping enemies back and at dealing with cavalry, but the shorter spears were a bit more wieldy when the fighting got a bit messy – a sort of compromise between the formation effectiveness of the longer spear, and the individual effectiveness of the sword. Footnote: I shall mention here the mystery which is the Renaissance period pikeman, who used no shield . No one can explain how these men fought. All re-enactments of these soldiers end up having to avoid the issue. For displays of pushing, the re-enactors are forced to raise their spears and push body against body with their foes. When they try clashes at pike-point between formations, the front rows of both pike blocks almost immediately suffer 100% casualties. True, the men at the front were paid double, but this is insufficient explanation. Perhaps clashes between such formations were solely tests of nerve. Most foes of the famous Swiss pikemen ran away rather than fought. Perhaps the men of the front row grabbed the pikes of their opposite numbers, and then closed to knife-range. The truth is not known. |
THE SABRE A sabre is a sword designed to be used in one hand. It is curved, and the outside edge of the curve is sharp, as is the point and the tip-end of the back edge, but typically most of the back edge, from the hilt to about two thirds of the way up, is blunt. It is a sword type used by cavalrymen. During the musketry days of the Napoleonic Wars, cavalrymen had sabres, whereas infantry officers were issued with swords which were in most respects the same, except that they were straight. http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/weapons/tulwar.jpg My tulwar. This is a Moghul Indian style of sabre. I had been led to believe by various things I had read, that the difference between a straight sword and a sabre or scimitar (another type of curved sword, much like a sabre, except usually a bit broader-bladed) was largely cultural and cosmetic - that there was little functional difference. I now believe otherwise. The Moghul Indians used a type of sabre called a talwar (this has several spellings, including tulwar), which was pretty much identical to a European sabre, except the style of the hilt. I own one of these. Holding it and wielding it has taught me two things. The first is an answer to a mystery I had observed on a few occasions. Sabre-wielding cavalrymen are often pictured holding their swords in what appears to be an odd way. They charge forwards at the gallop with the sabre thrust forwards in front of them. There's little odd in this, but they hold the sword twisted so that the curve points the tip of the sabre at the ground, and the sharp curve of the edge is on top. One might expect the sharp edge to be on the bottom, and the tip to curve up to the sky, as would be the case if a man had just chopped the sword downwards. Try this: extend your right arm in front of you, with the palm of your hand facing to the left. Now bend the hand down at the wrist as far as it will go. Next, in this position, grip an imaginary sword, the blade of which would be roughly in line with your arm, reaching out in front of you. This is the position you would be in if you held a sabre edge-down, pointing forwards. Your wrist is as flexed as it can be in that direction. Now imagine the weight of three feet of blade pulling down on that wrist joint, which is already at its furthest extent. Now imagine that you are galloping on a horse across the countryside, with the weight of that blade being jostled up and down with a fair degree of force. Even a gentle up and down movement is uncomfortable. A full-throttle gallop over rough ground would break your wrist. Conversely, if you now twist your arm around anticlockwise so that the back of your hand is facing to your left, you will now be in the position you would be in if you held the blade edge-up. You can still point the sabre forwards, but now you have quite a bit of flex in your wrist to absorb the weight of the descending blade. So, that cleared up the mystery for me, I hope it does too for you. One would hold a straight sword the same way, but the problem is more obvious with a curved one. The second thing I have learned from wielding my talwar is far less trivial. Most wargaming rules systems treat curved one-handed swords as equivalent to straight ones. Runequest for instance treats scimitars and broadswords as pretty much the same. This is, I contend, wrong. Sabres are next to useless for fencing. The curve of the blade makes the whole thing amazingly unwieldy. To hack, and then get the blade back into position for parrying is very difficult and slow. The curve does not make thrusts impossible, but thrusting with a straight sword is much easier. Remember that these curved weapons were used by cavalrymen. If a cavalryman rides up to an infantryman and stops, and then fences with him, he loses almost all his advantage. Horses are very large and very scary, and the momentum which a moving horse adds to a blow makes a slash from a passing horseman terrible indeed. But if a horseman were to sit and fence, then his horse's head would be in his way, and his horse would offer a huge fleshy target which he could not protect with his parries, and which might buck or bolt at any moment. The rider would only have one angle of attack: downwards. He would find it difficult to fight opponents behind him or to his left, and would find it difficult to attack the lower halves of his foes. The infantrymen could get round him, and attack his immobile legs, his horse's legs, and (especially if he