Drawing Swords, Hollywood Style

[The Comrade]

yeah that's what i was saying when i said sharpening it. no one was going into battle with blunted weapons, but i can't see the advantage of putting a super sharp edge on a sword before every sally knowing that it's going to chip and dull almost immediately.

i think too many people have the hollywood notion that all swords work based on a sharp edge. the reality is a lot of longswords worked on their weight, not their sharpness. they butchered through things as opposed to the katana's elegant slice.

[Medius]

[eynon81]

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Comrade]

[Medius]

[Bauce]

While were on the topic I've always kind of wondered about this. Movies depict medieval battles as two giant mobs just charging at each other and swinging swords/axes/hammers. Historical accounts indicate that these battles sometimes lasted 10 or more hours. Even if there are 10s of thousands fighting in an army, I can't imagine how that kind of battle lasts that long. We're dudes seriously just bludgeoning each other for 10 straight ours or was it more nuanced than tv and movies depict?

[The Comrade]

battles were pretty brutal and long. assuming they weren't an absolute rout though, there might be multiple stages of the battle, and sometimes they would last multiple days. it's really slow killing thousands of other people with sticks when they don't want to be killed.

as for the tactics of huge mobs fighting...sort of kind of like that? most armies were comprised of levies, so any real formation for the infantry would be lost once they engaged the enemy though there are some notable exceptions, like the battle of hastings.

[Bauce]

[The Dharma Bum]

Well, a cavalry charge would look much different than what you see in the movies. They moved in position at a much slower pace and only charged when quite close together.

Also the order of battle had stages. First they would usually soften the other side up with skirmishers, archers, catapults etc, which takes a while. There's a lot of maneuvering and what have you.

Then when the two main armies actually meet there's some crowd dynamics going on. Basically the idea was to grind the other mob down with your mob by pushing as a mass while poking with sharp stuff and flinging fire or what have you. Plus you would keep the main body of your army in reserve for the hammer blow.

You would want to engage their forces with some of yours and get them caught up so your reserve forces could hammer them from another direction, ideally between two great masses of men, horse etc. And of course the enemy is doing the same so it's not straight forward by any means. If one side lost courage they would break formation and route and then the battle would become light cavalry running down and slaughtering the routing enemy while they attempt to escape and regroup..

That all takes a long time.