Lances?

[John]

I've always been interested in medieval combat, but once thing I've never understand was how lances were used. I know that they were used in jousts, but how were they used in the battlefield? They seem big and heavy. I know calvary used it, but how were they used? From my observations of jousting, they look like they could only be used once in a battle, during the charge, and then had to be discarded. Could they have been used for melee combat as well?

[Shane Smith]

Good question John. As it is not my field of research, I'll wait for someone else to reply.

As an aside; please re-register with your real full name per forum rules. Thanks and welcome to the forum.

[Craig Peters]

I've always been interested in medieval combat, but once thing I've never understand was how lances were used. I know that they were used in jousts, but how were they used in the battlefield? They seem big and heavy. I know calvary used it, but how were they used? From my observations of jousting, they look like they could only be used once in a battle, during the charge, and then had to be discarded. Could they have been used for melee combat as well?

John,

Keep in mind that the lances used for jousting are not necessarily the same as the ones used in the field. War lances were much more like spears, and significantly easier to handle than some of the huge jousting lances that you see. In fact, it's not even certain that there was a clear distinction in the mind of medieval people between the spear and the lance.

In the medieval chronicle about Friedrich Barbarossa's incursion into Italy, for instance, the author describes a knight named Manfred who, during a battle with Rome, "Rushed like a lion to the middle of/ The fray and struck those in his way with sword/ And spear." Since I don't have the original Latin text, I cannot say for certain if "spear" was the exact term that the author used, but the fact that it seemed reasonable to the author to translate the term as "spear" suggests the fluidity of the definition of "spear/lance".

During the Battle of Hastings, according to Peter Poyntz Wright, the lances used by the Normans were more slender and lighter than the spears, and were intended to be thrown over head. He said that if these lances were used for stabbing, it would have required considerable skill to withdraw it for re-use while remaining mounted.

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Which lance and when? The Greek xyston is different from the two-handed lances of the cataphracts; these were then different from the early medieval lances, which did not resemble the later medieval lances very much except in the sense that they're both some sort of spear.

The late-medieval heavy lance, built with vamplates and meant to be couched with the aid of arrets and grapers, was indeed supposed to break in the charge. This was not much of a problem, though, since two formations of men-at-arms charging at each other were more likely to have passed right through each other and then reformed on the far side instead of stopping to fight in a confused melee. In this condition there is almost no time to strike more than one blow, and that lance sticking into your enemy (or at least unhorsing him) is all you need to make your presence felt.

At this time they were also lighter lances, however, which closely resembled the earlier lances used in William the Conqueror's time, and these were much more flexible in their use.

BTW, I sort of doubt Wright's assertion that the "lances" were lighter than spears. This is probably just a misinterpretation born out of the Victorian tendency to translate the Greek and Latin words for spear-like weapons indiscriminately as "lance" or "spear," with the result that we see many warriors fighting on foot while throwing their "lances" in translations of such works as the Iliad. The Norman lances were probably just spears used on horseback and this is borne out by the fact that their men-at-arms were perfectly capable of dismounting and forming up a spear phalanx at need, like at the Battle of Bremule.

And it might be true that withdrawing a lance from a dead enemy while speeding along on a galloping horse might require great skill, but wouldn't this skill have been an essential part of a man-at-arms's training at that time? We clearly have literary evidence that Norman lances were used for both throwing and thrusting.

[Craig Peters]

BTW, I sort of doubt Wright's assertion that the "lances" were lighter than spears. This is probably just a misinterpretation born out of the Victorian tendency to translate the Greek and Latin words for spear-like weapons indiscriminately as "lance" or "spear," with the result that we see many warriors fighting on foot while throwing their "lances" in translations of such works as the Iliad.

That could be, though it strikes me as odd that a relatively recent book which makes extensive arguments based upon scholarship on the Battle of Hastings would use Victorian translations. The two relevant sources that he lists in his citations for spears and lances are:

Wilson, G., "Norman Arms and Armour" England Under the Normans, British History Illustrated, 1978, p.8.

and

Mann, J., "Arms and Armour" in Stenton, op. cit. pp. 58-59.

