The Bayeaux Tapestry shows the lance being used both overhand, being thrown, and underhand, couched. The stirrup had made its way to Europe several hundred years before the Battle of Hastings in 1066, but it took a long time for people to realize how effective a couched lance could be. Not long after Hastings it became the preferred method for using a spear or lance.
Mounted knight with leveled lance.
Photo by Peter Fuller.
BOWS & SLINGS
Because the English used the foot archer to such telling effect, many people think that the longbow was unknown except in Wales. It is frequently stated that the English borrowed the longbow from the Welsh and made it their own. Certainly Edward III used it to great effect in his wars against France. However, attributing the invention to the Welsh is a little bit suspect. The longbow was in use in many areas and much earlier than most people realize. The Vikings were using it a great deal as early as the ninth century and considered it a very important weapon.
The famous warrior, Gunnar of Hlildarend of Njal's Saga, was noted for his skill with his bow and is mentioned using it on several occasions. When he was finally overcome it was only because his bowstring broke, and his wife (a really nasty type of person) wouldn't let him use a lock of her hair to plait another. All through the sagas the bow is very prominent, again described by some really beautiful kennings. Arrows are referred to as "the rain of the string," "the herrings of the corpse," "the hail of battle," and "rain storm of the wounds."
The bow itself was made of ash, elm, witch hazel or yew, and was about 6 feet in length. We can tell from the thickness of the bow staves the draw weights were probably around 80 to 120 pounds, similar to those of the bows taken from the Mary Rose, a ship of Henry VIII's that was recovered from where it sank and is now on display. In many of the Viking grave excavations the remains of similar longbows have been found.
Bodkin arrow point (left) and broadhead (right).
Arrow heads were pretty much the same as you would expect: thin bodkin points for battle, and broadheads for hunting. Shafts were usually about 30–36 inches in length.
The longbow does not lend itself to ornamentation. The Eastern recurve was frequently decorated, but the longbow, being essentially a stick, was not. Of course it is possible that some of the bows were painted, but that is not known for sure, and such decoration would not have survived.
Eastern recurve shape (left) and Viking bow shape (right).
Curiously enough, the sling was also used during the Viking Age. Although not as popular as the bow, it was still an effective weapon. In Kjalnesinga Saga we read how the outlaw Bui, attacked by twelve men, defends himself by gathering stones, standing on a hill and killing some of the attackers. Slingers are also mentioned as being on the flanks of some of the battles. Personally, I would rather have a bow and a good axe.
VIKING AXES
If there is one weapon that is most closely identified with the Vikings, it is the axe. Axes have been in use all over the world and at all times, and are probably the oldest weapons next to clubs. But the Vikings worked a variation that became popular all through the North, and even down into Italy, and that is the "Danish Axe."
Reproduction Viking axe.
Photo by Adam Lyon.
This is a big weapon. There is no way that this can be confused with a wood axe. This is a battle weapon, and intended to lop the limbs of men rather than the limbs of trees. The cutting edge on these axes ranged from eight inches to many that are ten to twelve inches in width. Curiously, these axes are not particularly heavy, but really rather light in weight. Most weigh in at two to three pounds. The blades are quite thin, about 2mm in thickness, with the blade being thickened at the edge. This gives the edge the backing it needs without a great deal of weight. Generally mounted on long shafts and swung with two hands, it is quite possible for a strong man to wield it effectively with just one hand. I have been able to do it and, although I did not have the control I had with a sword, I could deal a most devastating blow with it. The light weight allowed it to be swung easily, and with great speed. The edge, even thickened, was no thicker than a sword blade, so that the axe could cut quite deeply. The very thing that makes the Danish axe a deadly weapon also kept it from being an effective tool. The blade would not be strong enough to cut into a tree, and the stress created would likely cause it to buckle.
In one battle the blow from a Danish axe was almost incredible. When the Norse under Haskulf Thorgilsson attacked Dublin in 1171, there was among them a famous berserker called John the Wode. When the Dubliners attacked and their knights penetrated the ranks of the Norse, the Norse began to fly. But John stood his ground and fought with terrible ferocity. It is recorded that he cut off the leg of a knight at the thigh, and in doing so, cut through not only the knight's long byrnie, but also through his mail breeches as well! The power it would require to do all this is almost, but not quite, unbelievable. He is also reported to have cut down ten or eleven men before he himself was slain.
Thin and thick beaten axe heads, silhouettes as viewed from above.
But the large Danish axe was not the only one in use. There were many shapes, and a large number of them were short and intended to be used with one hand in conjunction with a shield. Regardless of the profile of the axe, they were referred to as two distinct types, the "thin beaten" and "thick beaten." This seems to refer to the blade below the eye or socket hole. In the thin beaten axe, when looking at the front of the eye and blade, the axe suddenly narrows and the blade is fairly thin and flat. On the thick beaten the blade hollows only slightly as it thins down to the edge. The thick beaten is obviously more sturdy and capable of heavy duty chopping. This type of axe could be used for a multitude of purposes. It is very difficult to say that any one axe was designed for a specific purpose. A wood or carpenter's axe made a good weapon—especially if that was the only one you had. The one exception to this is the large, thin beaten Danish axe. Its only purpose is that of a weapon. The thin blade does not allow for good wood cutting, but is superbly designed for a weapon.
