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Lafayette C Curtis




Location: Indonesia
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PostPosted: Sun 07 Jan, 2007 5:54 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Sam T. wrote:
I don't know about Europe but the "dance-like routines" existed in China since the very ancient times. They would be performed by a selected few who were able to perform those and they held shows and competitions during the festivals and major parades and shows. I don't know exactly what they looked like or if they look anything similar to what's shown on TV but those martial art systems do have the same names as in the kung-fu films.

So what is real martial arts like? From the Classical Chinese military manuals I see that they were relatively simple. So I assumed that it required not much training, like a few months to a year at most for a very fit and muscular man. From the views of the historians like Williams and Victor Hanson, people were fighting side by side so what kind of martial arts was designed for that? Like on the actual ancient battlefield, with the massed Mongol horsemen, Western shield walls etc... All of these websites like myArmoury all have demonstrations of only two or a few men.


"Dance-like routines" also existed in Europe, at least since the 16th century. I'm not aware of any manuals for them but there are accounts of a style of theatrical fighting that looks superficially like the systems put forth in the German fechtbucher and Italian manuals but works under very different mechanics.

The European martial arts system, like its Chinese and Japanese counterparts, was not a monolithic system where everybody agreed about what to do and how to do them. The earlier manuals, especially from the 15th century and before, tended to have a strong focus on techniques equally applicable to single combat and to the battlefield, but as the 16th and 17th centuries progressed they grew to deal less with battlefield techniques and more with dueling and/or single-combat styles.

I've also seen some Chinese manuals--particularly Qi Jiguang's--and I wouldn't really say they're "simple." The basic principles may sound simple when yo uread them, but try practicing them with real weapons. Even without the additional stress of having to face an active opponent, these skills would still have needed regular and frequent practice to learn and maintain.

Let's just take one skill I'm very familiar with: archery. The movements are simple, and they're designed to enable the archer to draw the bow and hold it at full draw with the minimum possible expenditure of energy. Some of the habits needed to make an effective archer, however, are not as intuitive as they would seem at first. Some of the most difficult things to learn / teach are 1) drawing with the shoulder rather than with the arm, 2) taking a consistent anchoring position for the string, and 3) doing the release smoothly rather than with a jerk. Even for me, with all my experience, I still need to re-learn these skills to a degree after every occasion in which I've missed practice for more than a week or two at a time.

Or, to phrase it in a clearer way, the techniques of battlefield martial arts were simple and had to be simple so that the men would not forget them in the confusion of battle. But even with this simplicity, they are easily lost when not constantly maintained by staying in practice. And then there are the "soft factors" to consider--a man may know all the basic fighting techniques but still lack the mindset needed to be an aggressive and effective participant in a fighting line.

Not to mention that the statement about fighting "shoulder-to-shoulder" is relative. Different establishments had different preferences for the intervals between soldiers, between ranks, and between files. Skirmishers certainly did not fight in a solid line, but in a loose swarm with considerable separation from man to man. A massed missile line (such as that of English longbowmen or 17th-century shot) would have been much denser than a skirmish line but still looser than a solid hand-to-hand fighting line since it still would need to take precautions against accidents and accomodate the space needed to maneuver the weapons and their accoutrements around. And even a solid line of men standing "shoulder to shoulder" does not necessarily mean the men's shoulders were touching each other--their bodies would have been at least partially profiled with one shoulder inclined towards the enemy, so there would still have been more space to wield the weapons than it would seem at first. And if you look at the armored fighting techniques in the European manuals--the ones most likely to have been brought over into the battlefield--you'll see that they were quite linear and took relatively little lateral space, so they would not have bothered the friends on either side all that much.
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Sam T.





Joined: 20 Dec 2006

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PostPosted: Sun 07 Jan, 2007 9:34 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Mikko Kuusirati wrote:

To cite Bruce Lee, "learn all you can, and use whatever works for you".

More than anything else, real martial arts are about awareness, and control - of yourself, the opponent, the situation.


Ah, but it takes constant practice just to stay fit and muscular. Not to mention keeping your reflexes honed, so you respond instantly and in the right way when needed. And, of course, there is no such thing as too good - you can't stop at being merely good enough: what will you do when faced by someone larger and stronger than you, or who's trained harder, is plain better-equipped, or brought more friends?

Naturally, these are not great concerns when raising as large number of militia as possible in as short a time as possible: then you just do the best you can in the time you can afford. Like a few months to a year. And you likely won't be happy with it, but it's what you have to work with so you'd better just hope the neighbouring realm's peasants can't afford to train three months a year... Happy

Shieldwalls and storming a trench are martial arts, just as well as jabs and pressure points. And all take extensive training to do well.


Thanks for the reply.