had no shield and used reins, as Napoleonic cavalrymen did) his left arm. He would be in big trouble. Cavalrymen would ride at infantry, take a hack at them as they passed, and then use their speed to get past and away. Cavalry were good at attacking disordered and routing footmen, but much less good at attacking well-ordered troops, especially if those troops had long weapons such as spears or muskets with long bayonets on them. Against a formed body of infantry, they would rush at them and attack the ends of lines, gaps and weak points, hoping to get round a flank. If the infantry held, the cavalry would ride away and regroup and try again. Often the infantry would break formation, and then the cavalry had a good chance. A mass of cavalry thundering across the battlefield takes a lot of nerve to face. What cavalry did not do, was ride up to the infantry head-on, halt, then try to whittle away the numbers of the enemy by fencing on the spot. When cavalry met cavalry, they would prefer not to halt to fight, but instead try to use nerve and formation to drive the enemy off, or mill about taking passing hacks at each other, using speed and horsemanship to gain advantage. Given that this was how cavalry operated, it would make sense to issue them with weapons suitable for the style of fighting. A curved blade is good for slashing. A straight blade may smash into a target, and knock the sword from the swordsman's hand. With a curved blade, the blade is more able to slide across the target, cutting it, and staying in the horseman's hand. At the moment of impact, less of the edge is likely to be in contact with the target, and so greater pressure is exerted on that smaller area. So, a curved blade is better for slashing with from horseback. It is, however, much worse for other tasks, such as fencing on the spot. Perhaps this was a good thing. Given a straight sword, a horseman might be more inclined to stop and fence. With a weapon useless for this, the horseman will instead behave as his general wants him to: to attack in passing. To stop and fence is to "get it wrong". The design of the sabre makes it unlikely that a rider will get it wrong. An infantryman would be given a straight sword, because he would be expected to have to fight on the spot against his opponents. Livy, in his description of the Battle of Cannae (216 B.C., Romans 0, Carthaginians 5, away win) wrote: Soon the Gallic and Spanish horse on the Carthaginian left were engaged with the Roman right. Lack of space made it an unusual cavalry encounter: the antagonists were compelled to charge head-on, front to front; there was no room for flanking manoeuvres, as the river on one side and the massed infantry on the other pinned them in, leaving them no option but to go straight ahead. The horses soon found themselves brought to a halt, jammed close together in the inadequate space, and the riders set about dragging their opponents from the saddle, turning the contest more or less into an infantry battle (Book XXII Chapter 47, Penguin translation).To me, this clearly indicates that Livy considered the practice of halting to fight to be something cavalry would avoid if they could, and that cavalry would prefer to fight on the move. Some readers may be familiar with the modern sport of fencing, and with the fencing sabre, which is thin, whippy, and quite wieldy weapon, which can certainly be used for parrying, and is only slightly curved. Such a sporting weapon is very significantly different from the military form of sabre, which has a blade about 11/8" deep. Such a blade has a momentum far more committed to its plane of movement, than the thin square-section fencing sabre, which turns this way and that far more easily. http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/weapons/tulwarhilt.jpg My tulwar has a hilt that was clearly made for someone with smaller hands than I. The scabbard is wooden, covered with fine leather. When in its scabbard, two prongs of metal on the hilt are outside the scabbard, one either side. I'm not sure what the purpose of these is, but I have been told that they are called langettes and are there to stop rain and dirt getting into the scabbard. They may also be decorative, as they are a bit big for this little job. Just possibly they were to give a warrior some ability to trap an opponent's blade. They do not grip the scabbard enough to stop the sabre falling out. In this picture, you can see a maker's mark on the blunt back of the blade. |
THE CROSSBOW I’ve decided to bung onto my site a short video I took of someone using a reconstructed crossbow at a public display in Aynsley castle, Northumberland. He is using a goatsfoot lever to load the weapon, and is in a race against an archer. He lost badly, shooting not half as many bolts as his opponent shot arrows. He may not appear to be hurrying, but this really is as fast as he can go. Part of my inspiration for including this file is my hearing a man at a lecture at the Wallace Collection in London, years ago, saying that goatsfoot levers wouldn't have worked. He had had a go at making one, and this was his conclusion. I'm afraid that the file is a bit on the large side: 12MB. Possibly I'll be able to make it smaller one day, if ever I can get my computer to cope with video editing. You can hear a baby crying in the background. Be assured it is not being shot at. http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/weapons/goatsfoot.jpg Crossbows were not invented in the late medieval period, as is often written, but are much older in origin. The