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Karl G




Location: Australia
Joined: 25 Apr 2016

Posts: 66

PostPosted: Tue 03 May, 2016 1:21 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I think its hard to argue against tournament play being the closest to military battle for its period of most any period. Having trained and served in modern theatres, the inability to use guns to literally shoot people in training(lol), the lack of any real fear of harm( indisputable, even with simunitions) and the general complexities of the modern battle field, make it a poor second to an era where you could duplicate everything near full strength simply wearing armour whacking an opponent, as per the medieval battlefield, with the fear of being killed or severely injured, as per the medieval battlefield. no comparison between this and modern field exercises.
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Ben Joy




Location: Missouri
Joined: 21 May 2010
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Posts: 122

PostPosted: Tue 03 May, 2016 10:49 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Karl G wrote:
I think its hard to argue against tournament play being the closest to military battle for its period of most any period. Having trained and served in modern theatres, the inability to use guns to literally shoot people in training(lol), the lack of any real fear of harm( indisputable, even with simunitions) and the general complexities of the modern battle field, make it a poor second to an era where you could duplicate everything near full strength simply wearing armour whacking an opponent, as per the medieval battlefield, with the fear of being killed or severely injured, as per the medieval battlefield. no comparison between this and modern field exercises.


Again, one of the big issues I have with this was the original point made with tournaments, citing a warrior of the early 11th century vs a tournament goer of the mid-later 15th century:

Pieter B. wrote:

Well I suppose you could say an 11th century soldier involved in constant feuding might have some more incentive to keep up general fitness than say a Burgundian Knight around 1440. Then again maybe the latter frequently goes to tournaments.


Which you can corroborate against the concept of this, which basically said that later tournaments in the middle ages were far more pageantry than simulations of war.

Gregory J. Liebau wrote:
Ben & Michael,
Nothing during the later Middle Ages compared to the early, free-for-all spirit of the early tournament scene. Individual jousts, bohorts with blunted weaponry, etc... The evolution of the tournament has already taken contemporary scholars several excellent books to describe.


Where I retorted with the concept of "What is a tournament?" given it's "evolution" where the early "tournaments" were little more than personal grudge-matches vs. nobles where the king might play middle-man and mediate the thing. Stated here:

Ben Joy wrote:

Also, from what you've described on some of the early "tournaments," they sound like little more than noble "Duels" where the two sides bring along men under their command in accordance to whatever rules of engagement the other agrees to . . . then they just fought it out as if it were a mini-war. Personally, I wouldn't really call that a tournament so much as a "nobles' skirmish".

It's taken several books already to go over the evolution of the "tournament" . . . so what would people call the early stuff? After all, for example, Stock Car Racing came about because of illegal races and competitions between bootleggers of the early 20th century, during prohibition. However, I don't think anyone today would call those early races a "NASCAR" event by any stretch of the imagination. Therefore, maybe something else that needs to be set for the prospects of the discussion is, "What constitutes a tournament?" as even your early tournaments don't sound like what most people would think of when one says "tournament", but the later Middle-Ages "pageantry" that you basically described would fit the true concept of a tournament far more closely.


That then leaves us with very interesting little take over how to handle things because, even if you want to use the early and brutal "tournament" goer as "true to war" experiences, those experiences that are "true to war" are still held within the confines of the same era as the constant fueding and wars of the 11th to 13th centuries; and have little correlation to the more "pageantry" tournaments of the 15th century. Given all of the information put into this thread, I think that is something we could all agree on at this point. Now, one could say that this certainly starts narrowing down the era with the most generic "martial prowess", because now we start finding an era with lots of war -corroborating points I made- and a really brutal and true to war "tournament" (because, again, those aren't really want I'd call a tournaments given the historical descriptions of what were little more than "grudge matches", "mini-wars", or "noble-skirmishes") scene -corroborating points Gregory made-.

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On the other hand, another issue with the question in the OP is the generic concept of "martial prowess". Thusly, we've also reached an impasse of training vs. experience? You say simunitions aren't good training compared to a medieval sparring match . . . so are you going to try to say that medieval sparring was intentionally trying to kill your training partner? I don't think so . . . I don't think anyone would reasonably believe that people training are actively trying to kill their opponent. I think the same level of percieved safety was retained during medieval training, as modern training, because no one is actively trying to kill their opponent. It is, after all, just training. Falling on my original points, which still hold ground here, soldiers who've been to war are going to be far more prepared and possess much more prowess over a soldier who's never been to war.

So, take the modern era for example (since you and I are both veterans of it, I think we can relate to it here in a very broad and generic sense, at least): from 2001 onward most US Armed Forces Members/Veterans -in service during that timeframe- have deployed to modern theaters of combat. Just about any of us who are combat arms (and many who aren't) are true "combat veterans" (myself included as combat arms and combat veteran). Compare that to the timeframe of the Post Vietnam (1976) to the first Gulf War (1990), where there was little to no military engagements involving anything other than special forces. While the average combat-arms (citing specifically them because they're the ones who are supposed to be fighting) soldiers in the Post Vietnam era still trained for war, they generally weren't combat veterans of any theaters, while the average combat-arms soldiers of the current era have generally seen at least some combat. Thusly, who has more "martial prowess", historically speaking? I'd say it's the veterans of later era live-fire military engagements, because they've got the direct experience, while the others do not.

I'd say the same correlation can be made for the warriors of the Middle Ages. The more true combat/war experience one has the more martial prowess one is going to possess.

"Men take only their needs into consideration, never their abilities." -Napoleon Bonaparte
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William P




Location: Sydney, Australia
Joined: 11 Jul 2010

Posts: 1,523

PostPosted: Wed 04 May, 2016 8:09 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

could the codification of fighting techniques play a part in the ability of people to train i wonder
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