I thought Bruce Lee was fake?
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Sam T.





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PostPosted: Sun 07 Jan, 2007 10:00 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Lafayette C Curtis wrote:


I've also seen some Chinese manuals--particularly Qi Jiguang's--and I wouldn't really say they're "simple." The basic principles may sound simple when yo uread them, but try practicing them with real weapons. Even without the additional stress of having to face an active opponent, these skills would still have needed regular and frequent practice to learn and maintain.

Let's just take one skill I'm very familiar with: archery. The movements are simple, and they're designed to enable the archer to draw the bow and hold it at full draw with the minimum possible expenditure of energy. Some of the habits needed to make an effective archer, however, are not as intuitive as they would seem at first. Some of the most difficult things to learn / teach are 1) drawing with the shoulder rather than with the arm, 2) taking a consistent anchoring position for the string, and 3) doing the release smoothly rather than with a jerk. Even for me, with all my experience, I still need to re-learn these skills to a degree after every occasion in which I've missed practice for more than a week or two at a time.


Hmm... I don't know about Qi Ji Guang, his standards were often too high as were most of the manuals before him. If you listen to them then their archers could outshoot WW1 Lee Enfields. Many of the Chinese "standards" set by some official were usually very unrealistic. They just imagined the ideal soldier with their own imagination (usually not realistic) and set their standards. If you look at the actual performances of the troops documented they were even worse than what could be reasonably expected.

But I generally looked at the simple figures of people doing those moves in manuals such as the Wu Jing Zong Yao and Wu Bei Zhi and they looked simple. And in reality many of the dynasties didn't have any standard for their troops. Often they were just trained but not tested AT ALL. And when they were it was often some endurance and strength test rather than skill tests.

I generally wouldn't give as much credit to the Chinese military manuals, many of them gave daunting figures. If they were taken with face value then their army would have conquered the world. But considering their engagements with the outside world, (Tartars, the portuguese and dutch traders) their army was much more mediocre than what the manuals claimed.
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Mikko Kuusirati




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PostPosted: Sun 07 Jan, 2007 11:07 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Sam T. wrote:
Thanks for the reply.

I thought Bruce Lee was fake?

He was a very serious martial artist, and far ahead of his time (and/or centuries behind it, ironically enough) in his approach to fighting arts, at that, learning everything from traditional Wing Chun kung-fu to Olympic boxing and fencing... Of course, the stuff you see in his movies is only a wildly exaggarated, showy version of what he could do in real life (and still he sometimes had to re-do takes because he moved so fast the camera simply couldn't keep up Big Grin).

Many Chinese action stars are actually martial artists first, actors second. It's a big part of the classic Hong Kong action movie charm, for me, the mix of seriously impressive action with endearingly amateurish acting. Happy

"And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
— Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
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Benjamin H. Abbott




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PostPosted: Sun 07 Jan, 2007 1:11 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Quote:
A man in full plate harness may be very nearly invincible against a sword, but on the field of battle will almost never meet an opponent using a sword against him.


I don't know about that. Swords and daggers were the weapons of choice once things got tight. This happened in most every battle. At least according to Smythe and Fourquevaux, pikemen were expected to fight with swords and daggers after the first thrust. Fourquevaux suggested thrusting at unarmored parts, such as the face and legs. Armor is great, and Fourquevaux had almost limitless respect for it, but it won't save you from getting stabbed in the face in a melee.

Quote:
A halberd or pollaxe will decimate a man in plate as will a lance or pike hit.


A good blow might, but armor is still considerable protection against such weapons. Fourquevaux lists armor as protecting against even halberds, though other parts of his works suggest he didn't believe armor gave complete protection against them.

Quote:
I assumed that it required not much training, like a few months to a year at most for a very fit and muscular man.


I don't know about Chinese training, but in the King's Mirror, a 13th-century Norwegian text, the king instructed his son to practice fighting at least once every day, except for holidays. Practicing twice a day was suggested.
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Thomas Watt




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PostPosted: Sun 07 Jan, 2007 2:21 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:
Quote:
A man in full plate harness may be very nearly invincible against a sword, but on the field of battle will almost never meet an opponent using a sword against him.

I don't know about that. Swords and daggers were the weapons of choice once things got tight. This happened in most every battle. At least according to Smythe and Fourquevaux, pikemen were expected to fight with swords and daggers after the first thrust. Fourquevaux suggested thrusting at unarmored parts, such as the face and legs. Armor is great, and Fourquevaux had almost limitless respect for it, but it won't save you from getting stabbed in the face in a melee.
Quote:
A halberd or pollaxe will decimate a man in plate as will a lance or pike hit.

