My brother collects swords and I’ve never seen one that can flop around and bend the way they do in the kung fu movies. Sure, I’ve seen the cheapo blades in kung fu schools. Usually they are right next to the wooden blades or bamboo blades. Those are used for practice and training. It would be pretty dangerous to give a beginning kung fu student a real sword with a nice sharp edge, so they use the imitation ones instead.
The ones you see in MA schools are called Wu Shu weapons. They are intentionally extra thin. They are different than ‘traditional’ MA weapons.
Extra points for knowing what a shield wall is.
No, Claymores WERE used to break up shield walls, but no, they did not weigh 50 lbs!
This is pure fantasy!
Can you give a cite for your claim?
Still looking for a cite.
The Philadelphia Museum Of Art does have some swords that back up my claim, but I can’t find them on a web site.
I suppose a sword of that size could be wielded, but not very well. In the game Dynasty Warriors, based loosely on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, there is indeed a warrior who wields an extremely heavy sword. He basically drags it along the ground and then swings around, slowly building up momentum with which to strike with his weapon. I’m assume that would be the only way to successfully wield a 160 lb. sword.
he may of owned one, that doesn’t sound too rediculus. worthless in battle but an extremely dramatic feat of strength. sort of a party trick to show off your strength. sounds reasonable to me.
While I’m not a professor of ancient weaponry I’ll take a strong stance and cry “Piffle!” on this one.
One of my friends collects medieval weaponry, his walls are hung with a collection of cutlery ranging from tiny stilettos to a greatsword nearly 6 feet long.
As someone pointed out earlier, one-handed and hand-and-a-half swords weigh in at around 2-5 pounds, depending on exact models (this is for European swords, however it’s not like anyone else was using depleted uranium or something for blades). My friend’s greatsword is just about 7 pounds. I’ve handled all these weapons and anyone who thinks that they’re going to pick up a proper greatsword and swing it about like it’s a foil is in for a bit of a shock - physics really gets in the way. Peter used to have fun taking some of these to the local game store and inviting folks to see what their barbarian warrior character was actually hefting.
IIRC, greatswords used a lot of chopping and thrusting moves; their added length is an advantage there, you can put a few inches of steel into somebody’s gut before they get within swinging distance. It’s easier to move a long weapon that way, rather than a full swing.
If you want to see some nice photos of modern replicas, along with actual weights, check out the Museum Replicas catalog online at www.museumreplicas.com. Towards the end of the swords section you’ll see some Big Cutlery including a Scottish claymore and a greatsword that are probably what a lot of folks think of when they imagine those weapons. These are both in the 5-7 pound range.
For anyone who still thinks that people were running about battlefields with 50 pound swords, try this simple test: Go down to your local YMCA and step over to the bench press. Unload the bar, then grab it at one end with both hands, like it’s a sword. An Olympic bar weighs 45 pounds. Try to lever it up. Now imagine swinging it all day, and trying to out-fight somebody armed with a 3 pound sword - you’d get cut to ribbons.
That’s not to say that people didn’t make some enormous weapons, but I’ll bet that those were basically wall-hangers and ceremonial display items, not actual combat equipment.
We need to remember that the line between “history” and “legend” can get pretty faint in traditional sources.
Especially in terms of Chinese history. There’s something 4000 years of it, and a lot of stuff is both legend and history, and so given the long time ago it happened, it can be hard to discern truth from reality. For example, Mulan, which is a folk story, and more recently a crappy Disney movie, is also actually true history. There was a girl named Hua Mu Lan who joined the army and did some stuff. I don’t remember what she did, but the point is that in Chinese culture there are folk tales, and there are history, and in some cases those coincide, and it’s hard to tell fact from artifice and hyperbole.
You sure as heck can’t breakthrough a shield wall with 7 lb weapons when tower shields are heavier.
I can think of one very good reason to have such a large sword. 516 years later he is still being talked about. How many other Chinese officers from the 14th century have open GQ threads?
Or 16th Century, even.
