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Benjamin H. Abbott
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 Posted: Sat 12 Mar, 2016 6:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Matthew Amt wrote: | | You aren't talking about trying to cut one *in battle*, are you? For all the effort and focus that would require, you're much better off just blocking, parrying, or trapping the weapon, and attacking the guy using it! Trying to cut through a polearm is an excellent waste of energy, and a good way to get killed. |
Swords could the heads off pikes. Raimond de Fourquevoux mentioned this in this 1548 manual. Roger Boyle (Lord Orrery) stressed the important of langets to protect pike heads from sword cuts in 1677. Various extant pikes and other staff weapons have these protective langets. Thus cutting through a small amount wood was a battlefield skill and something a soldier wanted a sword to capable of.
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Luka Borscak
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| Posted: Sun 13 Mar, 2016 6:09 am Post subject: |
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| Benjamin H. Abbott wrote: | | Matthew Amt wrote: | | You aren't talking about trying to cut one *in battle*, are you? For all the effort and focus that would require, you're much better off just blocking, parrying, or trapping the weapon, and attacking the guy using it! Trying to cut through a polearm is an excellent waste of energy, and a good way to get killed. |
Swords could the heads off pikes. Raimond de Fourquevoux mentioned this in this 1548 manual. Roger Boyle (Lord Orrery) stressed the important of langets to protect pike heads from sword cuts in 1677. Various extant pikes and other staff weapons have these protective langets. Thus cutting through a small amount wood was a battlefield skill and something a soldier wanted a sword to capable of. |
Usefulness of langets against sword cuts is obvious, but it is accumulative damage, not a single strike, one should fear.
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Mikko Kuusirati
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| Posted: Sun 13 Mar, 2016 6:29 am Post subject: |
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| Michael Brudon wrote: | | Thanks gents. No, no one was saying the falchion is a sword-axe on this thread I can see. |
Not in those words, exactly, but it's rather strongly implied by the notion that falchions would be particularly suited to general purpose chopping tasks.
If you're going to use a sword for camp chores - presumably because it's some kind of an emergency and you have absolutely no access to actual tools at the moment, for whatever reason; you would NOT do this just because the sword is closer to hand - it really makes no difference at all whether you pick up an arming sword or a falchion. Both types of sword would be just as ill suited to such use and just as likely to be harmed by it.
"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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| Posted: Sun 13 Mar, 2016 7:00 am Post subject: |
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| Luka Borscak wrote: | | Usefulness of langets against sword cuts is obvious, but it is accumulative damage, not a single strike, one should fear. |
Fourquevaux and Orrery didn't explicitly write that a single sword cut could remove a pike head, but they did clearly claim that soldiers should and did specifically cut at pikes in order to remove the heads. I suspect a single stroke could get the job done. Joseph Swetnam recounted an story of a combatant with a sword cutting through a staff in a duel and didn't dismiss this as unlikely or impossible. Instead, he said it was a bad technique because the staff wielder could just thrust under the cut in response. Pikes were typically rather thin, especially by the head because of tapering, so cutting a pike head off in one cut strikes me as thoroughly plausible.
You can find Lord Orrery's 17th-century account here:
| Lord Orrery wrote: | | The Pikes arm'd at the Points with Lozange heads, if the cheeks, or sides of the Pikes are not armed with thin Plates of Iron four Foot deep, are very apt to be broken off near the Heads, if the Push be vigorous, and the Resistance consi∣derable: Nor is this all; for unless the Pikes be armed with those thin Iron Plates, they are easily cut off with sharp Swords, for the Pike, especially toward the end, is carried ta∣pering, to poise it the better, and thereby renders it the more flippent for those who use it; so that the slenderer part of the Pike, if unarm'd, is the more liable to be cut off, it being there nearest the Enemy; whereas if the Pikes were armed with those thin Plates, and four Foot deep, no cutting Swords (which are alwayes of the shortest) could destroy the Pikes, since that part of the Staff of the Pike which is unarmed, would be out of the reach of the Horsemans sharp cutting Sword: I remember we once carried a Fort by storm, because the Enemies Pikes had not those Plates, whereby the Heads of them were cut off. |
As with most everything related to pikes, period source directly contradict contemporary common sense. Lots of historians still claim pikes were useless outside of formation, while period military writers described using pikes without order (out of formation) as a standard practice, martial artists detailed instructions for how to duel with pike, nobles plied the pike a tournaments, and commanders sometimes dueled with the pike on the battlefield. 16th-century military writers in fact emphasized how hard it was to wield a pike in the press rather than in the open.
