Samuel D R wrote: | ||
Well, you could also thrust an axe into someone's face and kill them instantly. Or a mace. They're not nimble with the point, they're not made to thrust, just like an axe or a mace. It doesn't mean you couldn't, but they wouldn't be effective from a combat standpoint, not actual damage. I mean, you could also drop every weapon you had and rip the enemy's throat out with your teeth. That's physically effective, you've killed him, but absolutely idiotic on a battlefield. |
Sam,
Out of curiosity, how often have you used broad bladed swords to thrust against targets of different thicknesses? Is this something you have done frequently?
The reason I ask is that it is very easily to make lots of theoretical arguments one way or another. However, what is far more persuasive and valuable is gaining experience in terms of using actual swords and knowing how they function. Having used very broad bladed swords like Albion's Tritonia, I know from experience that you can penetrate very thick media with them using a thrust. In light of this, I do not think you have a strong argument here.
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To use your own terms, the burden of proof is on you for that one. Everyone in history has had some form of armour. We know from Procopius and Jordanes the Franks used boiled leather armour, fur armour (otter fur), and even cloth armour. The poorer Saxons were similarily equipped against Charlemagne a few centuries later.
There's no reason that other Germans didn't either. The Romans had the subarmalis, which is easy enough to make. No sane person would have gone into battle without any armour at all. While a gambeson could stop a throwing spear quite neatly, probably sparing any internal organs, just having a tunic on would mean you being fully impaled. |
Not everyone would have been able to afford these armours. You might argue that anyone could make them, but I'm not sure that's true. And even if many combatants had textile armour, that would not necessarily be enough to stop a determined thrust with one of these weapons. Would textile armour help? Yes, absolutely- it would turn aside many thrusts, particularly attacks that were glancing. However, this does not mean that the points were not very effective (the words you used). So long as a particular attack can kill or maim a person, it is effective- and the points on Migration Era swords are more than adequate to do that.