You vs a medieval peasant

In My Humble Opinion
1

My Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England says “…you would be crazy to think you could engage a 14th century man in combat and have a chance of surviving. Most of them are much stronger than you.”

So let’s say you have to square off against a medieval peasant - or villein, more correctly. He’s from 1305 - before the Great Mortality and Great Famine, but poor diet combined with health and hygiene mean he stands at about 5ft 7, weighting in at around 136lbs. He’s 21 - the median age of the population. He’ll probably die between the age of 40 to 50, if he’s lucky.

He wears a calf-length tunic over undertunic, hood and rough leather boots. Mostly he toils on the fields on his lord’s estate, a hard and physically demanding life but his leisure activities include cock-fighting, watching bull-baiting, beating the crap out his wife and the odd bit of wrestling. Unlike a knight he has no formal combat training or weaponry. His lord has ordered that you must die (say you’ve travelled back in time and annoyed him with your ideas of egalitarianism or something) and our serf is charged with the task. It will win him his freedom and a hefty stipend from his lord, so you won’t talk him out of it.

Based on your height, weight, unarmed combat experience, martial arts knowledge how fucked are you (you can dress how you want, but don’t have any weapons either)?

How do you go about defending yourself when this rustic-smelling villein sets about your person?

2

I am a modern peasant and would not fight my medieval brother, we would get mightily drunk on thick dark warm beer and set off stumbling and singing on a quest to find a fine fat stinking wench who would take care of both of us for free. Stagger out the barn door next sunup and go to work…

3

Run Away! Run Away! Run Away!

4

My lack of fighting experience, age and physical condition means that unless I’ve got some sort of standoff weapon, I’m in for a painful death.

5

If you do, everyone will sing this song. Naturally, your only choice is to fight.

6

Oh great, so he’s my size and works the fields all day. How about a nice game of chess?

7

I’d run. I’m taller than him, have longer legs, and I think I could outrun him, assuming I’m wearing good shoes.

8

Let’s see I’m 6’6" and 320 lbs. So I foot taller and more then double his weight. I’m 31 now and haven been in a fight in several years but I have no doubt it’ll come back to me quickly. I don’t think there is a chance I’d lose but since I’m sure he’s wiry and determined that’ll make for a tough fight regardless.

9

Show him my tits, my daughters and plead for mercy or call 9-11. I’m five inches shorter than he is with maybe a quarter of the muscle power so I’m probably dead. Unless my husband shows up. B. is 6"2 and muscled so I think he might have a chance against the guy.

10

136 lbs? psssh… Fight would be over in a few seconds.

11

I’m dead. It wouldn’t even be a fight. Maybe I could . . . climb a tree? Wait, no, that only works for wolves. Yeah, I’m dead.

12

I like your polls better than that other guy.

13

I’m seventy pounds heavier, a head taller, better reach, reasonably fast and strong, ridiculously healthier, and have some limited understanding of unarmed combat. It’s no sure thing - fights rarely are - but the smart money is on me. The size advantage is just too much.

14

I think I’d be no match for physical strength. With good shoes I could probably outrun the vast majority of peasants though; I’m quite fleet-footed.

15

I am a three inches taller, nearly 50 pounds heavier. I have done some Taekwando

He would win, because, he will probably have a dagger hidden on his person which he will stab me with when I approach.

16

I’m in the same arena as far as height and weight are concerned. I work in an office and am more than twice his age. He’d fucking kill me.

17

Female so I would simply be executed by hanging, or locked in a convent. Either one would kill this medication dependent heart and diabetic patient.

18

For size versus size and age versus age this sounds like Martin versus Zimmerman all over again, except that this time Trayvon does hard manual labour from dawn to dusk six days a week, every week. And I don’t have a gun. Do the math.

19

When I was that age I was very similar in stature - but he would lose.

My whole day was about physical exercise, start off with four or five mile run, usually on a shingle beach in boots, during which we were made to stop off and do the various sprints, and carrying each other etc.

Back to base for another hour or so of workouts using weights and circuits.

Then off to the window ladder, this is a three part show, put the whole rig up, climb it in synchronised movement, take it all down.

From time to time we’d also be swinging bloody great cutlasses around for 40 minutes a go - that was mainly because we started off so rubbish that we had to do it again and again,

Dragging that rig up to the vertical was hard going, the metal beam across the top of it weighs over a quarter ton, add in two 40 foot telegraph poles and the wood grid frame (window ladder) the whole thing has to be a couple of tons, all moved manually. All this has to be secured by ropes to pins that we'd have to knock into the ground, those pin were about 4 feet long, and they take some knocking down.

The effort is deceptive, just sitting still in the window ladder in the ready position takes plenty of work.

Swinging those cutlasses around gets a bit tiring after a while - but the public never gets to see all the fancy stuff we would try out from the old workout manuals - probably because making a mistake is going to upset a few kids as they tend not to like the sight of blood.


Here’s a few lads in the practice Doho, this is the low level rig - these lads are ok but they haven’t quite got the synchronous snap into position yet - the real thing is a further 20 feet off the ground.
This lot are better, I would have been one of those descending upside down - the smaller ones such as myself would be on the top rows.

We would spend hours a day doing this - you get some strange jobs when you are in the armed forces, none of us actually volunteered for it, we were just detailed off to do it.

20

I’m a good bit older, but much larger and probably more knowledgeable about unarmed combat. To win, I’d have to take him down fast and choke him out. Could happen. Rather not find out.