In the final analysis, the Vikings did not have anything really unusual in the way of weapons. Many other European warriors had similar arsenals. What the Vikings did have was a core toughness that very few other cultures ever exhibited. It is easy to consider the Northmen hard and brutal, even cruel when judged by 20th-century standards. But those were hard and tough times that called for hard and tough men.
FIGHTING WITH THE SWORD
IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES
In my opinion, skill in the use of the sword began to decline during the middle of the 13th century. At this time armor began to be increasingly effective and was available to more and more warriors. Mail, which could be penetrated by a strong blow with the sword, was now being augmented with sections of plate. The mounted knight was by this time dominant in most of Europe, and only in the out of the way places, like Iceland and some of the Nordic countries, did foot combat still play an important role; but even there it too was on its way out.
The sword remained a symbol for nobility, honor, and so on, and was a very important weapon, but in actual combat more and more the weapon of choice was a mace, axe or war hammer.
On foot the preferred weapons were bills, halberds, and polearms in general. And although carried, the sword was now a weapon of last resort. The foot soldier found it more convenient to carry a two-hand weapon, and a small shield that he could easily wear. His armor was also becoming more and more protective, but far from the complete coverage that the wealthy knight could afford. Some of a foot soldier's armor was paid for by his employer, but it was also augmented by what he could pick up from the battlefield. Generally speaking, he was expected to provide his own armor and weapons.
Reproduction transitional armor, circa 1360, made by Peter Fuller.
Photo by Peter Fuller.
This is rather easy to understand if you look at the improvements that were taking place in the field of defensive armor. Mai
l was becoming much more plentiful because mail was frequently repaired and reused and could be handed down. As the whole economy of Europe improved, a rising middle class could afford more and better protection. Many foot soldiers were wearing a gambeson under mail. The use of such a padded undergarment absorbed much of the shock that mail normally passed on to the wearer. Plate defenses were also being added, and this made it more and more difficult for the sword to do much damage. As the armor improved, the shield became less and less important, and was gradually phased out. However, it was still used by the knights: not only was it quite dressy, and showed off the coats of arms, but it had a real use in that it helped deflect the lance. Which, after all, was the main weapon of the mounted knight.
There was also a more subtle social change taking place. It became much more advantageous to capture a knight than to kill him. After all, dead he was worth what you could get for his armor and horse, but alive his ransom could be a great deal of money. Several knights gained extreme wealth by being good enough, or lucky enough, to capture enough enemies to set themselves up for life. In England Falstaff was one and so was William Marshall.
These are the basic reasons that I feel that skill with the sword began to decline in the mid-13th century. Of course it didn't stay that way. As soon as the social and military conditions warranted it, swordplay came back, and skill was once again brought to the fore.
Suggestions for further reading from the editors:
All Norse sagas, especially Njal's Saga (aka The Saga of Burnt Njal), Egil's Saga, Eirik the Red and Grettir the Strong. The editor is particularly fond of the Penguin editions with the Magnus Magnusson translations.
Bradbury, Jim. The Medieval Archer. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1985.
Delbrueck, Hans, History of the Art of War Vols. 1–IV, translated by Walter J. Renfroe, Jr. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, this edition first published 1982, original German edition published 1923.
Fiorato, Veronica, Anthea Boylston & Christopher Knusel, Blood Red Roses: The Archeology of a Mass Grave from the Battle of Towton AD 1461, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2000.
Jones, Gwyn, A History of the Vikings. Oxford University Press, London, 1968.
Manjno, Guido, M.D., The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World. Harvard University Press, 1975.
Oman, Sir Charles, The Art of War in the Middle Ages, Vols. I & II. Greenhill Books, London, 1991, first published in this form 1924.
Schaal, Dieter et al., Vermisste Kunstwerke des Historische Museums Dresden. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, 1990.
[1] Armorers didn't start heat-treating armor until the end of the 14th century—up until then there wasn't enough carbon in the metal used to do a proper heat-treat—and even in the 15th and 16th centuries it was hit or miss. Some armor was heat-treated and some wasn't. A good book for info on this subject is The Knight and the Blast Furnace. —Peter Fuller
7: European Swords: The Rapier and the Smallsword
The rapier is the most romantic of swords. In spite of the recent popularity of the katana, the rapier remains the dominant sword in all romantic fiction. It is a slim, elegant, and oh so deadly weapon. Who has not thrilled to the duel in rhyme in Cyrano de Bergerac, to D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers fighting fiercely for the honor of the Queen? The very name evokes morning duels, with the mists lending an air of mystery to a deadly confrontation, or moonlight glinting off blades in a desperate midnight encounter.
Antique Spanish cup-hilted rapier, 47 inches overall length. HRC25A.
Books and movies have contributed to most of this romanticism, and I feel the reality was not quite like that. Your "adventure" is always someone else's terrifying problem. It is easy to ask how many of us would actually engage in that sort of thing if we could, and the answer is best kept to our secret selves.