Romans had them, and the Ancient Greeks designed examples of many sizes, the largest being siege weapons. The Chinese had them too. I thought I’d just quickly list a lot of the advantages and disadvantages of crossbows, relative to bows: PROSCONS The crossbow could be loaded with devices such as cranequins and windlasses, which rather than requiring one hefty movement to load the weapon, allowed the loader to break the task into many small increments, perhaps stopping for a rest midway. This meant that very powerful crossbows could be made that were more powerful than a man could draw in one go.If the string gets wet, the power of the crossbow is greatly diminished, and to put a new dry string on requires a visit to a workshop with vices. An archer could carry a few spare dry strings in a little rain-proof pouch, and change the string in the field. An archer had to be strong to pull the most powerful bows, which were about 120 lb draw-strength (above 120 lb, bows don’t gain any power – the limit of the system has been reached). A crossbowman could use loading tools to load comparatively powerful crossbows without spending years in training, building up his muscles.Archers could shoot over the heads of friendly troops in a battle. Formations of archers were often deep, and the rear ranks shot high into the air. Crossbowmen were forced to deploy in thin lines, shooting on a flatter trajectory. An archer cannot hold his weapon ready for a quick shot for ages. If a crossbowman expected a foe to come out of a doorway at some uncertain time in the near future, he could aim his loaded weapon at the doorway and wait in comfort. An archer would have to draw his arrow back and use his strength to hold it there as he waited, or else he’d have to start drawing his arrow when the enemy appeared, losing the element of surprise.Archers could move and load their bows at the same time. A crossbowman could only load when stationary. An archer has to expose himself more when shooting. A crossbow man could load his weapon while hiding behind cover, pop up with a ready-loaded weapon, and just expose the top half of his head his front hand, and then shoot.Crossbows had a far slower rate of shot than bows. This mattered less in sieges. The most powerful crossbows were very powerful indeed at close range. The smaller missiles they shot could be accelerated to very high speed.The bolts or quarrels that crossbows shot were smaller and lighter than long bow arrows, and so they lost power over distance far more rapidly. Long bow arrows were still dangerous when they were just falling out of the sky at extreme range. Mainstream opinion is that archers took many years to train, and crossbowmen could be taught to shoot effectively very quickly. I am unconvinced by this argument. I have taught people to use bows very quickly, and a bow that an ordinarily strong man can use is still very dangerous, so years of muscle-building aren’t necessary. |
THE SCIMITAR http://neoreviews.aappublications.or...mitar-pict.jpg I find the scimitar a mysterious weapon, because curved swords are so unwieldy. The curvature of the blade means that the user has to bend his wrist forwards more to get the blade to bite, which makes the weapon awkward. Also, the curvature means that twisting the weapon to move it in a new plane requires more time and effort. That they may have been better for slashing is easy enough to understand, but in a fight the tiniest fraction of second's delay can mean the difference between parrying in time and being killed, so the wieldiness of a weapon is close to paramount. One explanation is that they were used in conjunction with a shield, and the shield was used for parrying, and the scimitar was used with dirty-great hacks and slashes. Another is that the user used athletic leaps and bounds as one sees in kung fu films and wushu displays, and by this method kept himself safe. I doubt that this last technique is much use in a big battle. A third explanation came to me when I met a man at a re-enactment event who told me that his father had been on patrol in Lebanon in the 1970s when three men burst out of a crowd and attacked his platoon. The British squaddies were armed with FN rifles, which had long barrels and a very powerful round that would put a hole in a man, and the man standing behind him. The assailants were armed with scimitars, which they used without shields, and by holding them very close to their bodies, blunt-side-in, they were able to cut and sometimes use short thrusts from very close quarters. Seventeen men of the platoon were wounded before eventually the soldiers were able to step back and get a clean shot that wasn't going to kill bystanders or other soldiers. How true and well-remembered this tale is I cannot say, but the way the weapon was used struck me as convincing. With this technique, the scimitar could be used without a shield. The technique still suits duels and skirmishes rather than dense mass battles, but I have no reason to believe that scimitars were very unlike swords, in that they were not the main weapon of a soldier, but were instead personal defence weapons. Spears, bows, and halberds were the main battle weapons - the equivalent of the rifle. Swords and scimitars were more like pistols - soldiers liked to carry one when off duty or for surprise close encounters, but no army ever went into battle armed mainly with pistols. |
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great arab
thanks |
| ÇáÓÇÚÉ ÇáÂä 06:37 PM. |
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