Actually a samurai would probably put *japanese *on his swing…
I thought European long swords were big heavy things meant to bash or crease heavy armor. If you bash it in far enough, you break skin and bones. If you bash or crease it at articulation points, you just made that point inarticulate.
That’s why some suits have huge guards and plates covering these points. I’ve seen armor with tiny bucklers pinned over the fronts of the knees, presumably to keep hammers and bashing swords from doing damage to the armor behind it.
But maybe it’s different eras of European weapons and armor we’re talking about here, not to mention which countries in Europe. Germany and England might have had different weapons. How’s a Zweihandler compare to a Katana?
It doesn’t matter what era you’re talking about, specially since fully articulated plate armor didn’t come into play until the high middle ages (late 13th century and up) and well into the renaissance.
There were no “bashing” swords that I’m aware of, and certainly the longswords (two handed swords such as the one depicted here: http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/johnsson/sword-museum-brescia.htm) of the period were not that. As I mentioned in my previous post, they would have weighed less than a Katana per unit of measure. They relied on a strong cutting edge and a strong, sharp point to do their work.
Against a heavily armored opponent, the point would be used (usually by wielding the weapon at the ‘half-sword’, almost like a spear) to attack vulnerable areas. The blade itself would have been used to gain leverage against such an opponent. It’s this great versatility that made the weapon so popular as the mainstay side arm of the knight and professional soldier.
The Zweihandler or Dopplehander is essentially a larger version of the longsword. The weapon didn’t come in to play until the renaissance however. It seems to have been popular with soldiers protecting the colors of their unit/leading pike formations and protecting artillery. They were heacier than the standard side arm longsword, of course - usually weighing from 4.5 to 7 pounds were as a longsword would have weighed from 2.5 to 4.5 pounds. This weapon was definitely a field sword and probably had a little more in common with the Japanese Odachi.
There are a lot of misconceptions here, Sean, and it’s not really your fault. Hollywood and our Western fascination with eastern martial arts have combined to put western medieval and renaissance martial arts in a bad light. I see I’m not the only HEMA buff here (and this is getting off topic), so I’ll try not to be too longwinded.
First, there aren’t many combat weapons of any culture that are “big heavy things meant to bash or crease heavy armor”. If you think about it, this can be debunked without even resorting to the books - combat weapons need to be useful. A large, heavy weapon would tire a warrior too fast to be useful in extended combat.
The purpose of articulated and layered armor like you’re referring to is indeed to reinforce vulnerable spots, but they aren’t vulnerable to bashing. That would make the armor a liability, and again, not useful. The big vulnerability is to the other guys point, which he’s going to want slip into your visor, under your bevor to get at your throat, or under the arms or the inside of the legs. The roundels and articulations help defend against that.
It doesn’t look as good on film, but most armored single combat probably ended up looking more like a wrestling match than anything else.
To address your last point, the zweihander is a bit of a specialized weapon, and it’s purpose wasn’t against armor. Like the scottish greatsword, the zweihanders job was mostly to break up a wall of pikes or spears, so that your cavalry or sword-and-buckler men could get in and wreak havok. Most swords don’t get above 2.5 or 3 pounds (my longsword is just over two pounds, lighter than my rapier!), but these monsters sometimes topped seven.
I recommend Schools and Masters of Fencing by Egerton Castle, and pretty much anything by Ewart Oakeschott, to anybody looking to learn more about medieval european weaponry.
One quibble I’ve had with that article all along is that Japanese armor was usually made of iron or steel just like European armor. Iron armor was used way back in antiquity, from at least the 5th century. Only specialty armors or the cheap stuff like low-ranking ashigaru wore was primarily made from lacquered leather. While Japanese did value mobility over protection and would sacrifice material for weight in some areas, vital spots and extremities were covered in either iron/steel laced with leather or silk, or alternating plates of metal and bull leather that protected about as well as straight metal would have. Armor from the war-heavy Sengoku era was about on a par protection-wise with armor in Europe from a similar time frame, though full plate was never developed or adopted. As the designs were refined extensively during this time period, complexity was reduced and overall protection increased.
Saying that Japanese armor was usually made of lacquered leather is inaccurate, unless you similarly over-simplify European armor patterns. Before plate became widespread, the Europeans too made use of hardened leather armor, called cuir bouille, along with mail; examples here. Foot soldiers often only had leather armor and an iron helmet, or brigandine or mail if they were lucky. Archers usually had only padded armor since they weren’t supposed to have to face more than return fire unless the commander truly screwed up. In general, the higher ranks and those who were meant to face heavy fighting usually had better armor, but the lower guys took what they could get, which often wasn’t all that great. Articulated plate was a late development, and didn’t start to get cheap enough for regular guys until only a few generations before missile weapons started to make it obsolete. Anyway, that’s my short rant on a pet peeve.
