Are swords as pointless a melee weapon as they seem?

Factual Questions
21

Longswords were favoured pretty much everywhere because, beyond the simple status symbol of being able to afford one long piece of metal (which at one point meant you were hella rich) and being part of the warrior caste, they offer versatility.

They can give you some reach (for example, enough reach to never let guys with small machetes/daggers close up :wink: ). In tighter quarters you can grab them at half-blade and still fight just fine. You can use them one handed or two handed. They can slash. They can poke. You can use the pommel+crossguard as a striking weapon by grabbing them the wrong" way around (yes, it was done), or even the right way around and “pommel whipping” the guy.

They’re fast, they’re not too cumbersome to carry, their strikes don’t leave you as open as those of an unbalanced axe or hammer and you can redirect a strike mid-way through with only a flick of the wrist. You can use them to deflect blows too. You can use them in a duel, or in a tight unit, on horse or foot, with or without a shield.

They look cool. They make that “schwing” sound when you pull them out of their scabbard, too :D.

But **magnusblitz **is right than in many non-Ancient cases the longsword was the “backup” weapon, as well as the “peace” weapon (i.e. the one you keep on your person at all times because status+self-defence). On the open field, medieval knights had their lances and getting stuck in the melee was a bad idea ; infantry their spears/greataxes/pikes/halberds/whathaveyou because those tend to work better in a cohesive unit.
Remember though that from the ~Xth century onwards, in western Europe at least, field battles became the exception rather than the rule owing to all them castles dotting the landscape.

[QUOTE=the_diego]
The primary offensive weapon by then was the javelin, though the sword usually settled it at the end.
[/QUOTE]

Nah, the skirmishers and pila-throwing legionnaires were there to soften up the enemy line, make a few holes here and there that the charge could exploit and maybe threaten the other guys’ skirmishers with. The bulk of the fighting was a choreographed ballet of shieldbump, push, PUSH DAMMIT, stab as required, repeat. Then move back to let the second line have its fun.

22

It’s not so much that it was a “strategic” weapon, it’s that it had a technological secret in it that the Romans didn’t want just anybody to know about (namely, the head was attached to the haft by way of a long leaden core so that it would bend on strike and be annoying to remove from a shield/wound mid-combat). Restricting its use to the Legion is probably to be understood the same way the US Air Force doesn’t let just anyone fly its jets, or the Army won’t lend their tanks. Even for shows and the like.

But it’s not like javelins and javelin-flingers were rare in the Ancient world. They never were the bulk of the fighting force though, in part because a man can only carry so many javelins and after flinging them looks kind of stupid :). But most everybody around the med. had their armies preceded or surrounded by a bunch of light spear flingers, on horse or foot.

23

Tell it to the Gurkhas:

→ Kukri - Wikipedia

24

Yes. Or, as the kids like to put it: This.

I should perhaps clarify my earlier posts a bit: If you’re a javelin skirmisher, then the javelin is obviously your primary weapon. But skirmishers were support troops. If you’re the legionary heavy infantry, expected to close the deal, and doing the bulk of the fighting? Sword. And, as Kobal2 pointed out, shield. A Roman legionary didn’t have his shield just for€ protection. Or, at least it would be an aggressive sort of protection. Expect the line to advance and push those shields in your face.

25

I can’t tell if you are agreeing or disagreeing with me, as the text you posted says this “sword” is more of a machete, and viewing the linked pics at wiki I’d pick it up over a stereotypical sword. Which is what I said in my OP :slight_smile:

26

Machetes are made from thin metal stock. They are light and normally used for cutting herbaceous growth. Kukris are typically made of thicker stock. They are heavier for their size and they are choppers. That is, they cut more like an axe or hatchet.

27

Yes, sorry. No sword. But I find it remarkable that big knives still play such prominent role in a modern military formation.

28

It’s probably more tradition than anything else. Modern soldiers know better than to bring a knife to a gunfight.

29

The important thing to remember about soldiers is they’re supremely practical. If swords weren’t useful they wouldn’t have carried them. As a foot soldier every ounce of equipment is an ounce that has to be carried, in the case of roman soldiers up to a thousand miles or more. It then has to be used in the battlefield where exhaustion after hours of battle can mean the difference between winning and losing. They didn’t carry that sword because it looked pretty or to impress the masses. They carried it because it was an effective weapon of war. No single weapon has been used by more armies throughout history than the sword. It survived when almost every other weapon was made obsolete and only really fell out of use with the second world war.

30

TWEET

You! Out of the gene pool! Now!

:slight_smile:

31

I’m surprised at you–I thought you followed military things more closely than that.

