Hi,

I'm not as familiar with fighting manuscripts as some of you are. Was there much (if any) emphasis on knocking one's opponent out? Or are such details/intentions difficult to decipher? Or are there any contemporary sources discussing a weapon's 'knockout power'? I'm quite sure part of the appeal of the 'flat' side of a warhammer was knockout force, but what about across the board, for example in heavy late-period longswords?

A friend and I were doing our usual weapon vs armor experiments but became a little gutsy and did some 'head-hunting' rather than just torso strikes. We realized that the main thing keeping us from doing 'full force' tests on each other wasn't the risk of breaking bone or penetrating a gap as is often discussed, or for that matter even denting the armor which seemed quite immune. Rather, the risk is knocking each other out (and don't worry, we stopped the test before it really started and neither sustained any new brain damage). Any sword over 3 lbs and 40 inches seems to run a real risk of this against even heavy helms and decent padding.

*edit**: some seem to have taken this to mean I am a sporting re-enactor trying to shape my view of history around re-enactment battle rules and theatrical knockdowns.. not at all. The sword we were using was an a trim VS a good quality, but aging barrel helm of average thickness. I've never been hit full force with a real sword so I'm genuinely interested in hearing your opinions, but even at partial/test force it rung me long enough that I would have been unable to defend myself from a followup and pretty helpless in a life/death battle situation. Thus this question. Perhaps 'stun' or 'knock down' are better terms since 'knock out' is both overly specific and has sporting-rules connotations.

As a side note expanding on that, I've often wondered what exactly the roll of the heavy 'War Swords' of the late medieval period was (aside from the theory that they were merely macho and ornamental). Other late period swords were going in two very opposite directions; narrow, rigid thrusting blades dedicated to compromising armor, and light, cut-centric, and even curved blades, which altogether gave up on defeating metallic armor and concentrated on more common opponents.

Meanwhile the War Sword simply grew in mass whilst retaining a partial-plate era cut & thrust profile, like say the Albrecht II sword. Is it possible that these were a sort of 'Jack of All Trades' weapon, more capable of rapidly disabling lightly armed masses of infantry than the concentrated penetrating blows of a polearm or hammer, yet heavy enough to easily knock out an armored knight via blunt force? I would personally consider their knockout power far more reliable than our usual visual of plate-vs-plate combat (grappling with picks, rondels, anything which may punch through an increasingly exhausted oppnent's defenses).

I don't really see how 'beefing them up' would help in any other area (aside from durability), since they would still be nowhere near capable of cutting through the newer armor types.

Just wild speculation. Maybe there are some references on just how common 'going for the knockout' was in the heavier schools of swordsmanship??? Once a knight was disoriented enough to lose his footing or his consciousness, capture or death would seem inevitable - and wasn't capture & ransoming also a common objective?

Hmmm...very interesting speculation.Really though,in the heat of battle,I think that I wouldn't risk my back.If I apparently knockout an opponent,I wouldn't want to find out he had only been momentarily stunned by having a blade through my back.I just can't see how the technique would be that practical.When you are fighting for your life ,you go for the kill. All the manuscripts that I've studied emphasize efficiently dispatching your opponent every time.Of course,there was that time on The Princess Bride when The Man in Black knocks out Diego Montoya.(after all,killing him would be like shattering a stained glass window!)But that's no fighting manuscript ;) :p :D

In a mass battle I think they couldn't afford themselves to get out of the formation to grapple and strike the killing strike with a dagger or halfswording. That's more often in a duel situation. In battle I think it would be preferable to remain standing and get rid of your opponent with strikes, if he is just stunned, doesn't matter, you have his friends to worry about, you don't have time for him anymore...

The best armour in the World won't protect you from a pocket knife if you stay immobilized for more than a few seconds
( If I promise to not move for 10 seconds you can do anything you want to me armoured or not: It's called being helpless. ;) :p :lol: )

As long as the armoured guy can move and protect himself he is very hard to kill or stop, but stun him or wear him out to the point that he is completely exhausted or unconscious and you only have to lift the visor and do the " obvious " nasties to him.

In battle as long as he is out of the picture move on to the next greatest threat .... and ransoming what a popular option so killing wasn't always the thing to do: Winning included getting rich and between gentlemen of means the courtesy might be repaid at the next battle where roles where reversed and you lost instead of won.

