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Craig Johnson
Industry Professional
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 Posted: Tue 28 Apr, 2015 8:51 am Post subject: A&A Peasant Rebellion |
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Peasant Rebellion
Whether one is disgruntled with the local lord or you and your friends are having a pleasant evening out chasing the local mad scientist’s creation, these are just the items to fill out your ranks. Look like you mean business, when your comrades are armed with these no nonsense tools from our Peasant Revolt Supplies! Inspired by historic examples from the lower status revolts of medieval Europe. These agricultural tools and there weaponized upgrades are depicted in many of the illustrations from the period depicted.
A&A is on your side!
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Gregory J. Liebau
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| Posted: Tue 28 Apr, 2015 10:10 am Post subject: |
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Awesome stuff, Craig. Great choice of period implements converted to military use, and part of a totally underrepresented theme to boot... The late 14th-early 16th century peasant revolts throughout western and central Europe were a major social influence and sometimes put some professional armies to shame! Vive la revolution!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons...Bauern.jpg
-Gregory
(p.s. You really need to make one of the wooden pitch forks as shown in the Hohlbein illustration above!)
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Robert Frey
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| Posted: Tue 28 Apr, 2015 11:11 am Post subject: |
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That Flail is an interesting version of nunchuks. They seem to be a tool used all over the world, then used as a weapon too.
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Justin P
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| Posted: Tue 28 Apr, 2015 12:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Robert Frey wrote: | | That Flail is an interesting version of nunchuks. They seem to be a tool used all over the world, then used as a weapon too. |
Anywhere they needed to beat flax for fiber. 
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Leo Todeschini
Industry Professional
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Mark Griffin
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| Posted: Tue 28 Apr, 2015 3:35 pm Post subject: |
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I second Tod, lovely stuff. iIs a look I have got on many weapons (especially as they match some of my originals) and am lucky to have a fair few by a great smith over here, Andrew Kirkham. The flail is certainly for fibre beating, but also corn processing. And raising the odd lump on heads too...
Griff
Currently working on projects ranging from Elizabethan pageants to a WW1 Tank, Victorian fairgrounds 1066 events and more. Oh and we joust loads!.. We run over 250 events for English Heritage each year plus many others for Historic Royal Palaces, Historic Scotland, the National Trust and more. If you live in the UK and are interested in working for us just drop us a line with a cv.
Last edited by Mark Griffin on Wed 29 Apr, 2015 11:30 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Joe Fults
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| Posted: Wed 29 Apr, 2015 2:51 pm Post subject: |
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Really neat idea...good job.
"The goal shouldn’t be to avoid being evil; it should be to actively do good." - Danah Boyd
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Jean Thibodeau
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| Posted: Wed 29 Apr, 2015 7:02 pm Post subject: |
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Craig, really interesting concept and I might be more tempted later on after I recover from Tax season money I would have rather spent on toys .....   
The Swiss Vouge is really the one I like best, although I might upgrade it to one that has another eye with a back spike on it.
Even though I like the concept of rough from the forge peasant weapons, a higher grade version with a better finish, at a bigger price point might be very tempting: Maybe the same design done to arm a town guard or a band of professional mercenaries who might have commissioned the making of better quality weapons, maybe just to look more prosperous ?
I like the square haft with slightly rounded corners.
You can easily give up your freedom. You have to fight hard to get it back!
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J. Hargis
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| Posted: Wed 29 Apr, 2015 9:36 pm Post subject: |
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Damn the peasants, let them eat cake!
That's a joke, right?
Jon
A poorly maintained weapon is likely to belong to an unsafe and careless fighter.
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William P
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| Posted: Thu 30 Apr, 2015 4:15 am Post subject: |
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doesnt the hammer seem a bit superfluous though
forgive me but i dont think it will sell too well since it is so incredably rough and like something that could be made very easily with a minimum of tools and effort...
the rest though look great though
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J. Nicolaysen
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| Posted: Thu 30 Apr, 2015 6:01 am Post subject: |
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These are great. You guys make the best polearms! If I didn't have a few things going already, I would snatch a couple things up. I hope they are around in a few months. Great finish and a diverse look at the nasties used in a nasty time.
