How to defend against a mace, or a ball-and-chain?

Factual Questions
41

They also have most of their weight in the head, which is less than optimal for thrusting.

Well, yes, if you swing the sword. If you thrust with the sword, you don’t. As above, it is perhaps not impossible, but not particularly effective, to thrust with a mace, even with a point on the head.

A sword thrust also will tend to penetrate to the vital organs much more effectively than the short point on top of a mace. And the longer the mace point, the more it becomes similar to a unwieldy thrusting sword with no edge and poor balance.

Hybrid weapons - like a thrusting mace - aren’t often successful against standard ones. To use a mace successfully, you need enough armor (if you can get it) to survive the faster cut of a sword, the longer range thrust of a spear (or sword), long enough to bash his head in. If you are both wearing armor, the balance shifts, because he is likely to be using a longsword or other cutting weapon, and will be swinging just like you are.
Maces and clubs were common because they were cheap, low-tech weapons which required little training. They were rarely the weapon of choice for trained fighters.

Regards,
Shodan

42

He probably did, but Conan Doyle is notorious for putting urben legnds into his works as well, so I’d be cautious about anyhting base don just his work.

True, and swords have their wight distributed evenly along their length, which makes them less than optimal for sweeping. Nonetheless nobody would say that a sword can’t be used for a sweep.

How much experience do you have using maces or similar weapons? It’s very effective to thrust with a light mace.

  1. You don’t need to penetrate deeply to strike the vital organs or incapacitate an opponent. In fact the one thing you don’t want to do is penetrate deeply because that produces a real risk of the weapon jamming. Roman soldiers for example were warned not to penetrate more than 3 inches into an enemy for exactly that reason. The point on top of mace, at about 3 inches, is more than adequate to penetrate vital organs. Maybe not as good as a sword, but effective.

2 Simply putting a point on a mace doesn’t make it an unweildy sword. The balance of a well-made mace is different to a sword, but no poorer. A mace is a seprate weapon and used in quite differnt ways to a sword. The design and balance reflects that difference.

Cite?

And what exactly is a “thrusting mace”. As I said earlier most maces have a terminal spike to allow them to be used to stab. So what distinguished a thrusting mace from a standard mace?

What is that claim based on?

Cite? I have never heard this claim before.

If this is true how do we account for cavalry maces? At that time cavalry were all trained fighters were they?

43

It does, at least, show that the idea (true or not) of clergy using blunt weapons predates Dungeons and Dragons. An if it’s not historically accurate, it would be interesting to track whence Doyle got the idea.

44

Odo of Bayeux, the half brother of William the Conqueror, is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry as wielding a cudgel in the Battle of Hastings. The received view is that Odo was prohibited from wielding a blade by canon law. More information can be found in D. Bates, “The character and career of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux”, Speculum 50 (1975). It is highly likely that Odo himself commissioned the tapestry.

Blake,

There is tremendous variety in the weight distribution among different classes of swords. However, the weight of even a 12th century arming sword is by no means distributed equally. This claim is false on its face.

This also strikes me as patently absurd. A “light” mace of the 16th century is roughly 26" long. A contemporary 15th century German or Italian longsword for blossfechten has a blade roughly 40" in length. Thrusting with your mace against an opponent armed with a sword strikes me as a fantastic way to lose your arms, even if you are already infighting.

SCA and other reenactment does not count as “experience”.

At least I agree with your assessment of wound penetration. Fewer than 2 inches of penetration to the vital regions of the upper body is typically enough to deliver a fatal wound, if not instantaneously.

45

Speaking from many years of experience training and fighting with a variety of handheld (non-projectile) weapons, I’d say this is right on the money. The only thing about those weapons that might have been useful is that if you are facing opponents wearing armor and carrying heavy weapons such as two-handed swords or long weapons such as halberds or spears, a chain-mounted weight can give you a) a chance to wind up and hit with the full momentum of the swung weight and if that misses or does little damage, what the hell, you’re getting to wrap some chain around the limbs or body of someone who is even more dependent on being “at range” than you are (if you have a knife or a club or something handy so that you can move in once your enemy is inconvenienced by the chain, and work on getting past that pesky armor). Chains might also be useful from an anti-cavalry standpoint (wrap around legs).

If you’re a lightly armed fighter with full mobility, chain weapons are pretty trivial to overcome precisely because you can’t feint/feint/strike, and can’t recover quickly from one strike to initiate another.