Last edited by Benjamin H. Abbott on Sun 13 Mar, 2016 9:23 am; edited 2 times in total
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Mikko Kuusirati
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| Posted: Sun 13 Mar, 2016 7:07 am Post subject: |
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| Luka Borscak wrote: | | Benjamin H. Abbott wrote: | | Matthew Amt wrote: | | You aren't talking about trying to cut one *in battle*, are you? For all the effort and focus that would require, you're much better off just blocking, parrying, or trapping the weapon, and attacking the guy using it! Trying to cut through a polearm is an excellent waste of energy, and a good way to get killed. |
Swords could the heads off pikes. Raimond de Fourquevoux mentioned this in this 1548 manual. Roger Boyle (Lord Orrery) stressed the important of langets to protect pike heads from sword cuts in 1677. Various extant pikes and other staff weapons have these protective langets. Thus cutting through a small amount wood was a battlefield skill and something a soldier wanted a sword to capable of. |
Usefulness of langets against sword cuts is obvious, but it is accumulative damage, not a single strike, one should fear. |
Yeah, I would think this was more of a long term concern for the pikeman rather than a reliable tactic for the swordsman.
Now, I have deliberately abused some of my swords by chopping and splitting wood. It lead to two perhaps anecdotal conclusions that would be relevant here:
1) The only sword I was actually comfortable doing that with after a few blows was the Hanwei Banshee, a modern take on the dha, which is a general purpose chopping tool also used as a weapon (just like machetes, goloks, barongs and such). Everything else just didn't feel good at all, didn't work too well - most were simply too flexible, so wasted too much energy on temporary deformation of the blade - and some took visible (though repairable... as far as I can tell) damage. So I would say it's not so much that you can't chop wood with a medieval sword or that the sword would certainly be damaged - it's more that the sword won't do a very good job of it and you can never tell for sure whether it's going to be OK or not, afterwards. It's a gamble, and not a worthwhile one under any circumstances where you actually have a choice.
PS. FWIW, the Banshee actually does have a very axe-like cross-section, with a thick spine and very meaty convex bevels that grow even more convex towards the sweet spot...
2) Cutting through a 7' long, 1.5" thick wooden pole held by another person was pretty much impossible - I could do it eventually by gradually chipping away at the pole until it failed under the stress, but not even remotely in one blow. There was just too much give, even with the "pikeman" cooperating with me instead of trying to kill me. A long enough haft could conceivably snap if bent too far, but it would take a larger movement with more force than I believe I could generate with a sword. (Granted, I did not try this with anything larger than the Valiant Armory Kriegschwert.) So I think that, while it might be possible for someone stronger and better trained than me, there would be any number of far more productive uses for your time in a battle than trying to chop off pike heads, like simply pushing them aside. 
"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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Shahril Dzulkifli
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| Posted: Sun 20 Mar, 2016 7:32 am Post subject: Were some falchions used for sword + utilitarian tasks? |
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I never heard of knights in the Middle Ages using falchions to prune trees and branches.
No such recorded use, though.
But I believe swords (falchions included), unlike machetes, were rarely used for utilitarian tasks.
“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength”
- Marcus Aurelius
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Philip Dyer
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| Posted: Sun 20 Mar, 2016 8:03 am Post subject: Re: Were some falchions used for sword + utilitarian tasks? |
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| Shahril Dzulkifli wrote: | I never heard of knights in the Middle Ages using falchions to prune trees and branches.