Anyways, we'd best leave it at that, as this is starting to drift into the realm of the off-topic.

And it might be true that withdrawing a lance from a dead enemy while speeding along on a galloping horse might require great skill, but wouldn't this skill have been an essential part of a man-at-arms's training at that time? We clearly have literary evidence that Norman lances were used for both throwing and thrusting.

I recall reading somewhere that the Normans most likely had two types of lances, a lighter one used for throwing, and a heavier one used for thrusting. At any rate, there is evidence of thrusting in the Bayeux Tapestry, so it probably was done, difficult or not.

[philippewillaume]

Hello

Assuming we are talking about war lances.
For the rest of my post please understand spear and lance in their modern meaning as the meaning seems to vary according to the country and the time.

In any case
You seem to have three types of weapons.

Javelin/spears= weapon that re designed to be thrown and not so useful in hand to hand. The length is anything between 4 and 6 feets.
In antiquity this was used by the Gauls or the Numindian cavalry and by lots of light cavalry in the late roman period, so called dark ages and early middle aged. By the 14 to 15th century this is mainly a hunting weapon by Europeans forces.
Thought janites/turcopoles/Persian and Indian still used in a military fashion at that time.

Dom Duarte tells us to cast it and then break at a 45/90 angle (in order to avoid to run over the weapon you just have cast.

Lance= weapon that would be used by a foot soldier this is mainly a hand to hand weapon for stabbing and (sometime slashing) it is usually between 6 and 8 feets.
Lighter models could be thrown but the stiffer models were exclusively hand to hand.
A good exemp,e of that are boar spears.
When thrown they were treated as javelin, or if held in a charge they were used as a contus.

Contus= long lance about 10-12 feet or more, this is the lance used by cataphracts (Byzantine, Sarmatian, Alan, Goth and so on) and possibly by Alexander companions.
An evolution of that is the medieval heavy lance.
This is the heavy cavalry weapons by excellence. They varied from spear like weapon to the lance you can see in the battle of Sam Romano passing by tapered lance like weapon (ie but heavy lance)


In any case, you do not mêlée with a horse, the idea is to use speed and mobility, a stopped horseman is as good as dead.
The concept of horseman standing or walking in the middle of enemy and hacking left right and centre is very good in Hollywood but you are far too much vulnerable to swarming by foot soldier or enemy cavalry.
Basically the chance of retaining your weapon depends on what you are striking it into.
A Samarian using is long land in two hands has a good chance of keeping his weapons for a while

A Norman knight is in the same position, as long as you can move the arm that holds the lance freely, you can have a multi-usage lance or contus. In jousting we are using a 7 foot solid wood (mine is cherry) stomp a steel socket and 5 foot balsa tip, that weight about 6-7 kilos.
Sometime it happens that you hit your opponent with the sockets and sometime you lance goes across him, and you have a good chance of endging on your arse. But since we do not use lance rest you can control the lance so that goes over you.

For a 15 century knight, you need all the power of the horse to do damage. Hence the lance rests on the cuirass and the stop ob the lance. Since saddle were designed to keep the guy in place and that because of the lance rest you can not move the lance as feely as without it is probably better if the lance breaks.

According to Ringeck (and fiore) you can fence with a heavy lance/contus and a lance all the same.
My tries seems to agree with that.

Phil

[Benjamin Smith]

On a different note lances used from horseback (by any of the above definitions) are rarely covered in the manuals. For that matter spears aren't either (although staffs, whose use is very similar are covered extensively).

Talhoffer breifly covers a few techniques that involve lances, or counters to lances, including a few ways to protect yourself with one.

I understand that Fiore and Ringeck do as well, though I've never had the chance to examine these in detail, and not owning a horse I've never had the chance to try them out in practice.

My limited exposure to these sources leads me to believe this (as I've said limited exposure so take this conservatively): The idea was to build up momentum with your steed and mount a straightforward thrust with the lance tucked under the arm (Talhoffer shows this being done without armor). There are few/no detailed instructions as far as I can tell about how to conduct oneself in mounted combat with a lance on the battlefield.