G

46

I hardly would call it trivial, otherwise the weapons would never have been used. Without armor you are in doubly serious danger at any time you are fighting with lethal melee weapons.

47

OK, the best way to defend against this is to step back and let it go by and then step back inside the range with something pointy and sharp. Aside from that, maneuver the guy into a place where he is cramped and can’t swing well. If the weapon has a short chain as several people have pointed out as being more normal and less Hollywood, you just block the thing at an oblique angle like any other club-type weapon.

Take it for what it’s worth, my own experience is 7 years of Kali-Silat and 3 years of Jiu-Jutsu. The Kali is more applicable since it is an armed art that uses sticks of various sorts.

Regards.

Testy

48

I know this isn’t strictly germane to the OP, but this seems to have become a discussion of chain-based weapons in general.

I’m no expert, but my Kung Fu instructor back in the day could make a chain-whip look pretty damn scary.

It had a weight on each end and was long enough that you could keep either end spinning and attack with both alternately. I’d guess that, with grip adjustments, he could get a reach of anywhere from six to eight feet or more. As far as it being predictable to the point that you could step in and out of its reach, I’d be very skeptical. Most of the time, the head was just a blur.

If you attempted the above-mentioned “get it to wrap around something” defense, you’d better not be anywhere near the thing it was wrapping around.

49

Why not?

50

Because historical accuracy, and serious martial study is (usually) not a goal of these groups.

51

Yes…I think a good portion of this thread has been kind of unrealistic.

If someone were to ask how to defend against a sword what would people think of advice consisting of “Don’t get stabbed or cut - it’s probably pretty easy”?

Lots of people have been killed by these things, and I’m sure it occurred to most of them to just not get hit by the ball…

-Joe

52

I agree.

We don’t have a clear picture on how these weapons were used. I believe there are no surviving manuscripts on the use of flails (they are, very briefly, mentioned on a few treatises, Sutor being one), I think there might be reason to suspect, that none were ever written.

We know that the historical weapon consisted of a small chain (no mroe than 6 inches in length), and a large handle (unlike what we tend to see in movies and modern -historically innacurate- replicas, typically the opposite, small handles and long chains). My guess would be that they were used essentially as clubs or maces, the chain giving the weapon a little extra Oomph and nothing more.

How would you defend against one then? Same way you defend against all other weapons: Good footwork, good timing, good technique, and fearlessness :wink:

53

To my surprise (I assumed like you that the “priests use only maces in order not to shed blood” thing was made up by D&D to limit the weaponry allowed to clerics), I noticed once in some serious article or book a mention of such a custom. I absolutely don’t remember where, though. I think it was a reference to a particular bishop who was also a military leader. I don’t know whether it was his own particular habbit or a general custom. And I’m still not fully convinced.

54

Huh. I should have read the following posts. Now, I remember it was indeed in a commentary of the Bayeux tapestry that I read the mention that the depicted bishop was using a club because…etc… The commentary (in the Bayeux museum itself? I can’t remember…) implied (stated? Can’t remember) that it was a general custom, not a peculiar behavior of Odo.

55

While true the SCA and most historical fencers are practicing a sport, you can say that about all studies of martial arts that are not used by soldiers/law enforcement who are training to be in the field of life and death combat.

Is your experience fencing? a sport. Karate? sport. Trap shooting? Archery? Dim Mak? ( :smiley: ) It’s all a sport because we don’t fight with swords, spears and flails. In real life we use guns.

So, what makes your experience and knowledge of the use of flails superior to the sport martial artist in the SCA or the historical fencer or the historical reenactor?

I would not spurn the insight of the fencing student on sword fighting in the renaissance, would you?

I’m not being argumentative, I respect your insights into these matters and I always enjoy your posts and look forward to your response. Maybe I just have a bug up my ass today.

I do notice that these threads seem to always have one or two posters who get a kind of consescending air towards the SCA or other reenactors. Why? Who knows, maybe because they once saw some idiot in a bad pirate or fairy costume at an event or something and so they condem the whole group.

56

About cleric’s weapons: not too far into Gargantua and Pantagruel , a priest grabs a big cross and causes serious bloodshed and loss of limb by wielding it. It is supposed to be funny, of course (and is–damn funny), but it does seem to be based on an idea about priests not wielding swords, don’t you think?