[sub]Must not post before coffee[/sub]
I think you are underestimating what a 7lb zweihander sword can do in the hands of a skilled swordsman.
50 lb sword were simply not used in the battlefield, period.
But, you’d swing it so slowly it wouldn’t hurt anyone. I mean, you’re best bet would be to hand to your opponent!
I’m afraid I don’t read Mandarin, so the Ming-shih itself is unavailable to me.
Well, posibley, but I think the Ming-shih was compiled by the literary-bureaucrat class. And these annals, if they are what I think they are, were compiled from sources that talked about the general directly, and only a few years before.
The guy who wrote the book i took it out of (1587, a year of no significance) is Chinese and took it from the Ming-shih. He published the book in English in England, and I doubt he would have mixed up ounces and pounds and not noticed. His writing is excellent. Regardless, the text makes clear that he though the translation was 160 lbs, not ounces or anything. He was astonished by the weight.
I suppose you might have a 160 lb sword for ceremonial or execution purposes. (You execute someone with a 160 lb sword and they stay dead.) But it would be as utterly useless on the battlefield as my Delta drill press (which also weighs about 160 lbs).
Mobility would be a big issue. Just getting the damned thing to the battlefield would leave you knackered. And even assuming that you had lackeys and/or wagons to haul the thing around, it would be a pretty clumsy opponent who couldn’t outrun you long enough to leave you exhausted once you started fighting.
How * big * would a 160lb sword be? Let’s assume it was made out of steel. According to one site on the internet, 1 lb of steel is 3.5 cu. inch. Assuming the sword is 6 feet long and uniform, you get unlikely possibilities for the width and thickness. Assume a half inch thickness, the blade is something like 16 inches wide. Not real sharp, then. More like hitting someone with an I-beam. If you a ssume something with an actual cutting edge, maybe 1/4 inch of thickness, and you end up with a 10 foot sword with a blade 1 1/2 feet wide. Really, this isn’t a swordfight, it’s a caber toss.
(Using the same density for a claymore weighing 7 lbs, I get a six foot blade, 1/8 thick, and 2.7 inches wide – certainly in the ballpark.)
Agreed. Also, “Breaking through a shield wall” doesn’t literally mean hacking shields to pieces, it means breaking the formation and getting inside where you can do some damage. Same thing with breaking through a pike wall, it isn’t necessary to actually chop pikeheads off poles, it’s just necessary to get past the wall of sharp points - once inside and at close quarters, the pikes are worthless and swords become much more effective. Destroys the defensive value of the formation and more attackers pour into the gap.
It’s probably the units used, though in this case Mr. Liu would still be a very strong man.
Though the same units were used, their definitions actually changed over the dynasties. When they record so-and-so’s height as 8 foot, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they played for some ancient Chinese equivalent of the NBA.
From a dictionary I have (don’t ask me how accurate are these numbers):
Length:
chi3 (“foot”): 22.5 cm (by c. AD 0), 23.04 cm (c. AD 200), 24.12 (c 300), 24.45 (c 400), 29.51 (c 600), 31.1 (c 900), 30.72 (c 1300), 31.1 (c 1600), 32 (c 1900), 33.3 (informal unit used in China)
The Chinese length system was metric, so 10 cun4 (“inches”) made a chi, 10 chi made a zhang4 and so on.
Another unit is the li3 (“mile”). It was 405m, 414.42m, 434.16m, 440.1m, 531.18m, 559.8m, 552.96m, 559.8m, 576m, and now it is 500m (the units correspond to the time periods given above.).
Mass
jin1 (“pound”): 256g, 222.73g, 222.73g, 222.73g, 668.19g, 596.82g, 596.82g, 596.82g, 596.82g, 500g.
1 jin = 16 liang3.
smiling bandit: Are you enjoying the book otherwise? I have a used copy on my shelf, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
- Tamerlane
That’s likely under 10lbs. Maybe even just 6-8 lbs. First of all, the guy is little. Second, the sword is common in Bagua and usually weighs 5 lbs.