So if the sword could stun for at least a few seconds then other options become possible even if the sword isn't the ideal weapon to deal with someone in full plate, but given a choice I would use my A&A Spiked Mace or Poleaxe. ;)

http://www.arms-n-armor.com/pole004.html Yes I have one and I like it. :D :cool:

I've always loved the proportions of that morning star. Some other reproductions take the size of the ball to cartoonishly massive levels, but that one looks so fun and balanced to wield.

As far as maces, hammers, and whatnot vs the sword though, I think the same advantage they maintained over a sword vs plate they may have given up vs lighter armored troops, where a sword was in its perfect element.

Since you could never know exactly what or who you would be facing, the big swords being used to knock plated opponents unconscious would seem to, in one semantic detail, move swords from a place of ceremonial/backup weapon roles to front line roles via its versatility against all opponents. No longer solely regulated to 'peasant harvesting' duty, so to speak.

That's why I'm so interested whether there's any historical documentation pointing at sword design reflecting this. Every argument I find regarding the 'phasing out' of the sword as a first-choice battlefield weapon seems to revolve around its ability to penetrate or destroy armor, something I don't feel was even necessary.

Well, take a look at videos of mass reenactment battles in Eastern Europe. You will see a lot of people battering each other with all sorts of heavy things with full might but with little success. Trust me, hits to the head are so painful only as long as it is an experiment, but you start ignoring them once you get into a real fight. It is possible to knock somebody out with a sword, but it is very difficult to do unless the poor guy has a helmet made of foil. If you want some real knock-out power, take a mace or a pollaxe. Or at least use morschlag. Blade is not the best option. I would even say that it is one of the worst options unless you have a true two-handed sword which for some reason was not popular until the decline of armor use in the 16th century. And even a zweihander is far less effective than people would usually think (believe me, I do have a monster that is 155 cm long and weighs almost 3 kg). As far as I remember Oakeshott wrote that there were some very heavy "1.5-handed" swords in the 14th century but they very quickly lost their popularity. So I guess there were some swords with a design that empathized brutal power rather then hit placement, but the idea itself proved to be a failure. After all most people would rather have a weapon that is effective against all targets but not very convenient to use than a weapon that is very convenient but pretty much useless against armored foes.

Some time ago there was a thread about effectiveness of a bill (please correct me if I am wrong) which turned into discussion of effectiveness of polearms against armor. Find this thread, there are a lot of good arguments, some of which prove that polearms, and more specifically pollaxes, were very effective, and some of which prove that they actually were not. Considering that sword is a far less effective knock-out weapon than a pollaxe, you can imagine how "useful" it was such job.

I am of the opinion that, if swords were very good at concussing a man through his plate armour just by bashing him with the blade, then we wouldn't see things like the mordschlag and pommel-strikes, etc. being developed...

I think Jean summed things up quite well. "As long as the armoured guy can move and protect himself he is very hard to kill or stop, but stun him or wear him out to the point that he is completely exhausted or unconscious and you only have to lift the visor and do the " obvious " nasties to him."

This wasn't boxing, there weren't a lot of rules, how you took the other guy out was much less important than the fact that you took him out and he didn't take you out. If you visualize two heavily armored men fighting then it seems to me that the effects of blunt force trauma and attrition are going to play large if not decisive factors in the contest..

Jean's point about the desirability of ransoming is very apt too. Clearly there were times when fighters didn't want to kill their foe but incapacitate him instead.

As well, an advantage of weapons such as maces is that targeting the strike is less important. If you can hit his weapon arm a few times you're going to weaken it, if you can hit his head a time or two he's going to be a little slower and less clear about what he's doing. If you can deliver a bunch of blows to his torso breathing is going to become more difficult.

In this article you can read about effects of sword hits against plate armor:
http://willscommonplacebook.blogspot.com/2007...armor.html

I've never really watched re-enactment stuff before (although I have heard knockouts happen on occasion), so that's not where my theory originated. Don't they usually use weapons made of bamboo and whatnot though?

Keep in mind I'm not talking about 'swords' in general, only about heavy/war swords. Does a typical, short 1 handed mace really have that much more knockout power upon impact than say, a 47 inch, 4 pound XVIIIa? It would be interesting to see various weapons tested full-force against an impact-measuring target and determine just how deep of an advantage the weight distribution of a mace granted it and how large a sword had to be to 'catch up' in blunt force.