No such recorded use, though.
But I believe swords (falchions included), unlike machetes, were rarely used for utilitarian tasks. |
^Emphasize on rarely. There was other tools to do the job available, Falchion design specs don't indicate that they would be awful for regular utilitarian use, the fact that where self bought personal defense weapons and that there are no account of complaints of them being used as such. But if your baggage train was raided and you far from friendly territory and that is the only tool you have left to eat or stay warm, then yes, it make sense to use those like that. Also, if you want to see a sword for poor people, look of bedanas. They were made extremely cheaply and were used by people who poor by choice.
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Bartek Strojek
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| Posted: Sun 20 Mar, 2016 1:26 pm Post subject: |
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Bartosz Paprocki, in his relation about battle of Lubieszów in 1577 states:
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Wadacz Michał to bacząc, już chrom [kulawy] będąc, krzyknął na hajduki, aby do szabel skoczyli, rusznice odłożywszy, zaraz im spisy zucinali. |
Which translates to "Wadach Michał seeing this, being already crippled, shouted to haiduks, that they should draw their sabers, drop the guns and cut their pikes".
So this was apparently pretty common idea about what could be done with pikes. Hard to say how realistic one?
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Luka Borscak
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| Posted: Sun 20 Mar, 2016 1:49 pm Post subject: |
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Order "cut the pikes" would pretty much mean "strike at the pikes". If you cut it, however unlikely that is, great. But in any case, you will move the tip of the pike so you or other guy can pass the tip and get closer to the pikeman. If nothing else, it will be harder for pikeman to aim for your squishy parts if you keep striking his pike out of line. 
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Philip Dyer
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| Posted: Sun 20 Mar, 2016 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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Wasn't the word "pike" a loan word at the time pikes were being deployed? Like, our modern understanding of the term is spear at or above ten feet to 25 feet whereas what was considered pike by fencing instructors and military theorists varied alot more. I've also read it was the same with naming types of swords.
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Lafayette C Curtis
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| Posted: Mon 18 Apr, 2016 6:05 am Post subject: |
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"Pike" wasn't necessarily a loanword, but (at least in English) it had a broader sense than what we now understand by the term "pike." Generally speaking, it could be applied to pretty much any spear-like object that was long or heavy enough to be primarily a thrusting rather than a throwing weapon (and even then we sometimes hear of "thrown pikes.")
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Robert Morgan
Location: Sunny SoCal Joined: 10 Sep 2012
Posts: 90
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| Posted: Mon 18 Apr, 2016 7:46 pm Post subject: |
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Okay, here's a totally off the wall idea...
Forging a single edged blade like a falchion's is far easier than a double edged symmetrical blade for a whole host of reasons. Perhaps we shouldn't be focusing upon knightly weapons which certainly wouldn't be used for brush clearing, but upon the arms of the common soldier. These arms might be supplied by his lord, as the Bayeux Tapestry shows William's quartermasters supplying swords to his men from a chest or case. As a result, they wouldn't be of the highest quality but just, "good enough," to get the job done in the hands of the common soldier, as well as probably being cheaper to manufacture (less metal in the single handed grip, quicker forging time with the more forgiving thick back of the blade, etc.). Once they were damaged or replaced, these lesser quality falchions could be used for almost any use, or even melted back down. Given the falchion's obvious design as a cutter and chopper, maybe some became fancy butcher's knives? Who knows?
Part of the reason that I'm thinking this way is that the relative paucity of surviving medieval falchions has always puzzled me. The artwork clearly shows them to not have been uncommon at all, and yet they aren't terribly common survivors compared to their cruciform brethren. Some part of me believes that a falchion could have possessed more utilitarian uses which may explain why so many seem to have disappeared.
Bob
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Philip Dyer
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| Posted: Mon 18 Apr, 2016 9:59 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, but that still leaves with range from a spear length can could afford to robust by could range fought againist with a two handed sword to spear length so long they had to be tapered drastically to not feel like a log in the wielders hands and both of those could still be called pike.
