Yes. We own a large number of them. My “real” smallsword, the one I’m best with, is needle-sharp and intended to be used to kill people. This is different from most of the beater and wall-hanger weapons you can buy on the internet, which while they may be sharp and could inflect terrible damage on someone, are not designed or really able to stand up to actual combat.
Of course if someone is in my house at 2:00am I’m grabbing one of several guns which are coincidentally around the bed, not any sword. Ironically, however, since I fight with my swords as full-contact martial arts weapons against armed and unarmed opponents, I’d feel much more confident using one against an intruder than trying to use a firearm. Of course if the intruder had a gun, it would be just like Raiders of the Lost Ark…it’s sort of a silly mental exercise.
Yes and No because the point of riot control is not to kill people, baton strikes to the head and neck can easily be lethal. In combat way back when, the whole point was killing people.
OTOH most riot cops understand sheild wall very well.
hey thanks everyone for the suggestions on research materials. I read through the site mr dribble suggested last night, it had some interesting stuff i had not seen. If you guys would indulge me i would like to know what your thoughts are concerning how much you can stretch a weapons design before it’s better to switch to another design.
A sword could have limited use in a modern combat scenario. It has become somewhat common place within the special forces communities to bring a hatchet/tomahawk or a kukri knife/machete with them into combat. Mostly its for its use as a tool, but they have been used in tight quarters for kills. Also modern riot armor is somewhat analogous to linen/canvas armor of its day. Designed to stop knives and deflect/absorb impacts while staying light weight. It wouldn’t hold up against the heavy weight weapons of the middle ages but works well against people with pocket knives and small bludgeoning weapons.
It’s Dibble, no “r”, and one thing to note is that the classification of swords is, of necessity, not a precise art, so it’s better to think of the boundaries of the types being fluid. I mean, there’s obviously a world of difference between a Roman gladius and a Medieval hand-and-a-half sword, but some other distinctions aren’t as sharp.
Why is this a GQ thread? The rectangular shield also proved to be superior to the round shield in a number of battles. More surface area can be covered since it has a long axis parallel to the soldier, it can fit into a big network better than a round one (like during a testudo.)
The last non-firearm military genius I know, Shaka, favored a big rectangular shield which can protect a soldier while on the run against projectiles (but clearly not the best for close quarters.)
A flanged mace simply gives you a weight advantage over a spiked ball. Most spiked balls I see were flailed from a length of chain. The flanged design also gave one a lethal bearing of the weapon on all sides, unlike an axe or a war hammer.
Because it started out asking questions with factual answers. And the replies themselves were factual.
The surface area of a square shield and a round shield of the same weight will be exactly the same, only the circumference will vary.
The shields use by the Zulu were elliptical and not even remotely rectangular.
The Zulu shields were highly effective at close quarters. They were, however, wicker and hide constructions and used very differently to the rigid shields of Europe and Asia. Rather than being intended to actually stop blows, they were used either to deflect the blow or, more commonly, to allow the blow to penetrate the shield and trap the weapon.
If the two weapons are the same weight, as they likely would be if designed for the same user, then of course there is no weight difference.
I don’t know what you mean by “that I see”, since it seems unlikely that you have ever seen such a thing.
If you can find any evidence that a flail consisting of a spiked ball on length of chain ever existed in the real world, then I, and many weapons historians, would dearly love to see it. As far as anyone can tell, such weapons never existed; they were created out of whole cloth Victorian romanticists, along with double-bitted axes, chastity belts and many other devices that never existed in reality.
The closest to the ball-and-chain flail that ever seems to have existed in the real world is the “meteor hammer”, a double-ended throwing hammer , without a shaft, that was sometimes used as a hand weapon.
But the “spiked balls flailed from a length of chain” weapon seems certain to have to have been imagined in in the 19th century.
What about this or this? I can’t speak to their authenticity, other than to say that they don’t look like they were made recently (photographer claims 14th and 16th centuries, I think) and the appear to be in some type of museum. More details (the museum plate, for instance) would be nice.
The problem is that there was a fashion for creating medieval weapons and armour in the 19th century. A lot of it was Frankenstein stuff, made by combining genuine medieval tolls and weapons. So teh flail for example may well have a genuine medieval handle, chain and head, but the handle is from a hoe, the head is the weight from a fishing net and the chain is from watermill. And yes, a lot of this stuff did find its way into museums. Many museums also had chastity belts on display until a few decades ago, they have now all been removed because they are accepted to have been Victorian era fakes.
The issue is that the ball-and-chain flail is never mentioned in pre-Victorian accounts, never turns up in archaeological digs and is never illustrated in period pictures. Added to that, nobody is able to demonstrate how such a weapon could actually be used practically. So at this stage, the expert opinion is that it’s one of the many Victorian era inventions concerning the Middle Ages.
BTW, the device in the second picture is a meteor hammer, not a flail. No handle. These weapons were real enough, but they are modified throwing hammers, not flails. it’s possible that a misunderstanding of how these weapons looked in use lead to the Victorian era reconstructions of the ball-and-chain flail.
Blake, flanged maces were designed precisely to concentrate more force on the points without having having to make the weapon head weigh more than a pound and a half. So asking for a comparison between a spiked ball and a flanged mace is hardly sensible.
There have been enough discussions on flailed spiked balls on history shows that I’m wondering what your basis is for saying it never existed in the past. You’re looking for an authentic description and account of its use? Me too. Maybe we should keep searching. There’s the “mythical” English flail, and the equally mythical Chinese meteor ball modified with spikes.
sorry mr dibble for the “r”. I didn’t mean to screw up the thread by asking for something i suppose is opinion, however it could be supported by fact and is really more of a scientific question than opinion. I guess what i’m really trying to do is quantify the pro’s and con’s of variation within a design. For example a western long sword is a good all around weapon but an individual might want more power in there cuts, so they ad weight to the blade.(or change the balance or change the length or what have you) what i want to know is when does it become impractical to stay within the western long sword design, instead of switching to say a japanese long sword design which is optimized for cutting.
Sorry if this isn’t appropriate for this thread, i just sorta stumbled across it and found people who know a lot more about this stuff than i do.
^
No longer a factual discussion but in books like “Paradox of Defense” and “The Book of Five Rings,” the writers do give comparative descriptions of different weapons and how they grade into things like reach, power, and deployment (thrust or cut). Bladed weapons are mission-specific, if that’s what you’re driving at. Better to cite situations.
The best discussion on sword evolution I know is the George Silver article.
As to versatility, I get three top votes from various fora: the gladius, the rapier, and the wakizashi.
Paradox of Defense and the Book of Five Rings. I will definitely give those a read. Again i am more interested in the pros and cons within a given design. But yea i guess its mostly a matter of personal preference. Most of the variation was probably to “fit” a weapon to an individual. I also kinda disagree with the weapons that you chose as versatile.
The rapier and shoto are specialized weapons, and I would not consider them as versatile as the preferred side arm of the high middle ages - the longsword.
The rapier excels as a weapon of civilian self-defense. In the narrow streets of the old world and against unarmored opponents, it’s deadly, but it wasn’t a battlefield weapon.
The shoto lacks range, and it’s not an effective weapon against armor - something the average Samurai didn’t have to worry much about, specially during the period of peace, when the Daisho achieved it’s height in popularity.