The tin foil-ness of a helmet doesn't seem all that relevant because a knockout is caused by rapid G forces on the brain relative to the brain stem/spine, not physical crushing damage to the skull - simply having one's head knocked back at a high enough speed can result in several seconds of unconsciousness. The weight of the helmet would absorb some of the momentum I suppose. The padding would probably be the bigger obstacle, but amateur/olympic boxers are knocked out wearing far thicker padded headgear than that via even more heavily padded human hands, a fairly pathetic weapon. Was that added layer of steel, with no sort of 'Hans device' mechanism preventing brain stem trauma included, enough to offset a full force strike with a 15th c. war sword?

When considering "knockout power" you have to think about the effects of adrenaline. In full fight or flight mode the human body is capable of some incredible stuff, I've seen enemies absorb some serious damage (multiple 7.62x51 hits etc) and still return fire for 10-15 sec before their bodies shut down. It takes a lot more to kill or disable a man than you think in a real fight than many people think.

While I am no expert here I think a possible analogy might be the ongoing debate among martial artists between grappling arts and striking arts. The grapplers contend that they can get in close and end the fight, while the strikers claim they can nail the grapplers as they come in.

This has been tested in real life though and isn't theoretical. Strikers like to say "Hey, when you move in for the takedown I'll drop an axe kick on your head", but take a look at how well that works in the UFC.

The fact is that an experienced grappler can often deflect, ignore, or simply outpace incoming strikes on their way to the takedown or clinch. Doesn't always work, but it does more often than not. Perhaps coming in to grapple at the halfsword while the opponent tries for a KO is similar.



Concerning the SCA, I understand they are, as has been mentioned in previous threads, presently seeing a change in the type of fighters. They used to favor big mean fighters who could wade in and slug it out, but now they're beginning to see smaller, quicker fighters. My guess is that this has something to do with the small but growing influence of WMA, MARE, HEMA, whatever you want to call it.

I wonder if there is anyone here who can say whether those who attempt to use the historical techniques are stunned or KOed as often as those who do not? I'd like to think our ancestors knew what they were doing and the answer is "No, they usually fend off such blows and rarely get hit in the head," but you never know.

Its my opinion that the lenticular sectioned swords of the 11th - 13th century were used with percussive intent against the mail clad opponents of the time. Obviously swords are not ideal for fighting armoured opponents, but there is plenty of contemporary evidence that they were used. Modern tests (particularly Michael Edelsons here on myArmoury) show that you can't cut through maille with a sword, and even big 13thC swords of war struggle to cut even padded defences. However, I personally think that the percussive force that a sword (such as a big XIIa or XIIIa, even the smaller Xa and XI types) could deliver along a thin edge would be considerable. Heads, hands, elbows, collarbones and knees would constitute the main targets.

YMMV.

I believe that swords were used as percussive instruments when they proved to be ineffective for cutting as you happened to hold it in your hand when you suddenly face a heavily armored opponent on the field. Not optimal but you got by with what you had available. It was the all-round weapon many would keep for any eventuality and often the last weapon left in a drawn out battle after all other resouces had been exhausted, rendered useless by weather (crossbows, firearms and such don't like rain so much), broken or thrown at opponents (as even in the Bayeux even maces can be thrown).
A knockout is a win, either for capture of enemies or for a coup de Grace and looking at especially some very solid and large swords, such as falchions, the energy in a strike would be substantial enough to sometimes kill even opponents with the best helmets around with a closed head injury. Some times this wouldn't even show any outside damage to the victim, just turn them up dead from a strokelike effect from the brain being jarred around in the skull hard enough.
Perhaps this is also a thought to have in mind if one is testing these theories on another living human being. Serious head trauma need not be a split skull, but could be just as dangerous. So play safe.

Also, something that's often overlooked, maille doesn't have to be cut for a sword to deliver cutlike tearing to flesh beneath, even through a second layer of padded jack. I've tested this with pig-thighs and swords and the damage from a solid blow was at times horrifying bonewhites showing through massive pig thigh muscle, with no or only very minor damage to the maille links and also only minor tearing damage to the padded piece of jack. So sure, swords are not optimal as cutters vs maille, but not entirely ineffective either. Stabbing would seem more optimal though, many tests today show stabbing through even riveted maille is possible, with some maille qualities at least, and I expect a few solid cuts can jar the opponent with pain and open for a fight ending stab.