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Craig Peters
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| Posted: Wed 06 May, 2015 3:33 am Post subject: |
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I don't know much about munitions grade weapons or whatever the correct term for them is. So I have a few questions about them. First of all, how common were weapons of this sort during the Middle Ages? Are they equally attested throughout the medieval period (we'll go with say 500-1500 AD for the purpose of simplicity) or were they more common during certain eras than others? Were these sorts of weapons mainly just used by peasants, or do we see them in urban militias or carried by serjeants?
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Gregory J. Liebau
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| Posted: Wed 06 May, 2015 6:26 am Post subject: |
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| Craig Peters wrote: | | I don't know much about munitions grade weapons or whatever the correct term for them is. So I have a few questions about them. First of all, how common were weapons of this sort during the Middle Ages? Are they equally attested throughout the medieval period (we'll go with say 500-1500 AD for the purpose of simplicity) or were they more common during certain eras than others? Were these sorts of weapons mainly just used by peasants, or do we see them in urban militias or carried by serjeants? |
Hello Craig,
There are many historical accounts of peasants arming themselves in self-defense throughout the medieval period, and obviously with laws forbidding the keeping or economics simply making it unreasonable for peasants to have quality weapons available, they would have used whatever was at hand. With that in mind, I am sure that tools such as hand sickles, lumber axes, and pitch forks were probably used as defensive weapons since the establishment of those technologies when circumstances dictated. Perhaps to defend an English homestead against a raid of cattle thieves, or protect the outskirts of a village from a foraging group of soldiers, etc... Very circumstantial stuff.
Also, feuding among peasants was at all times a surprisingly normal occurrence during the Middle Ages. A great many laws descending from the post-Roman Frankish and Gothic states all the way through to the Renaissance deal with appropriate measures to be taken among peasants in order to settle blood feuds... And bloody many indeed were. Families sometimes fought on and off for generations on end in order (at first) to avenge a single death, then another and another as the fighting continued. Imagine different versions of Romeo & Juliet being played out in hundreds of villages across medieval Europe! Certainly then, again, often whatever tool or blade was handy would become a weapon.
However, it is not until the late medieval period with the rise of a series of peasant rebellions that took place roughly between 1350-1550 throughout Western and Central Europe that we see field tools en masse on the battlefield. Following the great famines of the 1310s and then in the wake of the plague some decades later, peasant discontent matched or surpassed the perpetual resentment of the nobility towards the working class, and revolution became the name of the game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peasant_revolts
Just look at the frequency of the revolts and read some of the particulars if you're interested from the Wiki link above to get an idea!
All of the weapons that Craig has reproduced are viable for the period of revolts during the Late Middle Ages. Some are not so appropriate earlier on. We do not know how most peasant tools looked prior to about the year 1200 due to a lack of archaeological and illustrative evidence. Agricultural historians have suggested that scythes were probably not known in most of Europe until about that time, and for long afterwards the sickle remained the primary tool for cutting corn in the fields. Threshing tools such as the flail probably developed in different times and places to look or function somewhat differently, but Craig's example is very much in line with late medieval artwork that depicts that tool in use.
The billhook is probably the only tool among those that actually became a mainstay of armament during the high medieval period (possibly due to the levying of armies that occurred during the troubled times in the early 13th century, culminating in such staggering battles as Bouvines). It's frequency in art and apparent use by professional soldiers (sergeants and the like) is a testament to its continual prosperity on the battlefields since that time.
Cheers!
-Gregory
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Craig Johnson
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Wed 06 May, 2015 10:08 am Post subject: Excellent response |
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I would concur whole heatedly with Gregory's response.
Craig
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J.D. Crawford
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| Posted: Wed 06 May, 2015 1:53 pm Post subject: |
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Speaking on behalf of the mad scientists, I'm glad that I have an armory of knightly A&A weapons to defend my creations from those pesky peasants and their quaint improvised weapons. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)
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This is a standard topic