Medieval Combat

[bushido_man96]

Zoodles, thank you thank you for chiming in! Love the videos.

1) Unarmoured Longsword (two handed weapon, weighed between 2.5 to 3.5 pounds. This style is German Longsword)

This one is great at showing the finesse of longsword.

2) Armoured Longsword. Swords are lousy weapons to use when fighting another armoured man, so you have to use it in a completely different way.

This is the half-swording that I've never really seen, but read about. Thank you for this one.

3) Dagger: This dagger is known as a rondel. It was a long spikelike weapon designed to be used in armoured combat with an icepick grip to punch through the link of mail armour and into the gaps of plate

Lots of similar techniques that I've seen in Combat Hapkido and CQC techniques.

4) Abrazare/Kampfringen: Medieval combat grappling. JuJutsu for knights

These were great! Lots of similarities I see in Wrestling. Thanks again, Zoodles!

Lastly, here's a video I stumbled across, showing some sparring between bokken and longsword. It doesn't really show one guy whipping the other. You see two guys with some pretty similar skill levels having a pretty even match. It appears to me that both guys get some good techniques in.

[Kusotare]

I'm a huge fan of medieval combat!

I train in a 300+year old Koryu (school of classical Japanese "samurai" bujutsu), and also get chance to "mix it up" and compare notes with European Medieval combat experts (I'm lucky) - and I can tell you that there is a huge cross over.

Circumstances, surroundings and culture affect why you develop what you do and thus the end result from a martial perspective (necessity being the mother of all invention etc.), but when it comes down to it, men have been fighting each other since the day dot, so no surprise there is such a commonality.

More fool the person that doesn't realise this imo!

K.

[Dark Shogun]

I was at a medieval festival and I watched a demonstration of close combat techniques, some of which involved holding the longsword a cross one's body with one hand holding the blade near the tip.

How is this possible with a sharp sword? There is no way you could do this with a katana.

[MasterPain]

I was at a medieval festival and I watched a demonstration of close combat techniques, some of which involved holding the longsword a cross one's body with one hand holding the blade near the tip.

How is this possible with a sharp sword? There is no way you could do this with a katana.

Gauntlets, I assume.

[Drew]

I was at a medieval festival and I watched a demonstration of close combat techniques, some of which involved holding the longsword a cross one's body with one hand holding the blade near the tip.

How is this possible with a sharp sword? There is no way you could do this with a katana.

Gauntlets, I assume.

Bingo. A palm protected by leather and possibly also mail is pretty hard to cut. There are also some other possible explanations for ungauntleted half-swording, but I pity the unarmoured fool that has to fight an armoured chap. I think a hammer would be more appropriate for the unarmoured fellow in that instance.

How is this possible with a sharp sword? There is no way you could do this with a katana.

I have seen at least two kenjutsu ryu that have halfswording in their curriculum, Enshin ryu and one form or another of Itto ryu. I will try to find links in my notes for later posting.

[Kusotare]

There are numerous techniques in Japanese Kenjutsu where the blade is managed/augmented by the left hand.

K.

[bushido_man96]

I was at a medieval festival and I watched a demonstration of close combat techniques, some of which involved holding the longsword a cross one's body with one hand holding the blade near the tip.

How is this possible with a sharp sword? There is no way you could do this with a katana.

Gauntlets, I assume.

Yep, its called halfswording, and the more armor worn, the more it is done. One of the links Zoodles posted shows some halfswording techniques with guys in full plate armor.

[Zoodles]

1) Real swords aren't as sharp as people think. The sharper the blade, the more easily damaged it is. Just take your best knife, sharpen it as much as you can, then hack into a cow bone and you'll find out why swords weren't sharpened very highly.

As such, swords are sharpened as much as they need to be, and no more. A good filleting knife is going to be quite a bit sharper than a sword meant for fighting, and that includes a Katana. 'razor sharp' is essentially a meaningless marketing gimmick, not an actual description of sharpness

Most of the cutting power of a sword comes from proper technique and sword geometry, not sharpness. You can cut someone open with a blunt weapon quite easily.

2) Swords don't cut unless they are drawn across the flesh. If you pinch the sword blade between your fingers and palm you can grip a sword very tightly without the sharp part ever contacting flesh.

3) And as others have pointed out, they wore thick gloves and Gauntlets

[Kusotare]

1) Real swords aren't as sharp as people think. The sharper the blade, the more easily damaged it is. Just take your best knife, sharpen it as much as you can, then hack into a cow bone and you'll find out why swords weren't sharpened very highly.

At best, long swords were what you could describe as chisel sharp.

Difference being of course that uchigatana only have a sharp edge along one side.

K.