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Luka Borscak
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| Posted: Tue 19 Apr, 2016 3:05 am Post subject: |
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| Robert Morgan wrote: | Okay, here's a totally off the wall idea...
Forging a single edged blade like a falchion's is far easier than a double edged symmetrical blade for a whole host of reasons. Perhaps we shouldn't be focusing upon knightly weapons which certainly wouldn't be used for brush clearing, but upon the arms of the common soldier. These arms might be supplied by his lord, as the Bayeux Tapestry shows William's quartermasters supplying swords to his men from a chest or case. As a result, they wouldn't be of the highest quality but just, "good enough," to get the job done in the hands of the common soldier, as well as probably being cheaper to manufacture (less metal in the single handed grip, quicker forging time with the more forgiving thick back of the blade, etc.). Once they were damaged or replaced, these lesser quality falchions could be used for almost any use, or even melted back down. Given the falchion's obvious design as a cutter and chopper, maybe some became fancy butcher's knives? Who knows?
Part of the reason that I'm thinking this way is that the relative paucity of surviving medieval falchions has always puzzled me. The artwork clearly shows them to not have been uncommon at all, and yet they aren't terribly common survivors compared to their cruciform brethren. Some part of me believes that a falchion could have possessed more utilitarian uses which may explain why so many seem to have disappeared.
Bob |
I'm not sure there is a great deal of difference in the forging difficulty between a good falchion and a good double edged sword. All falchions we know of were good quality weapons, not cheap low rank weapons. I have no idea why people keep insisting they are cheaper and easier to make weapons often made for poorer soldiers. What proof we have of this? Just their single edged blades? I have never heard a swordsmith saying it's much easier to forge a good falchion then a good double edged sword. And good quality iron and steel good enough for weapons wouldn't be melted down, it would ruin a good metal. Maybe they would be cut down to a couple of knife or dagger blades, not melted.
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Mikko Kuusirati
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| Posted: Tue 19 Apr, 2016 3:36 am Post subject: |
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| Robert Morgan wrote: | Okay, here's a totally off the wall idea...
Forging a single edged blade like a falchion's is far easier than a double edged symmetrical blade for a whole host of reasons. Perhaps we shouldn't be focusing upon knightly weapons which certainly wouldn't be used for brush clearing, but upon the arms of the common soldier. These arms might be supplied by his lord, as the Bayeux Tapestry shows William's quartermasters supplying swords to his men from a chest or case. As a result, they wouldn't be of the highest quality but just, "good enough," to get the job done in the hands of the common soldier, as well as probably being cheaper to manufacture (less metal in the single handed grip, quicker forging time with the more forgiving thick back of the blade, etc.). Once they were damaged or replaced, these lesser quality falchions could be used for almost any use, or even melted back down. Given the falchion's obvious design as a cutter and chopper, maybe some became fancy butcher's knives? Who knows?
Part of the reason that I'm thinking this way is that the relative paucity of surviving medieval falchions has always puzzled me. The artwork clearly shows them to not have been uncommon at all, and yet they aren't terribly common survivors compared to their cruciform brethren. Some part of me believes that a falchion could have possessed more utilitarian uses which may explain why so many seem to have disappeared.
Bob |
There are plenty of surviving "munitions grade" double-edged swords, though, and relatively very few falchions even in representative artwork. AFAIK, making a falchion is ultimately simpler than making a straight, double-edged sword only in that sabering in heat treatment might be less of an issue; you still have to take just as much care in the forging if you want to produce a quality blade, no matter the shape of it, and if you're deliberately not aiming for high quality, then that is what makes the difference rather than the type of blade.
All in all, this really does not seem to have ever been a consideration in outfitting medieval soldiers, as far as I can tell.
Also, if falchions were actually suited to utilitarian tasks, I think you should expect a lot more of them to have survived such use in recognizable shape, given the relatively large numbers of surviving tools and farm implements, you know?
