Bad Medieval Weapons History, or How I Became Possessed by the Ghost of ByzantineBasileus
Deciding that this subreddit hadn't quite had enough of riffing on bad pop history documentaries, I decided to take another stab at Conquest, that classic of bad pop history made somewhat bearable by a somewhat charismatic English presenter.
This one is a doozey. Weird Weapons of the Middle Ages, covering such strange, esoteric designs as...The mace. We'll get into that later. Click here if you want to watch along.
1:08: Broadsword isn't really (to my understanding) a weapons category in the Middle Ages. Nor is it particularly accurate for a knight of this period, even if he is on foot, to use a sword and shield - while shields did continue to be used by knights, the arming sword (and similar swords) have always been a sidearm. He'd probably be using some kind of polearm.
1:35: I know I'm skipping over the part with the bow here, and we could be here all day discussing the relative penetrative power of the longbow, but here we get into bad crossbow usage. The myth that it takes a minute to wind up a crossbow is false unless you're using more specially designed siege crossbows that were designed to be used in situations where the archer could take cover after loosing the bolt.
1:47: I'm going to skip over this and hope one of my fellow badhistorians can add stuff about early medieval firearms, because I, not unlike Jon Snow, know nothing about this topic.
2:12: "Time and time again plate-armored knights defeated hordes of unarmored foot soldiers."
Because of course, opposing armies wouldn't have their own knights in shining armor. Like, I get what the presenter is getting at, and obviously the well-armored, well-equipped warrior caste was a factor on the battlefield, but the fact remains that the lion's share of medieval armies weren't made up of peope dressed head to toe in heavy armor.
3:41: Now, I'm not completely up to date on my sword typology, but I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be some variation on a two-handed sword, which notably weren't in use in the Middle Ages. Two-handed swords became a fixture of Renaissance battlefields because of their ability to break up pike formations. You'd never bring one of those to a duel (which, let's face it, that's pretty much what this is.) More importantly, a greatsword doesn't weight that much (the heaviest were around 4-5 kilograms.) Also, why is the presenter trying to hit him with the middle of the blade and from such close range when the sword's point of percussion is much further up?
4:08: So the presenter has just talked up how plate armor had its gaps, and so he goes on to make his point by trying to stab through the thickest part of a breastplate with an arming sword. I'm not sure I see the logic here.
5:08 - 6:03: Hoooo boy, let's begin with a simple question. Why in the heck isn't the knight using a shield? Mail armor was very effective protection, but medieval art still depicts knights carrying a shield. What kind of knight would go into battle dismounted, armed only with a spear and absolutely nothing else? Again, I don't have enough experience with axes to know whether the discussion about them is accurate, but I do know that edge alignment is a problem with swordfighting as well, and not a problem unique to axes. In other words, if you're bad at using your weapon, you're not going to do very well with it. A very salient point.
6:03 A falchion is a weird weapon how, exactly? It was in use throughout pretty much the entirety of the Middle Ages and many of the surviving weapons of this type are engraved with the names of landed people.
6:20: Ah, the favorite of pop historians everywhere - cleaving through flimsy pieces of fruit in order to demonstrate the badassness of a new weapon.
6:28: Ah yes, let's slap a guy in plate armor with a big heavy weapon right where the armor is most difficult to penetrate to demonstrate its badness. Coupled with the guy in mail armor somehow being thrown to his feet when faced with a single, two-handed stroke from a MIGHTY PLATE ARMORED KNIGHT.
6:40: There's that 'broadsword' term again. A broadsword, my English presenter friend, is a basket-hilted sword from the early modern period. What you're holding right there is a sword. There, no need to attach all kinds of labels to it - this isn't a D&D sourcebook.
6:58: I don't know enough about estocs (besides the fact that it literally meant thrust), so I'm going to let this one slide. Again, I implore my fellow badhistorians to help a brother out.
7:21: Okay, so we have the classic 'priests weren't allowed to draw blood' myth nonsense. This is a story that keeps being perpetuated in spite of medieval poems like the Song of Roland featuring depictions of Archbishops riding into battle and wailing on people with swords.
7:47: Time for 'extras flailing around in the background while the presenter does something cool.' And of course you had to get in close, that's the whole point of having a melee weapon. You're not going to be standing fifty feet away and throwing it at them. That only works in the movies. Also, once again, WHY IS HE USING A SHIELD AND WHY IS EVERYONE ELSE USING CLEARLY-INEFFECTIVE-AGAINST-PLATE-ARMOR SWORDS AND SPLITTING INTO LITTLE ONE-ON-ONE DUELS? WHYYYYYYYYYY
8:44-9:04: The taking of political prisoners was obviously a very lucrative business in the Middle Ages, but it does beg a question - why is this considered particular to the mace? The objective of almost every weapon is to neutralize your opponent, either by killing him or ensuring that he does not get up to try and stab you back.
9:05: Knights were men-at-arms. The term man-at-arms just referred to any professional soldier who fought in heavy armor. Knights were the class of men-at-arms who were part of the gentry, but there's no sharp class distinction. The taking of prisoners would also depend on the nature of the battle - the Wars of the Roses were infamous for the amount of nobles who were killed by the opposing faction in the fighting.
9:18-9:58: This just seems like a strange aside rather than being related to the point of the video (highlighting 'strange' weapons). However, getting down on your knees to stab someone in the face in the heat of combat seems counterproductive when you could just ask one of your mates with a heavy polearm to, say, crush him while he's down while you move on to the next man. To my understanding, the 'running around the battlefield knifing wounded or unimportant people' happened when there was a lull in the fighting, not while the melee was in progress.
10:13: So this is the only weapon in the entire showcase that's actually weird. I guess it's also another example of the presenter FLAILING AROUND (I'll be here all day!)
10:30 Goodbye, very dead unarmored peasant facing off against a group of heavily armored men. We hardly knew ye.
10:30 onward: I don't even know, guys. I'm just gonna go pretend to drown my sorrows in milk or something.
13:48: Actually, a bec de corbin is a somewhat more literal thing - a specific kind of polearm that's very similar to the Lucerne. However, for the fear of this rapidly devolving into an Order of the Stick bit, let's skip over the various pedantic definitions and just say 'it's a two-handed warhammer,' not a specific name for the armor-piercing spike depicted on most warhammers. It also had a significantly longer handle than the weapons depicted on the show.
14:23: That doesn't look like a very significant penetration, but otherwise I've got nothing to add here.
14:48: I believe we've already had quite the lark as far as the idea of being able to chop through the haft of a spear so simply, so I'm going to skip over this point.
15:09: Going to skip the ahlspiess because I know nothing about it, but I'm going to bring up another point: The spear was useless (or at least very ineffective) against plate, which is why it was very rarely seen on late medieval battlefields, having been replaced with some variations of polearm, including the next weapon they're looking at. Again, in the interest of not repeating the Order of the Stick skit, I'm just going to say that different cultures employed different kinds of 'choppy/stabby/spiky bit on a stick' and leave it at that.
16:14: There we go. Again, considering that the show itself mentions that the billhook was one of the most ubiquitous weapons in medieval Europe, why is it a weird weapon again? I'm starting to think the show's definition of 'weird' is 'it isn't a sword lol.' I haven't found any evidence to substantiate the 'it was used by Alexander the Great's infantry', so again, I implore other, smarter people to educate me and the other unfortunate watchers.
16:52: Was leather armor ever really that widespread? Padded jackets, sure, but I've never really seen any substantial evidence for leather armor being used, especially not as plate armor started to become widespread. It seems like another one of those 'I think I read this in a D&D manual somewhere' examples of pop history.
17:00: Knights of this period used polearms on foot as well. They might have been shaped differently, but fundamentally, the polearm has remained a staple of medieval warfare for a reason - if you can stab a guy and he can't stab you back, you already have an advantage, especially in dense formations, which is how these battles were fought, not as one-on-one duels.
19:10: OH DEAR LORD IN HEAVEN WHAT IS THAT MONSTROSITY. For comparison, this is a goedandag. I have no idea what that unwieldy, nobbly monstrosity is, but I'm pretty sure it's not a goedendag.
19:50: It's worth noting that this 'army of peasants and shopkeepers' was a pretty well-armed and well-trained militia, and that while the goedendag was used, the primary weapon of the Flemish at the battle of Courtrai was the pike, and that it had just as much to do with the fact that the ground wasn't conductive to a cavalry charge, which neutered the biggest advantage the French had. In other words, while the goedendag was supposedly present on the battlefield, it wasn't instrumental in the defeat of the French army. Also, I'm pretty sure the helmet is anachronistic for an early 14th century French force. It seems more suited to a knight circa the Norman Conquest.
20:45: So the thesis of this entire video is 'just be more numerous than your enemy and you're going to win.' So, what was the point exactly?
Verdict: Bad, but not as bad as the 'weapons of the barbarians' video. And not as bad as the episode on the bow which I might eventually get to if ByzantineBasileus doesn't murder me in my sleep for poorly riffing on his nemesis.
Sources: Wikipedia for most of the weapon images, a Danish volume named 'Hundredårskrigen' (literally The Hundred Years' War) for the descriptions of late medieval military tactics that are lightly touched on, and random Google searches for the dates of various battles. On that note, if people have additional reading recommendations for this topic (military history, weapons development, what have you), GIVE THEM TO ME. I don't have enough reading to do.
Posted Mar 8, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC
Don't dismiss this so quickly. What if our hypothetical medieval knightly person was attacked by a Moor swinging a pickled lemon, or an eggplant-wielding Saracen? If you're under attack by a Frenchman, knowing that your glaive-guisarme can cut through his haricots verts, thereby disarming him, can be of paramount importance.
Relevant
Dude, trigger warning.
Loganberries will be the death of me one day. Damn you, you red blackberry heathens!
[deleted]
God damn it. My brother just thought I was choking because I was trying to laugh and drink water at the same time.
YOU ARE A MONSTER, [Insert your preferred pronoun here].
Or a pygmy woman with a vicious sharpened piece of mango?
Indeed. I'd dare say fruit-cutting was a crucial aspect of the battle of Mbutu Gorge. Imagine how the Upper Volta campaign would've gone had the British equipment been ill-suited to the slicing of kiwi fruit!
WHEN SOME 'OMICIDAL MANIAC COMES CHARGIN' AT YOU WITH A BUNCH OF LOGANBERRIES, DON'T COME CRYING TO ME!
Not to mention, Field Marshal Haig was almost killed by a pygmy woman wielding a wickedly sharp mango in the Battle of Mboto Gorge, and would have met a sticky and juicy sweet end had it not been for the courage of Captain Edmund Blackadder.
And who can forget the dread Melon Lord, ruler of the Fruit Nation?