One thing I haven’t noticed anyone pointing out about sword design is that hardness and flexibility are more or less mutually exclusive goals. The harder you make the metal, and thus increase your potential sharpness, the better the chance you have of fatigue, stress fractures, or other failures. The more flexible you make it, the less of an edge you can make and hold.
Swords are vastly different from knives. Mass distribution and edge geometry requirements are exacting by themselves, but then you have to add in the material properties. The metal has to stand up to heavy impacts without fracturing or permanently deforming, which means a decent amount of flexibility, but not so much that it’s too ductile. If it’s going to take and hold an edge, then it has to be somewhat hard too. Knives don’t have to be anywhere near as tough as swords, so you can elect for a much higher edge hardness than would be practical for a sword.
There are a lot of ways to meet those disparate requirements. Early iron and steel weapons, like those of the Romans and some contemporaries, were often only case-hardened instead of through-tempered. The Japanese and Vikings chose pattern welding to control carbon content and differential hardening to balance flexibility with edge-holding. Later European cultures usually tried for a uniform temper that was a compromise between sharpness and toughness, but even there the better smiths seem to have attempted spot-tempering in high-stress areas like the tang.
For all that these past smiths didn’t have access to theoretical models of metallurgy, and had none of our modern tools to control the process, they had some really excellent results. It took modern materials analysis to figure out exactly why some wootz steel had patterns and some didn’t, even if it had similar physical properties (trace phosphorous content was a key factor) and what exactly pattern welding did to make steel better (carbon migration, and sometimes trace elements like chromium or vanadium that would be deleterious at higher levels, but worked well in a mix and as a bonus looked damn cool if treated properly).
People have done cutting tests on various mediums, including livestock carcasses. Yes, a sword can be relatively blunt and still cut through unarmored flesh and bone easily. In one test I read about years back on a different board, a guy had an opportunity to do some test cutting on a cow carcass. He found out that even a cow bone, which is thicker and heavier than a human bone, doesn’t present much resistance to a halfway decent sword. He lopped off a leg with a backhand cut from a Viking style blade, and on cutting through the spine with a longsword encountered so little resistance that he initially thought he’d gone between the bones, cutting through a disk instead of one of the vertebrae. Nope, cut right through the bone without even noticing it.
He used several different swords, from a crappy thing only a few steps up from a sword-shaped-object, to close replicas of historical swords. The replicas usually fared better regardless of whether they were paper-slicing sharp or blunt enough that you’d be able to grip the blade without (much) worry about slicing your palm. Wieldability or mass distribution, and edge geometry was more important than “sharpness.” His conclusion was that decent swords were scary effective, and that armor would have been absolutely necessary if you wanted to remain attached to any of your body parts. That scene in Braveheart where Mad Max took off a leg by cutting straight through a leather-clad thigh; totally believable.
Back in 1980, the NJ Arts Council tried to make one grant do double duty by paying a craft/farrier blacksmith to make swords for the NJ Shakespeare Festival (1963-1990, R.I.P.) to use in the Scottish play. Within one day of delivery, half of them were broken, and the other half were bent.
The hard way, like a Malayan kris.
In John Keegan’s “The Face of Battle,” he suggests that French men at arms were stunned by blows from maces or mallets wielded by archers, before being finished off by dagger thrusts.
I’m not a medieval weapons expert, but it seems to me that the mace, no matter by whom wielded, was indeed a weapon intended for bashing away at armor. Also that a decently heavy sword could deliver a stunning or crippling (‘bashing’) blow with the edge, before the point came into play for the killing.
It’s probably very difficult to create a sword meant for stage show. You have two main problems and the one gets in the way of the other. First these things are abused. These people are obviously not trained swordsmen, they are actors. So they bash these things together edge on edge with wild abandon. In order for these things to survive extended use, they essentially need to be turned into crowbars with hilts. But then they become unwieldy and heavy and dangerous to the actors.
No. It couldn’t. At least not to someone in any decent amount of articulated plate. You could try for a glancing blow to the head perhaps, but while you’re trying to do that, he’s busy carving up your good bits.
Swords were not designed for that kind of abuse. They didn’t have to be since the smart thing was to use the point in unprotected areas.
Professional actors are trained swordsmen, if only for safety’s sake. Furthermore, the fights are worked out by professional fight directors, and every fight is rehearsed before every performance of the show. And no one, no matter how stupid, goes thwacking away at full strength for very long – the repeated shocks are hell on your hand.
Actors do normally go edge-to-edge, though. Damage to the nonexistent edge of a stage sword doesn’t matter, and the danger of breakage is somewhat less.
