Research and Discussion Forums

I think the Japanese bows were a lot less powerful than the English Longbow, the Japanese archers at the Royal Armouries a few years back had problems pulling 70/80lb yew bows so I think the 150lb+ longbows of the period must have had a lot more power. Knights practiced archery quite often, there ar...

How much do people feel the difference in concepts of honor would affect the fight. From what I understand the Japanese would want to win with honour while the my perception of the English knight at least (based on over 15 yrs research in the period in general) is that the honorable thing to do woul...

I think it has probably been used as a way of distinguishing between landed knights (lord Knight) and non landed knights (yoeman knights). In England during the 1100-1300's if you own a certain amount of land or earned a set amount in rent from land then you had to join the order of Knighthood by la...

OK, so it's been a bit longer than a week but things are pretty hectic at the moment. I've got my results and I got a 2:1 over all, and 75% for my dissertation, so with a bit of luck I should beable to get my conclusions and stuff published at some point in the future (both markers said it was publi...

Sorry I haven't posted for a while, I've been really busy making kit for the me and the family as we have our first event of the season this weekend! <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" /> I can't stop to chat just now either I was just checking out what had been happe...

Towton documents refers to people drawing their swords to enter the chase. Also I suggest that there are about 6 times the number of archers than men-at-arms in a national army and that the majority would carry a sword of some kind and would be used like infantry in close quarter combat. Charles the...

At Towton it is known that they fought on foot, even the Yorkist King dismounted to fight along side his men.

This is a common occurance in English tactics post 1400 and appears to have been used pre 1400 a bit, so the chances of cavalry causing such wounds are severly limited in England.

Steve

I agree that it is a possability, however, it still makes it difficult to explain the high %'s for graves from none battlefield sites. I know I've still got a lot of research to do, I'm planning on getting some excavation expierence in over the next year and then I want to go back to Uni to do postg...

Have you tried standing behind a man and hitting him on the occipital bone (where a pony tail is tied in the hair)? If they were running away when hit I think you'd probably find a lot of skeletons with a foot missing. If they turned and fought, using the conventional interpretation of the medieval ...

The asumption about the rout and/or execution is due to not being able to percieve a method of combat they are not familiar with. If they are right that it was rout/execution then it means that the mojority of people who died from blade injuries during the higher medieval period were either in a rou...

OK "to assume that the tactics of the Roman legions would not have been adopted by those who came after the Romans is a wee bit risky in my mind. In fact, when I think of it, there are accounts of how the Germanic tribes actually used tactics of their own when encountering and beating a Roman l...

I think Proff S. Anglo published something in Antiquity Journal some years ago.

If your interested I can find the reference for you!

Steve

I think treachary, deciet etc have been the thing that has allowed every Empire to expand as far as I can see, wether Spanish, British or Ottoman or Mongel so lets not keep dissing the Spanish for it! I also think anybody talking about any form of chivelry in regard to physical violence has to be be...

OK, one bit at a time! Weapon evolution - as far as I can see evolution in any area has rarley been a straight line, niether do I suggest that evolution means better, personally I much prefer the earlier fighting stlyes which are perhaps not quite so "formalised" (OK I don't know to much a...

Is weapon evolution not a possible indicator of changing tradition?

Swords develop from cutting weapons to thrusting weapons, pole arms move from hacking weapons to thrusting weapons all during the 16th century!

Is this not reflective of changing martial traditions?

Steve