"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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Robert Morgan
Location: Sunny SoCal Joined: 10 Sep 2012
Posts: 90
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| Posted: Tue 19 Apr, 2016 6:39 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I'm not sure there is a great deal of difference in the forging difficulty between a good falchion and a good double edged sword. All falchions we know of were good quality weapons, not cheap low rank weapons. I have no idea why people keep insisting they are cheaper and easier to make weapons often made for poorer soldiers. |
I didn't say, "all," just perhaps, "some." Also, I actually do think that a falchion would be in some ways the ideal weapon for a poorer, less trained soldier or conscript; singlehanded and with a range of motion not terribly dissimilar from a farmer's cutting or chopping implements, it would theoretically lend itself to quicker training, certainly faster than a longsword.
Single edged blades are typically easier to forge than double edged ones. The quenching and tempering process can easily warp a blade, but in a falchion or any curved single edged blade like a katana or sabre, isn't that the whole point? The thicker back of the blade also aids in stiffening the weapon, and there is only one cutting edge to sharpen and really shape.
As to why munitions grade cruciform swords have survived when falchions largely have not, my point was that they may - may - have had other uses beyond the battlefield. As a result, they may have been used up and discarded over time, while a cruciform sword of any quality pretty much only had one use and may have survived simply by being put away and stored somewhere. Knightly falchions of high quality would have survived but the more common ones, perhaps not.
At any rate, it was just a wild a**ed guess that I put out there to stimulate conversation, which is always fun and illuminating on this board. I am always amazed at the range of knowledge that folks on this board and in this line of study possess.
Bob
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Timo Nieminen
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| Posted: Tue 19 Apr, 2016 2:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Robert Morgan wrote: | | Single edged blades are typically easier to forge than double edged ones. The quenching and tempering process can easily warp a blade, but in a falchion or any curved single edged blade like a katana or sabre, isn't that the whole point? |
Yes, as Mikko said, you don't care (as much) about sabering of the blade in heat treatment. (Technically, that isn't part of the forging. The more general "easier to make" would include it.)
It's also easier to use lamination methods such as inserted-edge or wrapped-edge on single-edged blades. (Which is part of the forging process.) It's also easier to differentially harden a single-edged blade (e.g., methods such as edge quenching are easier).
| Robert Morgan wrote: | | The thicker back of the blade also aids in stiffening the weapon, and there is only one cutting edge to sharpen and really shape. |
Usually, the back isn't thicker, compared to a double-edged sword's spine. Often thinner. This might make the single-edged blade harder to forge.
"In addition to being efficient, all pole arms were quite nice to look at." - Cherney Berg, A hideous history of weapons, Collier 1963.
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Andrew Gill
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| Posted: Wed 20 Apr, 2016 7:50 am Post subject: |
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| Robert Morgan wrote: | | I actually do think that a falchion would be in some ways the ideal weapon for a poorer, less trained soldier or conscript; singlehanded and with a range of motion not terribly dissimilar from a farmer's cutting or chopping implements, it would theoretically lend itself to quicker training, certainly faster than a longsword. |
I'm not sure I agree with this. The german messer system has significant similarities to the german longsword system and is quite a complex system in itself, and in any case, many double-edge knightly swords were single-handed cutting weapons, not longswords, even though knights presumably spent less time doing cutting chores. Also, being able to chop firewood doesn't really translate into using a single-handed sword effectively; there's much more to it than that. Besides, why would you want to arm troops who don't know how to use a sword with any sort of sword? Spears are cheaper and were considered much more effective on the battlefield (at least according to the author of "The King's mirror") and those are a lot simpler to learn to use effectively.
I do, think however, that some German peasants might have considered and used their bauernwehr as multi-purpose tools/weapons(see my previous comment about these), and I would speculate that more recent authors might have confused these (sometimes crude) large knives with medieval falchions, which might be the root of many current misconceptions about falchions. If memory serves, these were usually obtained through private purchase, though, not issued by an arsenal.
Interestingly, while most modern utility knives are single-edged, for many centuries small multipurpose knives were often double-edged; there's an example of a French sailor's double-edged utility knife in Dr Capwell's book on knives and daggers.