But, yes, stage swords are as difficult to make as real swords. Off-the-shelf, they cost roughly $100-$500 (assuming no jewels in the hilt, etc.). I hear that the “Medieval Times” theme-restaurant chain has been using titanium blades, lately, though I’m puzzled as to how they forge them, since titanium can be worked only in exotic atmospheres. But they hardly count, anyway – they prepare their blades with squibs, fer cat’s sake!
Sounds about right. Arms and armor forging are specialties within the craft. You can’t just take any smith and ask him to make a sword, or a helm. It takes practice and knowledge to do right. The only the very basic stuff is the same. Heck, just making a decent knife is more than a lot of craft smiths have done before. Especially if they’re used to working with wrought iron, they’ll really screw things up.
For stage combat in the movies most of the time they’ll use an aluminum alloy so that the swords are not so heavy. They’ll be made with thick rebated edges, and the spine is usually thicker than a steel blade. Still, they get bent all to hell, beaten up, etc. and they’ll have to swap out blades after a fight sequence. Aluminum is a lot easier to machine, and later straighten and re-polish than steel, as well as cheaper, all of which are good reasons to use it for movie combat.
Some sword makers specialize in steel swords that are made for stage combat or reenactment groups. These are usually what guys who are into realistic sword combat would call “sword-shaped objects.” For safety and longevity reasons, the blades and edges are deliberately made thicker and stronger than a sword meant for cutting, and the blade profile might even be made to reinforce the edge to prevent chipping. Because of these design considerations, they are usually badly balanced from a combat point of view. It doesn’t matter so much for stage combat since they’re slowing things down and hitting each other’s blades rather than directing blows at an opponent’s body, but the feel of one of those pigs compared to a nice blade is night and day.
Real swords didn’t need to be designed that way because, for one, the technique of using them is different. If you’re directly blocking edge-to-edge then it’s probably because you screwed up. In regular combat, blades usually made contact at angles or on the flats, almost never edge-on. Ideally, the only thing you’d be making contact with is your target: an area with weak or no armor. Also, as other pointed out earlier, speed, control, and fatigue are prime considerations. You’d be surprised at how heavy the sword can be overall, but still feel nice and easy to wield if the blade is designed properly.
In what way are they trained swordsmen? The simple fact that they go through “steel crowbars with hilts” like cup cakes at fat camp shows that proper technique is not what they are going for. They need to sell a scene, a story. That’s what I mean with “swordsmen”. I’ve had my Paul Chen Practical longsword (a nice little beater) for years now, and we go at it a lot more enthusiastically than most actors/extras. It’s still in excellent condition.
Your experience may be different from mine. Most of the actors that I know do either Renaissance Faires or Shakespeare on a regular basis. A fair number of them also fence, and are entirely cognizant that the two things are different. But safety is safety, whichever you’re doing (and actors usually have to fight bareface).
Heck, I’m only an amateur, and, frankly, if my technique were to be graded, I’d be a D+ student at best, but my 1"x28" broadsword purchased in 2002 is still in great shape.
Now, opera singers are another story…
Not to take away from trained stage-fighters, what they do takes skill. But they aren’t trained swordsmen any more than Mel Gibson is.
This is not to say that a person can’t be both. I know a couple folks that do both, and do both well. But stage-combat training is not combat training.
I am a trained actor (formal fine arts degree) with an extensive background in stage combat.
Inexperienced actors may get a small amount of training, and believe they are trained in combat. The more experience you get, the more you realize that what you are trained in is, as Rapier42 says, the very specific skill of stage combat. It’s vaguely related, but it’s definitely not the same thing.
Some actors start with the stage version, and as they realize the distinction, get interested in the reality, so they can start bringing some grit to their performance. Other actors start with a watered-down version of reality, and then learn how to “stage-ify” it. I started informally with the first, but when I began formal training, we did the second. We learned actual competitive-level fencing (foil, epee, saber), and kendo technique, and held intramural tournaments to test ourselves. (I came in third in a field of thirty. It’s amazing how effective it is to lure an inexperienced combatant into overcommitting himself and then to zap him behind his failed attack. But that only goes so far, which is why I didn’t get any higher than third place.)
In stage combat, you are, indeed, banging your blades together in a way you would not do in an actual fight. The primary reason for this is, it looks and sounds cool. An actual fight would be fairly boring on stage, because (a) it would most likely end up on the ground, and the audience couldn’t see anything, or (b) the only way it doesn’t end up on the ground is, it’s over in two or three moves, after four or five seconds.
