William P wrote: |
secondly ive heard from a few places tht longbowmen ad increased luck owning a sword (or falchion) and buckler as a sidearm by, roughly the middle of the 15th century. |
No. Longbowmen came from a fairly privileged social class to begin with (not noble, but fairly well-off by commoners' standards) and at least a fair proportion of them probably had swords right from the beginning of the Hundred Years' War. By the end of the 14th century practically all of them had swords (and often bucklers), so the mid-15th century is much too late as a timeframe for the adoption of swords by the better sort of common soldiers.
Gary Teuscher wrote: |
Looks like falces and gisarmes are the weapons of the lower class, and bows. I wonder if the falces and gisarmes are more peasant weapons thna the true military versions?
A falx could be nothing more than an agricultural scythe, and a gisarme and it's simplest form is a pruning hook on a shaft. I'd rather have a spear than either of these. |
Let's not underestimate the "peasant" weapons. A war scythe (with the blade positioned to lie along the same line as the shaft) is virtually as good as a spear except that it also had a long and wicked cutting edge, while if you've seen tree limbs being lopped off with a billhook you'd certainly wince when you see a war bill (at the end of a long shaft) going towards you--or past you!
Gary Teuscher wrote: |
Funny though, all one on one sparring that I have seen has the spear used in two hands. |
Because that's the method for which we have solidly documented techniques? I don't think I've seen spear-and-shield techniques in any manual apart from Marozzo's target and partisan (?) plays, while plays for the short spear are all over late medieval and early Renaissance manuals. However, these short spear techniques are knightly techniques (so to say) and may not necessarily be representative of the methods used with the longer spears commonly encountered among non-chivalric troops--for one thing, the short spear lacks the reach of the 8- to 12-foot commoners' spear but is much more manoeuvrable for striking with both ends.