I also know that swords, whether single or double edged were frequently reused because the relatively high-quality steel in them was valuable and useful. In the bible there is the quote regarding swords being beaten into plowshares - a metaphor, of course, but metaphors use familiar concepts to illustrate something vividly. More concretely, in the British museum there is a rather rusty unmistakably sword-like iron object from a woman's grave with other weaving goods, described as a loom tool of some sort - on further reading, I discovered that bluntened, worn-out iron-age Celtic swords were apparently sometimes passed on to the warrior's wife to be used for weaving. The Highland Scots famously sometimes used cut-down sword blades from damaged weapons for their dirks, as have many other people around the world who lacked a reliable source of high-quality iron ore, or steel through trade. It may have sometimes had additional sentimental motivation - a way to keep an old inherited weapon in use after it had broken. So that definitely did happen - it just wasn't specific to falchions.
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Ralph Grinly
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| Posted: Mon 25 Apr, 2016 4:57 am Post subject: |
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I suspect the main reason falchions are fairly un-common survivors from the medieval period is that they were simply way TOO useful for everyday tasks that they were used until they were of no longer any use. Sure..they may not have been as good at a task as a tool specifically designed for that task, but they could and would be used if the special tool wasn't to hand. As far as "Wood Cutting" goes..I strongly suspect the people of the day were very well aware of what tools were needed to chop dry wood..for that you use an axe or a saw..not a blade. Trimming light brush or something similar..that was something a falchion could do
And as far as the surviving falchions we DO have, perhaps the reason they survived is because they were of better, more "knightly/aristocratic" provenance than the average, day-to-day falchion ?
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Mikko Kuusirati
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| Posted: Mon 25 Apr, 2016 6:47 am Post subject: |
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| Ralph Grinly wrote: | | I suspect the main reason falchions are fairly un-common survivors from the medieval period is that they were simply way TOO useful for everyday tasks that they were used until they were of no longer any use. Sure..they may not have been as good at a task as a tool specifically designed for that task, but they could and would be used if the special tool wasn't to hand. As far as "Wood Cutting" goes..I strongly suspect the people of the day were very well aware of what tools were needed to chop dry wood..for that you use an axe or a saw..not a blade. Trimming light brush or something similar..that was something a falchion could do |
But then, an arming sword could do that just as well as a falchion. Even better, in fact, given the typically somewhat longer blade!
In either case, again, it would be a waste of a perfectly good sword when cheaper and better tools were far more readily available. When it comes to things like clearing brush, a billhook is more effective, more ergonomic, more durable, more ubiquitous and more affordable, so why would you ever use a sword for it aside from freak emergencies?
(Now, the idea of making a used falchion into a serviceable butcher's knife or similar implement, that could work, just like broken straight swords were sometimes made into dagger or spear blades. But you'd need the falchion to break at a convenient spot in a way that leaves enough of the blade undamaged for this to be feasible, so I really don't think this was anything like a trend, as such, but at most an occasional less-than-totally-unlucky break, as it were...)
| Quote: | | And as far as the surviving falchions we DO have, perhaps the reason they survived is because they were of better, more "knightly/aristocratic" provenance than the average, day-to-day falchion? |
This is, indeed, a factor with all things in archaeology: more precious items get taken better care of and thus (often! but not always!) have a better chance of surviving in the archaeological record, so our impression of the overall historical quality and quantities of things based on surviving finds is not necessarily reliable.
HOWEVER, it should be noted that in period sources, both textual and visual, the falchion is NOT presented as a commoner's weapon. The existing archaeological specimens are not usually found in recognizably non-noble contexts, either, regardless of their relative quality or condition. It's every bit as knightly and aristocratic a weapon as double-edged swords. The notion that it's somehow cruder, cheaper and more workmanlike than swords with slightly differently shaped blades (and no other meaningful difference, seriously) is a purely modern one with no historical or archaeological basis that I know of.
"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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