Still, for all-time popularity, the rapier has an advantage that other swords lack: play and contests can be held with a practice sword that can be made to feel very much like a real weapon. Heavier epees are on the market, and there are "schlager" blades as well, and these mimic the feel of many real weapons. Alas for the katana, the shinai still feels like a stick.[1]
But enough of romanticism.
ORIGINS OF THE RAPIER
Although considered a weapon of the Renaissance, the origins of the modern rapier really go back to at least the 15th century. But there are swords that can only be called rapiers that go much further back. As mentioned in the chapter on bronze, there are Bronze Age Mycenaean swords that can be called rapiers, and in the Berne Historisches Museum in Switzerland there is an unusual iron sword that is most definitely a rapier. The blade is narrow, slightly over a half inch in width, four sided with somewhat shallow faces, and it tapers to a sharp and deadly point. The hilt is knobbed. This sword dates from about 2nd century BC. No one knows how these weapons were used. While it is unlikely that a form as sophisticated as modern fencing was used, I feel sure that some form of fencing was developed and used with these weapons. But nothing can be proved either way.
Bronze Mycenaean sword.
The first of the "modern" reincarnations of the rapier was the "estoc," also called a "tuck" by the English, and this is what we will call it. This seems to have developed in the first part of the 15th century and became quite popular. The tuck was a long, straight tapering sword whose primary purpose was the thrust. The cross section of the sword varied, some triangular with deeply hollowed faces, some flattened diamond, some square, without hollowed faces and edges that were for all intent and purposes useless. These are not "fencing" weapons in the common sense of the term. They are heavy, and the balance and size of many of them lend themselves to a two-hand use.
Still, as with most everything in this field, even that statement must be qualified. I have in my possession a tuck with a rather light blade that would lend itself to fencing except that it has no protection for the hand other than a wide crossguard.
However, they were stout swords, and unlike the rapier, were intended for war. The tuck seems to have been an offshoot of an earlier sword, an Oakeshott Type XV. These had thick blades that narrowed quickly to a sharp point. It was probably an earlier forerunner of this style of sword that the Sire de Joinville used at the Battle of Mansourah (1250 AD).
There De Joinville was attacked by a Saracen who struck him a hard blow on his back, pushing him forward in his saddle, and then tried to hold him there. The Sire de Joinville broke free, grabbed his saddle sword, couched it under his arm like a lance, and ran the Saracen through. (He was an interesting man. I would suggest reading his Chronicles.)
Ewart Oakeshott considered the rapier to be a development of the arming sword, and has presented some excellent arguments for this. And while I have no wish to even try to counter his arguments, and am not even opposed to them, I do feel that there are some things that must be noted. Any sword development has so many contributing factors as to be almost impossible to detail in depth, let alone describe in a neat linear progression. For instance, consider that improvements in armor led to lessened use of the shield. This in turn led to the sword being used for defense as well as offense. Make no mistake, this had been tried before, and we read of it in the Norse sagas. But the shield was very much in use then and no effort was made to further develop this style of combat.
When using the sword in any defensive movement it becomes necessary that you control the sword with more dexterity than previously. This was achieved by hooking the forefinger over the guard. This also led to losing a forefinger, and very quickly a bar was added to protect the finger. This, in turn, led to greater and greater hand protection, which reached its peak in the basket hilts of the Scottish broadsword and the Venetian schiavona and, to a lesser degree, in the swept and cup hilt rapier.
Antique basket hilted claymore, 38 inches overall length. HRC28.
In passing, I'll note that the crossguard of the classic medieval knightly cruciform sword was there to protect the hand from hi
tting the shield, and not from a blade sliding down the sword. Should two edges meet, there is almost no sliding that I have found in my experiments. Instead, the blades grip as the edges are nicked, and hang together. Should the blow be parried by the flat of the blade, and the opposing sword slide down, the guard offers no protection, as it extends in the wrong direction. Japanese, Korean, and Chinese swords are frequently used to parry with, and their guards extend in four directions on a plane at right angles to the hand.
Although this section is devoted to the European tuck, rapier and small sword, it is interesting to note that the Turks of the Ottoman Empire also possessed and used tucks of their own. These appear to be similar to the European but on closer observation they are heavier and thicker. Of course the use was the same as the European. However, the rapier itself was never used in the East.
By the 1400s the tuck had become a distinctive sword style of its own, and remained in use until well into the 17th century. One of the most telling differences between a tuck and a rapier is the usage. The tuck would work well in battle. It could be used with one or two hands and deliver a powerful thrust.
The rapier, although worn at times as a mark of rank, was essentially useless in combat. George Silver, the English gentleman who wrote on swords and sword play, called it a "birdspit, that cannot harm our enemies in war, and only harm our friends in peace." Today, many enthusiasts look down on Silver, and say that he was trying to defend an out-of-date fighting style, that he was merely xenophobic, or that he just didn't understand the potential of the rapier. Having played with a lot of weapons, and having met a lot of people, I feel that George Silver would have been a lot to handle, regardless of what weapon was being used. And I feel that he did understand the rapier, probably all too well.
Hank Reinhardt's The Book of the Sword Page 11