32

Does a rifle with a bayonet count as a spear?

33
Looks like a unique form of martial arts to me, which definitely has it's place in a modern military. It certainly isn't merely folklore.
34

Even that greatly overstates it. Although hypothetically the Knight was defined by his horse, in practice they quite frequently fought dismounted and being able to do so was considered critical to their combat role. Knights could be, and often were, knocked from the saddle or had to fight in terrain where the horse was a hindrance. In those cases, the sword would be the primary weapon. From horseback, swords were mixed with spears as they both had good uses.

One downside of the sword was that it wasn’t that great at penetrating armor, but warriors compensated by using techniques designed to attack unarmored points of the body. Eventually armor got to be the crazy Gothic-Full-Plate type stuff, but that was so expensive it didn’t actually get onto the battlefield for a very long period. Now by that time, it was true that infantry had largely switched over to using massed pike-and-shot, but swords were the counter to that type of unit. Spanish sword-and-buckler men got inside the formation and chopped it up, or you could use a two-hander to hack apart the unit.

Even then, the sword was still in use among cavalry for the next four centuries.

One historical oddity is that the sword stopped being used in battle by Samurai at precisely the moment they become most historically important. It was very much a status weapon, although still important enough that the Sword Hunts aimed specifically at removing all swords that peasantry could get their hands on, with other weaponry as a bonus.

35

What I find interesting about the OP and subsequent discussion is the (nearly) complete treatment of
“sword” as a single type of weapons. Despite the statements by a couple of posters noting that different armies at different times used swords of different lengths and construction, most of the posts have ignored the OP’s failure to recognize that so many different swords have been used throughout history. (For that matter, one could make a case that the machete, itself, is simply a sword variant.).
I suspect that sending an army of machete wielders up against a host armed with broadswords and mail, scimitars and targets, gladii and scuta, katanas, or even cutlasses would provide a rather disastrous slaughter for the machete wielders. (The machete wielders might have had a chance against the cutlasses, provided they were trained and led by someone of Lieutenant Robert Maynard’s foresight to use a lighter weapon while steeling his men to accept initial losses from the heavier weapon).

36

A machete is a type of sword. A crappy sword, but if you’re using it to fight it’s a sword.

37

Massively incorrect. The kind of wounded hack and slash you see in the movies is just that… far more of a real sword fight is over in a couple seconds. Your body can survive a number of pretty grisly looking superficial slashes that dig will into muscle However getting a sharp steel point poked 5-6" into your chest or abdomen will kill you regularly albeit often slowly (few minutes to a few days). It will however very often render you combat ineffective immediately. Since anything resembling modern trauma surgery did not exist in that era, any serious penetrating trauma was long term lethal.

There have been a few dopers who have posted threads about being stabbed and just moving a hundred feet to summon help was challenging and this is with a kitchen or folding pocketknife, not a sword with a much wider wound track and potential for much deeper penetration.

38

Drachillix, you are dead on the money. For those with a desire to see demonstrations of what s/he means, check out any of the testing videos for Cold Steel. They manufacture good quality reproductions of real edged weapons and regularly test them vs a pig carcass. This is, for some, a bit gruesome, but does show the effects of a blow or thrust vs a decent human body analogue. Mind you these are all wind up shots where the person striking is not concerned about over extension, protecting themselves or followup activities but still, one can easily observe the degree of damage possible to the unprotected body.
A single well delivered cut or thrust can easily take a person out of the fight. And a person can also keep going despite immense damage, sometime fatal damage. (See the FBI Miami Shootout) It’s all a guessing game with a lot depending upon the person being hit.
In response to the OP, most swords, regardless of period, were lighter and much easier to wield than movies and games would led you to believe. Until you get into the realm of bastard swords or two handers you’re looking at 1.5 to 3 lbs, usually around 2. The larger ones only run about 5 lbs. With training, as someone mentioned up thread, it is easy to move quickly and the versatility of the weapon kept it in service longer than any other aside from the knife.

39

In the renaissance there was at least one battle where Swiss Pikemen were attacked by soldiers carrying bucklers and swords. They were able to maneuver under or between the pike points, get into the hedgehog and start hacking away. There was little to stop them but a sargeant or two with a halberd. After such encounters the Swiss gave the pikemen swords as backup in addition to having some soldiers in the pike block carrying larger swords that could also be used to hack at enemy pike heads. The latter become obsolete with a pike head design change. But the pikemen kept their swords.

40

Not necessarily

Not necessarily

Some swords make their own opening…

I’ll take that bet…

Because they worked.