[philippewillaume]

In the lichtanauer tradition there is 4 guards with the lance which leads to 4 pieces.
To summarise quickly, they say that you may as well hit accross the neck of the horse (ie the way you have the lance when you strike) as it is as efficient as the other way and you are better protected.

I have tried the 4 pieces. (I am jousting)

1st: aime at the head and at the last minute drop the lance so that it stikes over you oppoenet and so defelct it.

That does work. However this one is not in ringeck, I believe because it is not as safe as the other one. You deflect the lance of your opponent into you own horse or leg or get it across you belly.

2nd is to preten tha lance is too heay drop it and bring it back up , deflecting the enemy lance on your outside (if need be holding the lance with two hands)

That work well, it is similar to a move you do in aikido with the jo.

3rd is too hold you lance across you sadlle and flip it backup, deflecting his lance accoss yourself

That does work well as well

4th grab you lance in the middle and use you arm to deflet the incoming point as you stab him.
That works well as well.

phil

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Contus= long lance about 10-12 feet or more, this is the lance used by cataphracts (Byzantine, Sarmatian, Alan, Goth and so on) and possibly by Alexander companions.
An evolution of that is the medieval heavy lance.

I'd strongly dispute the idea of an evolutionary link between the kontos (a word that originally meant "oar" or "barge pole;" the Greeks used it to refer to the lance's extreme length) and the medieval lance. They were both used as charging weapons, but the Roman/Parthian/Sarmatian kontos was so long that it had to be wielded in two hands and the method of gripping it seems to have been more of an underarm one than couched in the armpit. The late-medieval heavy lance is more likely to have descended from the one-handed lances in widespread use among the heavy horsemen of the Romano-Germanic successor states in Western Europe.

Not to mention that Alexander's companions didn't use the kontos, but the shorter eight-foot xyston wielded in one hand.

Fencing with anything lighter than a jousting lance is indeed quite practicable in single combat. In a battle though, I've mentioned that the actual timeframe of a direct encounter between two medieval European cavalry formations would usually have been very brief so there would have been neither the opportunity nor the need to "fence" with the lance. Just point it in the right direction and hope it hits something hostile.

(Pointing it in the right direction does require a considerable amount of practice, though.)

Somehow I'm still not convinced that the Normans needed two types of lances. As far as my experience goes, a plain eight-foot-long spear has enough capability for both shock and throwing that there would have been hardly any need to arm the horseman with a different kind of spear. Such a conclusion is apt to appear from the pen of an academic who has never tried to practice combat on horseback. Of course, the Norman horseman might have used more than one kind of spear if we consider that their Germanic and Nordic ancestors had a wide range of spears for handling a variety of situations, but in the absence of primary source evidence I remain rather skeptical of it. The Bayeux tapestry clearly shows only one length and type of spear in Norman hands regardless of the purpose.

About retaining the lance, a late-medieval man-at-arms who has struck his target squarely would probably have retained a hold of his lance--but only a fragment of it. The rest would have been sticking out of the enemy's body or broken up into a multitude of splinters. These lances were designed to break in order to make sure that the wielder wouldn't get clotheslined by a succesful impact. Earlier lances, being lighter, more spear-like, and generally not pointed across the horse's neck, didn't need to be so breakable (and weren't).

I wouldn't comment on whether a Sarmatian would have been able to retain his kontos after an impact simply because we don't have surviving kontoi from that time or any mentions of the techniques used thereof. The closest we can get is probably the Mamluk furusiyya manuals and they mention their long two-handed lances (descended from Central Asian Turkic weapons, and hence a possible descendant of the ancient kontos) as being made of light bamboo, since otherwise their weight would have been excessive; the flexibility of bamboo might have allowed them to resist breaking a bit better.

Still, as far as I recall the kontos and the heavy horseman wielding it weren't actually meant to be an anti-cavalry combination. The cataphracts, in particulat, were meant to break infantry and a Roman observer noted that a good hit from the lance of one such horseman was able to skewer two foot soldiers at once. This would definitely have had quite a significant morale impact upon the footmen.

[steve hick]

I've always been interested in medieval combat, but once thing I've never understand was how lances were used. I know that they were used in jousts, but how were they used in the battlefield? They seem big and heavy. I know calvary used it, but how were they used? From my observations of jousting, they look like they could only be used once in a battle, during the charge, and then had to be discarded. Could they have been used for melee combat as well?

