Dan Howard wrote: |
We don't need a translation of the whole battle - just the few passages in which armour is mentioned. |
This is the famous call to use the point, "l'estoc". France mentions the use of the knife and stabbing at Bouvines, and then this rebuttal is found while discussing the Battle of Benevento (bolding mine). The orginal source would seem to be Andrew (III) of Hungary.
John France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000-1300, Chapter 13, Note 24:
Quote: |
The tactic of stabbing under the armpit recurs in Primatus's account of the Battle of Tagliacozzo of 1268, and Delbruck, Medieval Warfare, pp. 353-7, criticized the notion as the invention of a later writer on the basis of soldiers' tales, but Delbruck did not know the sources himself: in particular, he did not know that the story is found in Andrew of Hungary, and was relying on the studies of others. Oman, Art of War, vol. 1, pp. 502-3, studied the battle of Benevento at length and supposed that this tactic was designed to avoid German plate armour. Runciman, Sicilian Vespers, pp. 109-11, follows Oman and repeats this myth. However, there is no mention of plate-armour at Benevento: the accounts stress the close order of the Germans. |