A good blow might, but armor is still considerable protection against such weapons. Fourquevaux lists armor as protecting against even halberds, though other parts of his works suggest he didn't believe armor gave complete protection against them.
Quote:
I assumed that it required not much training, like a few months to a year at most for a very fit and muscular man.

I don't know about Chinese training, but in the King's Mirror, a 13th-century Norwegian text, the king instructed his son to practice fighting at least once every day, except for holidays. Practicing twice a day was suggested.


Speaking as a man with a wealth of mixed past experiences as a soldier and a martial artist (although getting old, slow and stiff these days) I wanted to add a couple of observations:

While I might well choose a sword or dagger for close-quarter fighting, I would always, always, always prefer to keep my foe on the battlefield as far away as possible while maintaining the ability to kill him. As a former soldier, the stress was always on avoiding close-combat whereever possible. It might be fine to kill your enemy in close mortal combat... it's much finer (and degrades your army less) to kill your enemy at a distance.

I also spent several years in both Chinese and Japanese martial arts training. Intense daily practice is absolutely required. Regardless of my past experiences and training, I am too old and too far out of practice to be a worthwhile battlefield participant.

A warrior (which status I am not laying claim to) can certainly expect to best an unskilled opponent easily, just as anyone with a specialized skill-set would normally be able to perform tasks within their skillset.
Big Grin

Have 11 swords, 2 dirks, half a dozen tomahawks and 2 Jeeps - seem to be a magnet for more of all.
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Lafayette C Curtis




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PostPosted: Sun 07 Jan, 2007 7:56 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Sam T. wrote:
Hmm... I don't know about Qi Ji Guang, his standards were often too high as were most of the manuals before him. If you listen to them then their archers could outshoot WW1 Lee Enfields. Many of the Chinese "standards" set by some official were usually very unrealistic. They just imagined the ideal soldier with their own imagination (usually not realistic) and set their standards. If you look at the actual performances of the troops documented they were even worse than what could be reasonably expected.

But I generally looked at the simple figures of people doing those moves in manuals such as the Wu Jing Zong Yao and Wu Bei Zhi and they looked simple. And in reality many of the dynasties didn't have any standard for their troops. Often they were just trained but not tested AT ALL. And when they were it was often some endurance and strength test rather than skill tests.

I generally wouldn't give as much credit to the Chinese military manuals, many of them gave daunting figures. If they were taken with face value then their army would have conquered the world. But considering their engagements with the outside world, (Tartars, the portuguese and dutch traders) their army was much more mediocre than what the manuals claimed.


Well, their mediocrity was a function of the lack of practice and enforcement, not to the absence of martial arts in their training. The troops of the late 15th-century French and Burgundian Ordonnances were also notorious for performing well below the levels of the desired standards, and in these cases at least we have evidence from the rolls, legal documents, and chronicles lamenting the men's lack of practice and talking of them "losing their skills" rather than never obtaining them in the first place. This means that basic martial arts training was a crucial component of the training of a medieval man-at-arms and not rarely of the humbler soldiers as well, but they often forgot or lost those skills over time since they lacked the dilligence to maintain them through constant practice.

Like just about everybody has said, simple postures and simple moves do not always translate to easy execution. Try going to a sword fair or a serious reenactment / living history event and see the differences in the way laypeople, beginners, and experienced practitioners hold and use their weapons. You'll see that the experienced people's stances would be much firmer, their movements faster and more graceful, and their overall looks more deadly even though what they're doing are essentially the same movements as what the beginners do. Practice and experience counts for more than mere technical knowledge. This applies equally well whether to "prestige" weapons like the sword and the cavalry mace or to the simpler massed techniques for say, the pike and the musket.

(And of course lack of practice causes rapid deterioration in martial capabilities. I don't think this point can ever be stressed more than enough.)
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Lafayette C Curtis




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PostPosted: Tue 09 Jan, 2007 2:31 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Ah. Forgot to mention that, in case you're doing this as background research for writing fiction--which was one of my initial motivations for learning swordsmanship and still is one of the most important--I've learned that most fighting techniques are both simpler and more difficult than I thought they were. There's no way to learn them properly except with constant practice, and absolutely no way to keep them without constant practice. Which might make for a few good plotbunnies when the old crusty warrior turns out to have forgotten a few important moves through lack of practice. Wink
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Ben C.





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PostPosted: Tue 09 Jan, 2007 6:41 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Sam T. wrote:

I don't know about Europe but the "dance-like routines" existed in China since the very ancient times. They would be performed by a selected few who were able to perform those and they held shows and competitions during the festivals and major parades and shows. I don't know exactly what they looked like or if they look anything similar to what's shown on TV but those martial art systems do have the same names as in the kung-fu films.

