Knight as a combat unit... -- myArmoury.com

Rodolfo Martínez · Posted: Thu 01 Feb, 2007 8:21 am Post subject:

Thanks for the painting Gordon. Most Museums don´t use to show armours with their respective cloth parts, as skirt bases or whatever. (Some do that, but only if the cloth skirt is under the metal tassets. Maybe to show the art in the fauld)
I was wondering about Men-at-arms weaponry, Is this sword an estoc?, i mean, is accurate to show a Man-at-arms´ armour wielding a zheihander, or other type of mercenary weapon?

Thanks

Gordon Frye · Posted: Thu 01 Feb, 2007 9:08 am Post subject:

Rodolfo Martínez · Posted: Thu 01 Feb, 2007 11:34 am Post subject:

I though that those swords were more for infantry than for heavy cavalry, while longswords were more apropiate swords for heavy cavalrymen than any kind of larger sword.
There are armours shown wielding halbers, maybe Victorian ones. This really confuse people if they are not deep in the subject, like in my case.
But why a Gendarme would use a two handed sword? I mean, imagine a first half XVI century Man-at-arms or Gendarme. Would he use the two handed sword as a foot combat weapon if unhorsed like the poleaxe? Is historically accurate the use of zweihanders between Man-at-arms during the first half of the century?

Thanks

P.D.

Does anybody knows if this sword is an overzised longsword? I was searching in the Cold Steel site but i haven´t found any info.

Lafayette C Curtis · Posted: Fri 02 Feb, 2007 5:46 am Post subject:

The only discordance I notice in the photograph with the suit of armor holding a sword is that the suit looks like something designed for foot combat while the sword is something I'd expect to be used on horseback. So, speaking in strictly chronological terms, the two were probably contemporary to each other. I don't think they would have been used together, though.

And I may be wrong. I tend to observe the developments in the 17th century more than those in the 16th.

As for unhorsed men-at-arms using two-handed swords--the biggest problem is where they would have carried it. If you mean a longsword, of course, it could have been stowed in a scabbard hung from the saddle. But a two-handed sword is...well, bigger.

It still doesn't nail the lid on the coffin, though. If the man-at-arms was left unarmed after the fall of his horse and the first weapon he got was a two-handed sword he picked up from a nearby corpse or wrested away from an enemy officer, he probably would have used it since it's certainly better than going around with no weapons.

Now. The Cold Steel sword. It doesn't seem particularly oversized--I guess it's still well within the size bracket of ordinary longswords. The blade, however, is not what we would conventionally think of as a longsword blade. It has too little taper compared to the illustrations in the 15th-century (and later) longsword manuals and looks mostly like an earlier Type XIIa/XIIIa "war-sword" or "greatsword." It is longsword-sized, but it's not as powerful in the thrust as the later weapons that usually come to mind when we talk of longswords.

Rodolfo Martínez · Posted: Fri 02 Feb, 2007 9:53 am Post subject:

Thanks Lafayette.

I was told that French and Burgundian men-at-arms used both styles of armour from XVI century, the smooth Italian, and the German Maximillian. I was wondering, Did British and Spanish men-at-arms still used widelly both styles after the development of Greenwich style and the Spanish one?

Thanks.

P.D.

Do you know if the cloth skirt under the tassets are ¨Bases¨too, or are part of the gabeson?

Thanks

Lafayette C Curtis · Posted: Sat 03 Feb, 2007 11:21 am Post subject:

Obviously. The trade in armor was quite a vigorous one, and I'd find it odd to see an army without a mixture of styles--even among the lower-grade armors.

The pictures. Hm. The first doesn't really look like a waffenrock. I'm tempted to say that it's the usual cloth doublet but I can't be sure without disassembling the armor. The second might be a waffenrock, although I'm accustomed to thinking that the waffenrock was usually made longer than that. The garment in the second photograph, too, looks a bit stiff so it might have been an extension of the arming doublet.

BTW, what exactly do you mean by "base?" I might be a bit clueless here since I don't think I've ever seen such a term in armor terminology. Yet.

Rodolfo Martínez · Posted: Sat 03 Feb, 2007 4:03 pm Post subject:

Maybe i haven´t written it properly, but as far as i know, bases is that skirt used over the metal fauld by men-at-arms, the waffenrock.

Do you know if there is any armour display wearing those waffenrock image? I have found one here, in the album gallery, but its the armour´s rear, and i have a few ones but are very little and with low definition.

Thanks.

Nathan Robinson · myArmoury Admin

This topic has been completely derailed from the "knight as a combat unit" topic. All these side questions about reproduction swords, pieces of armour, etc, are better suited for their own topics. Please guys, keep things on topic and separate the other discussions to their own topics. This ensures topics remain readable to all and worthwhile over years of being archived on the Web.

For your reference, this topic's original intent was stated at this: