Worse than Hollywood!

[Ray_McCullough]

Justin you must have read "Secrets of the Samurai" by casle books. It has other inacuracies too. the best part of that book was the step by step dressing in armor. The book does mention the horrible defeats the samurai suffered in peasant revolts. They even requested help from the portuguese to fire there naval guns on the peasants to break a seige. The Japanese pirates never fared well in there attempts to capture English ships.

The truth is to hard to find among the crap. and in hollywood they can make more money on false information then they can with the truth. They call it "poetic license".

I saw the beginning of Kingdom of Heaven today . there is no high guard resembling Vom Dach in the Italian fechtbuchs is there? If not why did they take the time to makeup one when Vom Dach exists?

[Jaron Bernstein]

Speaking of which, at work today I saw a stage combat class with steel blunts. Egads it was bad <img src="/forum/images/icons/tongue.gif" alt="" />

For Kingdom of Heaven, I actually enjoyed much of the longsword parts of the forest ambush fight. It actually shows halfswording!

[Brian Hunt]

Hi Ray,

Yes there is a Italian High guard called "posta di falcon." It is found in Filippos Vadi's manual.

Brian Hunt
GFS

[Justin Lompado]

Yes Ray I have read "Secrets of the Samura". I was sure someone would be aware of the book and I'm glad you were. You're right, there are other innacuracies, I just found those to be some of the more blatant. Unfortunatley, I have yet to read a book that comprehensive that has any fewer innacuracies. I apologize for not including the titles of my books. The other book, the one with the Frankish sword, is titled "Battle: A Visual Journey Through 5,000 Years of Combat".

[Justin Lompado]

I totally agree Szab. That is a whole other area of our study that must, for the sake of utility and necessity, take a backseat to weapon training, but nevertheless is absolutley vital to the accurate reconstruction of WMA (what's the point of learning to fight like knights and men-at-arms of old if we dont know what tey were fighting for?). Not that we have no idea, but a good in-depth analysis of knightly virtue and philosophy, and how it translated into battlefield performance, would be heartily welcomed.

[Ray_McCullough]

Hey Brian Thanks for the correction on Vadi s posta di falcone.