57

Would it have been against the rules for some wily so and so to have a pouch of a highly irritating substance on his person (e.g. onion juice or maybe even lye) that he could use to impair the vision of the guy with the ball and chain, and then move in for the kill?

I imagine the lye-er would have to make sure he’s upwind of the lye-ee.

58

I would disagree. While it is true that most MODERN martial arts have evolved into sports, this is not not true of ALL martial arts studied today. There are many that are taught with a true martial purpose. Combatives are still taught in just about all modern armies, though typically only special forces are well versed in them. There are some asian martial arts taught today that are not only viable forms of personal self defense, but are taught in that spirit.

These are not (usually) taught as sports, but as true martial arts, meant to be used against an enemy in combat, or (more likely) in personal self defense.

The problem with the SCA and other re-enactment groups is two-fold:

  1. They do not study historically accurate technique. Now this is not true of all members of the SCA or other groups some actually study historical martial arts on their own or along with other groups, but these organizations themselves do not teach or use historical form.

  2. What they do teach is completely geared towards sport/theater. It’s all based around certain rules and regulations, certain equipment, etc. The way an SCA fighter uses a Rattan weapon is NOT the way a medieval knight uses his sword. Neither is the way many reenactment groups handle their weapons any real representation of historical martial arts. In the case of most reenactors
    this is due to the need for safety, and theatrical story telling.

My experience is historical martial arts from the medieval period to the renaissance. And I disagree that this cannot be practiced as a true martial art today.

The techniques we perform are historically accurate, and, more importantly, they are effective. They function as they are meant to, their purpose is to disable your opponent as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

It is true that we do not employ them to this effect in actual life and death struggles, that is a deficiency I’m glad we have to live with! :wink: But we believe that learning these techniques in light of how they are to be used and through study of medieval manuscripts, utilizing historically accurate replicas, and with true martial intent (and with some safety gear on!) leads us to a martial understanding of the weapons that playing at a sport will never, could never lead to.

Of flails? Not much, really. As I mentioned, We simply do not have much to go by in terms of historical treatises or even guidelines from masters of the past on that particular weapon. Historical martial artists, however, do posses a deeper understanding of the foundational principles of medieval martial arts: from footwork, to philosophy, to the use of similar weapons. I think, therefore, that although we could not know exactly HOW these weapons were utilized, a historical martial artist is likely to come up with a much more educated guess, and he is likely to posesses the tools necessary to at least separate what works, what is truly martially sound, from what doesn’t, or only that which would work in the context of the sporting arena.

Yes, I would. Modern fencing is nothing akin to renaissance martial arts.

I do not believe you were beign argumentative. Debate is what this board is all about after all :wink:

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I don’t have any bad feelings towards the SCA or other re-enactor groups as a whole. I’m sure they are all great people interested in having fun, and with whom I’d likely have much in common. I’m also happy for the work they and other re-enactors do. I wished more people would be as interested as I am in the period, and these people do just that, they get more people, young and old, interested.

The only thing that bugs me is when they claim that they are portraying historically accurate combat, because they aren’t, and this confuses people. Specially (and this is being done less, and less, thank goodness) when misinformation, proven false ages ago keeps on being passed on as true: like 20 pound swords, knights hoisted onto their saddles, unable to get up, The vaunted supposed superiority of asian martial arts, etc.

59

As usual, Kinthalis has the right of it.

I would add one additional caveat regarding the SCA and other reenactment groups. There is absolutely no quality control whatsoever. I could join the SCA if I were so inclined and set myself up as a teacher immediately. Some people have the unmitigated gall to teach fundamental Italian rapier techniques when they can do little more than look at the plates in Capo Ferro.

There are no real standards apart from safety, and there is little or no rigor in instruction. They do not participate in a living tradition that has been refined over centuries and has been passed down from master to master by means of a grueling certification process.

Granted, there are people in the SCA who really can fence. Unsurprisingly, they all have sport fencing backgrounds. Sport fencing certainly isn’t a martial art, but there is plenty of technique to learn. Reenactment is a lot of fun for a lot of people, and I have no contempt for the activity whatsoever. I save my contempt for those who doggedly refuse to see the difference between an art that requires years of discipline and qualified instruction and smacking your buddies around with rattan or with wafer-thin schlagers.

60

In A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman says there was a ecclesiastical injunction against clerics that they could not “smite with the edge of the sword.” To me, it would seem that rule would be a flowery way of forbidding them from engaging in war, but they avoided that on a technicality by using the mace.