So what is real martial arts like? From the Classical Chinese military manuals I see that they were relatively simple. So I assumed that it required not much training, like a few months to a year at most for a very fit and muscular man. From the views of the historians like Williams and Victor Hanson, people were fighting side by side so what kind of martial arts was designed for that? Like on the actual ancient battlefield, with the massed Mongol horsemen, Western shield walls etc... All of these websites like myArmoury all have demonstrations of only two or a few men.


A real martial art is one that can actually used effectively for fighting/warfare. The problem is that in modern times people apply the word to styles that really have little application in real fighting such as the vast majority of kung fu and karate styles.

Complicated moves are great for showy performances but when it comes to real fighting you want to use techniques which maximise efficiency with simplicity. Simple though does not equate to easy to learn/master though. Look at boxing, at the base of it you only have 4 striking techniques; jab, straight, uppercut and hook. There are a few extra techniques such as the overhand punch but those 4 strikes represent the bread&butter of the style. The jab is an incredibly simple technique yet it requires years of training, sparring and practice to really get effective at it, as do the other key punches. Yet as simple as those 4 punches are, they are still far more effective than any punch found in karate or kung fu. This is why more effective and modernised forms of karate and kungfu such as kyokushin and sanda borrow heavily from seemingly more simple/streamlined martial arts such as boxing and muay thai.

This is really a discussion for another thread though. I apologise for hijacking the topic away from the real discussion of sword penetration.
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Chris M.





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PostPosted: Thu 11 Jan, 2007 8:32 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

plate armor was the best but it was still only about 16-18ga steel by our standards. thinner tan a standard metal garbage can or about the same as a 55 gal drum. we all know what happens if you wrap that gage of metal around your head and someone hits you with a hammer. your going down.
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Dan Howard




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PostPosted: Fri 12 Jan, 2007 3:58 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Chris M. wrote:
plate armor was the best but it was still only about 16-18ga steel by our standards. thinner tan a standard metal garbage can or about the same as a 55 gal drum. we all know what happens if you wrap that gage of metal around your head and someone hits you with a hammer. your going down.

Extant samples of breastplates range widely in thickness. Some are under 2mm thick while the heaviest are over 8mm thick.
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Mikko Kuusirati




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PostPosted: Fri 12 Jan, 2007 5:01 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Chris M. wrote:
plate armor was the best but it was still only about 16-18ga steel by our standards. thinner tan a standard metal garbage can or about the same as a 55 gal drum. we all know what happens if you wrap that gage of metal around your head and someone hits you with a hammer. your going down.

Which is just one reason why the larger helms look oversized and, if not attached to a solid body, had suspension systems that kept it away from direct contact with your head. Happy

"And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
— Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
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Lafayette C Curtis




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PostPosted: Fri 12 Jan, 2007 5:35 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Not only breastplates and cuirasses--helmets, greaves, gauntlets, etc. also exhibited a considerable degree of variation in thickness, although never quite as extreme as the plastrons/breastplates.
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Alexander Hinman




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PostPosted: Fri 12 Jan, 2007 8:45 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Sam T. wrote:
So if the only way to defeat plate is to overwhelm them and try to thrust into the gaps doesn't mean that the men in plate will have a significant advantage over someone in older forms of armor like lamellae? I mean just think about what the kill ratio would be if the guys in lamellae have to go through all that to kill their enemy.


It's note the only way, as many others have pointed out. Overwhelming, depending upon the context, is not a necessary criterion. In Talhoffer's 1467 manuscript which showed a plate armoured duel, it ended with a single thrust to the face, while both opponents were still erect and fighting quite actively. With longswords.

In a very general sense, though, 'overwhelming' your enemy (that is, making him unable to attack you) is one of the basic principles of fighting, assuming you're not suicidal. Killing your opponent in a position where he can't kill you back is essential, especially when dealing with thrust-based combat, since thrusts take longer to incapacitate the opponent than deep (severing) cuts.

Now, though it's been given some mention, I think it's worth reiterrating that a mounted blow from a lance in the hands of a skilled user could kill a man armoured in plate quite neatly, and is perhaps the most direct way to do it, one of the instances where the weapon actually goes through the armour.

It should also be noted that one of the reasons that a sword thrust is ineffective is that an underhand (or indeed overhand) thrust simply isn't strong enough, while a swords design doesnt allow the force to be concentrated on a small enough point for a cut to be effective.

Picks/hammers/maces (and axes, to some degree) are the solution to the latter problem, creating a lever with the majority of the weight concentrated at the business end.

Lances, thus, are a solution to the former problem. 'When human physiology is insufficient, combine it with something else's' is perhaps a maxim in that regard.

There are also powerful projectile weapons. Crossbows, guns, and ballistae (to a very small extent)
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