Mace fighting?

[Benjamin Parker]

Can anyone tell me anything about how one would fight with a mace?

[Corey Roberts]

Hit the other guy in the head.

[Sal Bertucci]

I mean, It's a club. You use timing, footwork, and proper technique. You have to compensate for the different balance of a mace compared to a sword though. For that reason they also tended to be shorter. B/c of that I would think that it would be best used with a shield.

[Stacy Clifford]

You're still going to use the same 8 lines of attack and you can still use forehand and backhand blows (equivalent to true & false edge strikes), and you can thrust with just about anything, pointy or not, but it's not going to have the agility to defend as well as a sword. In the manuals you see it mostly used in judicial duels with large shields or by guys who are armored head to toe and can afford to miss a parry or two. The great thing about the stuff we study is that no weapon is mysterious. Even if there's no specific teaching on one, if you've learned the principles from another then you can apply them enough to use almost any weapon effectively. Maces and clubs are pretty simple and straightforward and I imagine the masters probably considered any instruction on them a waste of valuable parchment and ink.

[John Farthing]

Hans Talhoffer covers the use of the club in his writings on Judicial Dueling while, Joachim Meyer advises us that the Dussack might be employed to train and develop skills with all single handed weapons.

[Keith Culbertson]

I agree with Stacy that one simply must apply what techniques will make sense to do with different weapons what one has already learned to do with a sword. However, each different weapon might also provide a few things one cannot do with a sword (entanglement with a flail, hooks with a short axe, different grips/leverage, momentum, etc)--those are the things it would be nice to find in a manual, but for now are left to the imagination.

[Maxime Chouinard]

I suppose this would have been a reliable technique since it's basically a mace: http://quebec.shinkendo.ca/textes/stick_edited.pdf

[Peter Goranov]

Heavy Cavalry used a one-handed mace as a side arm, the strength of the blow aided by the charging steed. Two handed maces and war hammers were effective against plate, but one had to be well armored himself to use them effectively (as was mentioned). Piercing trough the joints, inflicting blunt trauma wounds, hooking limbs come to mind as a viable means of fighting.

[Toke Krebs Niclasen]

I saw an interesting picture in the crime museeum in Rothenburg.

It was a judicial duel, the man was standing in a hole to his midrift, one hand tied behind his back and a wooden club turned to a high lensshaped head.
The woman were given a stone to fit in her scarf, giving her a large flail, tied to her wrist.

It didn´t say wether they got training first, but anyway it must have been nasty, fighting for your life like that.

[Stacy Clifford]

I saw an interesting picture in the crime museeum in Rothenburg.

It was a judicial duel, the man was standing in a hole to his midrift, one hand tied behind his back and a wooden club turned to a high lensshaped head.
The woman were given a stone to fit in her scarf, giving her a large flail, tied to her wrist.

It didn´t say wether they got training first, but anyway it must have been nasty, fighting for your life like that.

Right, there's a section in Talhoffer exactly like that. The object was for the woman to drag the man out of the hole or the man to drag the woman into it. May not have been to the death, but I imagine those fights got pretty ugly sometimes.

[terry brown]

Can anyone tell me anything about how one would fight with a mace?

>
Hi Benjamin,
>
I just came across your request and so am posting an interesting piece on uing the mace. The piece was supplied to me by a friend and IIRC the original is held at the British Library. I also published this over at SFI.
>
Best wishes,
Terry Brown.
>
>
From the Nihayat al-su?l wa-l-umniyya fi ta?lim a?mal al-furusiyya

THE FIFTH LESSON ON THE USE OF THE MACE

In this lesson there are many useful points which are not found
elsewhere, and there are also questions and answers.


The man who uses a mace does not have to fear it breaking or
becoming blunt, as in the case of the sword. He can strike with it as
and where he likes, as he can with stones or pieces of wood or iron and
so forth, unlike in the use of other weapons.


Question: Where is the mace carried on the saddle?
Answer: On the right side. Horsemen of old used
to put it on the left of the saddle, but the right is
better.

Question: How does the mace-bearer strike a blow with
his mace?
Answer: He strikes a sideways blow with it so that it
does not slip from his hand and injure either his mount
or himself.

Question: Where should he strike his enemy with his
mace?
Answer: He should strike a man on his nose. If he is
unable to do this then he should strike the forehead.
If this is impossible, then on his right upper arm if he
is on the right side, or his left upper arm if he is on
the left. Alternatively, he should strike the front of
his horse?s head, on the forelock, or if that is
impossible on the front of one of its shoulders.

Question: What does the mace-bearer do when he
meets the bearer of any other weapons?
Answer: He can breal lances, swords, bows, or
shields. He can smash helmets, forearms, thighs,
and trunks, and he can shatter bones. He can
also throw his mace at the horseman or his horse,
or at the footsoldiers. Or he can do whatever occurs
to him.

Question: Where does the horseman hold his mace when
he has withdrawn it from its suspensory strap before an
encounter?
Answer: He holds it between his hands on the saddle,
in the centre part of the saddle between himself and the pommel.

Question: How should the footsoldier hold his mace in an
encounter?
Answer: He should lay it on his left forearm gripping it with
his right hand and with his shield in his left hand, in the same
way as a sword.

Question: When is it appropriate for the footsoldier to hold
his mace vertical?
Answer: He should hold it thus (Note 1), as we mentioned
concerning the sword, on passing between ranks of troops
and in the presence of kings and sultans.

Question: How should the mace be thrown?
Answer: The mace-bearer should take hold of it at the grip
withthe head of the mace held away from the body and lift
the hand until it is level with the shoulder. Then he should
stretch out his hand to full extent so that the weight (Note 2)
of his mace may have more effect.

Question: How heavy should a mace be?
Answer: Its weight should not be beyond the strength of
the man carrying it so that he can weild it effectively. I have
heard it said by friends who fought in campaigns against
against the Unbelievers that a mace should weigh 150
dirhams (Note 3). That is a good weight; a mace may be
less than that but not more.


Note 1
There is a further word in the text apparently describing
how the mace is held, in addition to ?vertical?. It is from the same
root as ?passing? in the next line, but its exact sense in this context
is obscure.

Note 2
This is the apparent sense of the word given in the text which
literally means ?mercy? and which I assume to be a miscopy (not uncommon in this Ms).

Note 3
In modern Egypt a dirham is about 3.12 grams. For twelfth
century Syria it was apparently about 3.14 grams (see W. Hinz: Islamische Masse und Gewichte, Handbuch der Orientalistik, Leiden 1955). 150 dirhams
would thus equate to about 470 grams.

[Sal Bertucci]

Well that was suitably cool. Thank you for that post.

[Jaron Bernstein]

Fascinating. Is there an Arabic fechtbuch tradition out there as well (in terms of the books existing even if not in their revival)?

[Maxime Chouinard]

I get that Dr. Manouchehr Moshtagh Khorasani is investigating a couple of them: http://www.arms-and-armor-from-iran.de/b02_author.html

He posts sometimes about it in Swordforum, but I'm curious of seeing the results.

[Jaron Bernstein]

I get that Dr. Manouchehr Moshtagh Khorasani is investigating a couple of them: http://www.arms-and-armor-from-iran.de/b02_author.html

He posts sometimes about it in Swordforum, but I'm curious of seeing the results.

That would be pretty sweet. I am curious if the literature in Arabic and Persian deals only with macro-military topics (like the Byzantine books on the topic which address tactics, logistics and the like, but not how to use a particular weapon) or if they have more specific things like a Ringeck or Fiore manual.