Stage weapons may or may not be made of different materials than actual weapons, depending. If you’re carrying an epee or foil, it’s a tournament blade, with a blunted tip. If it’s a broadsword, it’s a stage-specific steel alloy, hard enough to stay rigid but soft enough that you can bang it against another sword without risking a shattered blade. It’s a common task for the armorer or fight master to spend a couple of hours filing down the edge to remove the burrs and notches that result when metal strikes metal; otherwise the actor risks injuring himself by catching bare skin on what becomes a serrated surface.
However, I must take issue with the characterization of this activity as “bash[ing] these things together edge on edge with wild abandon.” Fight masters are very emphatic about admonishing actors who swing their weapons with full strength. One of the first things we learn, for a variety of reasons, is to direct our energy past our onstage opponent. We do not swing the broadsword into our adversary; we bring the weapon inward in an arc and then snap it at the last minute, like we’re flinging water droplets off it. This produces several desirable results: First, we’re not bashing metal on metal, and risking breakage. Second, it’s safer for the performers, as a missed parry doesn’t result in a body strike. Third, it creates a better visual; the combination of a three-quarter-speed swing followed by a faster “snap” allows the audience to see and follow a slower fight but to perceive it as being faster and more dangerous than it is. And fourth, it creates a better sound effect; metal simply hitting metal just goes clank, but a sword that hits with this technique actually gets to rebound a bit, which produces a thrilling (if totally unrealistic) clannnggg.
I hope this clarifies the distinction between stage and actual combat, and corrects some of the misinformation in the thread to this point. They’re definitely different disciplines, but not so vastly unrelated that the skills in one can’t or don’t translate to the other. An actor whose weapon-handling experience is limited to the stage would be pretty useless in an actual blood-and-bone fight, but there are a fair number of actors who have studied both, for whatever reason. Stage combat is, in its own way, something like a martial art, akin to Peking Opera.
If I can provide any other information on this, please let me know.
To be honest, I was thinking more of your typical extra, when I made the comment of bashing these things with wild abandon. I recall seeing some “behind the scenes” clips from fantasy movies and that’s pretty much what the extras were doing.
The main actors were better in that respect typically but, their technique with medieval longswords, and even rapiers were far from historical or useful in a martial sense. Lots of cuts with the rapier, lots of twirling around and static blocks with the longsword.
But don’t get me wrong, I fully understand WHY that is so, and I can certainly appreciate when a stage fight choreographer is able to tell a story highten the action in a performance with a well choreographed fight.
The extras you mention were almost certainly swinging swords made of wood or (more likely because they can be quickly poured/cast on a production line) hard rubber.
Cervaise,
My question is off-topic from sharp-cutting swords, but you offered to provide other information on the difference between stage martial arts and real-world martial arts.
Are actors who practice stage martial arts more or less fit than real-world martial artists? For instance, if someone practiced wu shu enough to become a stage or screen star (Ray Park, for instance), how physically in shape would they be compared to someone who practiced a real-world martial art (krav maga, for example) with equal vigor?
I don’t mean to compare two martial arts specifically to each other, just how well in-shape one becomes when practicing for screen as opposed to real world combat. I’m sure a leader in MMA could trash someone who only does stage combat. But if someone does stage martial arts, how well will they do against someone who doesn’t do either?
Also, one of the best sword fights I’ve seen in a movie is the fight between Inigo and Westley in Princess Bride. How much training did Mandy Patinkin have to go through for that? And did Cary Elwes play his fencing part, or did they have a standin?
I heard that for roles in Highlander movies, there was very extensive sword training. But personally, I thought the Princess Bride fight scene was better.
Movie and stage sword fighting is NOTHING like medieval or renaissance European martial arts… But, the more modern you get the the more accurate it can be done.
A movie that depicts modern sport fencing is likely to be quite accurate. One that depicts classical fencing (small sword, classical sport fencing, possibly military sabre) CAN be done well if the choreographer is well versed. But move beyond that and the reflection from the actual martial art is practically non existent. This is for various reasons from ignorance on the subject to the safety of the actors.
Also, the moment you see flipping around, twirling, jumping around, etc, you can bet it’s not based on a (useful/realistic) martial anything.
People can be physically good at lots of things and still look like couch potatoes. I know someone who plays Friar Tuck at a Renaissance faire, and he has the traditional rotund build for the character – but he can do standing backflips in plate armor, and he handles a mean quarterstaff.
But you have to understand that performing itself (if you do it on the schedule of a professional stage actor) is going to keep you fairly fit. Playing the lead in an uncut Hamlet pretty much demands the body of an athlete, even without the long duel at the end, and one reason that you don’t see King Lear done very often is that the title role is almost beyond the abilities of any actor old enough to do it. Opera is even worse; a star can literally sweat off ten pounds in a night.