The period resource is Dom Duarte's Livro de ensinaca de bem cavalgar, which has an extensive section on lance, mostly peaceful. On use of lance in war, there is Don Juan de Quixada's work Doctrina del arte de la cavalliera. Both are mentioned in the ARMA bibliography of works on horseback. The former was translated by Antonio Preto, the latter, not translated from the Spanish, is a book edited by Dr. Noel Fallows. The section on combat on horseback in the latter is very short, but he has a section on how to train to use the lance, which is similar to dom Duarte's.

Apparently Pietro Monte has a section on lance in his Collectanea, this is in Latin (and in Spanish), I have not read the relevant sections, can't tell you what is there.

That's pretty much, AFAIK, for period discussions on the how and why. There might be more in the authors on gineta, I've not looked at them.

Steve

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Now that I think of it, the idea of Normans carrying two kinds of spears might not have pertained to the Normans themselves, but rather to the Bretons--who still frequently employed their cavalry in a skirmishing manner. And we know for certain that the Normans often employed Breton allies and mercenaries in their campaigns.

[JeffGentry]

John, Et Al

In the book "The Last Duel" which occured in France in 1386, it has a very good description of the the combat gleaned from the court record's and document's of people who were actualy there.

This is a bit of the description of how the duel started on horse back with tthe lance.

"Jean de Carrouge, as the accuser, began the combat by charging first. The knight lowered his lance into its rest, couching it tightly under his right arm, and took careful aim at his enemy."

Hope this doesn't go to far off topic.

Jeff

[LafayetteCCurtis]

No, not off-topic at all--though the use of the lance on the battlefield seems to have had some important differences from its use on the jousting lists, at least if we can consider Dom Duarte to be a reliable source (and I think we can).

[JeffGentry]

No, not off-topic at all--though the use of the lance on the battlefield seems to have had some important differences from its use on the jousting lists, at least if we can consider Dom Duarte to be a reliable source (and I think we can).

Lafayette

I was thinking a judicial combat would be closer to battlafield use than the sport of jousting, If for nothing else than in a judicial combat there intent was to kill the other guy so that would effect the way they used the the lance.

Jeff

[philippewillaume]

Contus= long lance about 10-12 feet or more, this is the lance used by cataphracts (Byzantine, Sarmatian, Alan, Goth and so on) and possibly by Alexander companions.
An evolution of that is the medieval heavy lance.

I'd strongly dispute the idea of an evolutionary link between the kontos (a word that originally meant "oar" or "barge pole;" the Greeks used it to refer to the lance's extreme length) and the medieval lance. They were both used as charging weapons, but the Roman/Parthian/Sarmatian kontos was so long that it had to be wielded in two hands and the method of gripping it seems to have been more of an underarm one than couched in the armpit. The late-medieval heavy lance is more likely to have descended from the one-handed lances in widespread use among the heavy horsemen of the Romano-Germanic successor states in Western Europe.
Not to mention that Alexander's companions didn't use the kontos, but the shorter eight-foot xyston wielded in one hand. .

Not necessarily
The alano-gothic (and alike) tribes are coming from the same region as the Samarian and were used in the role of cataphract (feodoraty) by the declining roman empire (and settled all over Europe). Some historical evidence seems to point that they were using a “Samaritan” type of lance. Medieval lance did no need to evolve from a shooter one handed lance, long lance have been around for a while.

Not to be utltra pedantic but really the difference between a xyston, a contus and a kontos is more semantic than anything else, as in what people from difference countries calls it that what it is really.
Basically, it is long lance of 3-4.5 meters long used in both hands.
I understand you making a difference with between the xyston and the sarrisa.
A xyston could be around 3 to 4.5 metres and a sarissa could be any thing between 3 and 7 meters nnd there was a distinction between the usage cavalry using xyston and sasrissa

On a side note, It seems that you missed that bit where I said that I sued the word outside his historical context and that I wanted to make the difference between the 2-2.5 meter lance and the 3-6 meters lance used at least very late medieval cavalry.

En of part one