Sword Durability

[Bill Tsafa]

For a long time I have been seeing sword makers hide behind this impenetrable shield of "accurate historical use" when their swords break or otherwise fail. I decided to take a closer look at this and do some in depth research regarding historical use.

My studies show that historicaly almost all knight fought from horseback. If you have the resources to buy a sword you can afford a horse and will not likly be walking into battle if you can help it.

Knights charged with the lance, this was the primary weapon. When that broke they draw the sword. A sword has a longer reach then most maces. Axes may hook onto your opponent and pull you off your own horse or dislocate your shoulder. Flails are awesome, but as the horse is bouncing around you may hit yourself or your horse. So a sword was a very poppular choice from horseback. So knights raced into their enemies at 20 to 30 mph and swung. A head shot was ideal and had the best chance or knocking a man off a horse, but most of the time you made contact with his breastplate or armplate if the opposing enemy was not able to defend the blow.

This is the style of fighting that gave Charlemaign the advantage to expand from Frankia into the Germanic areas that became known as East Frankia in the late 8th century. Prior attempts by the Carolingian and Merelvingian Dynasties had failed. What enabled this new form of fighting was the use of stirrups and the highback saddle in the late 8th century. The Byzantines had been using this method form the 6th century. Swords were used in high speed charges bracing upon the stirrups and saddle. The armies of Charlemaign did not have plate armor, but this is the method of fighting that stayed with knights into the age of Plate armor.

Do you know how much additional power the momentum of the horse will add to the blow? Do you know how greatly ones ability to target unarmed areas of opponents will be diminished? These are the questions we must try to answer here in this thread and present sword manufactures with when they try and tell us about "intended use". The method of fighting I discribed is the predomenant style of fighting that took place between the 8th and 15th century in Europe. The men on foot most likely could not afford swords and used duel-use weapons like axes, spears and clubs.

The knights that charged on horseback put far more stress on their swords then is posible for any of us to generate on the ground. If you have two horses charging from opposite directions at an average 25 mph, and one man strikes the breastplate of the other, simple laws of physics say the impact will be that of the sword moving at 50 mph. Now add to that the power of the swing. I might guess that it might bring the force of the blow up to at least 70 mph. This is enough to prove how important sword durability is. Furthur more given that this was the primary method of combat from the 8th to the 15th century, I think that the vast majority of swords would have been designed for this use. I fear that the originals that modern sword makers are baseing modern replicas on is those peices owned my nobility for display and cerimmonial occasions. I think that very few true battle swords have survived, as most would have been turned into horse shoes after their useful life terminated from use and repeated sharpening.

[Josh Welsh]

I must thoroughly agree. A good sword should be almost impossible to break, unless you are trying too. If your oponant is wearing a full suit of armour, there really isn't a way to hit him without hitting metal. These kind of comments from sword makers are usually excuses for focusing on form over function.

If swords used successfully against armoured opponents have been in use for at least a millenium, modern swords have no excuse for being poorly constructed.

[Bill Tsafa]

I think this refference below will bring everything into focus.
http://www.cavhooah.com/polish.htm

The charge was started at low speed and riders accelerated during its progress, reaching top speed just before the enemy. This not only preserved the horses’ strength, but also had psychological effects on the enemy who saw the preliminaries to the charge. Extremely long but light lances were used to break opponents’ formations, and were supposed to break during the clash. After the lances were gone, sabers and estocs were used.
When the first charge was not successful, Hussaria withdrew and charged again. There were battles in which the same troops charged 10 times and later helped pursue the enemy. This was possible only with highly trained units that could withdraw and regroup in an orderly manner.

[Matt Easton]

Err.. Bill, been reading too many comic books? <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

If you look at the historical art and read the historical sources you'll find many references to swords breaking. Sorry to spoil the dream.

Matt

[Matt Easton]

"My studies show that historicaly almost all knight fought from horseback."

What are 'your studies' Bill? I have a degree from UCL in medieval archaeology and history, specialised in warfare and have been researching WMA for about 9 years and running a WMA group for about 5. I have lectured and taught all over Europe. These are my studies. You are wrong.. even just a little bit of reading of a simpleton source like an Osprey Publishing book would show you this.
What proportion of 'knights' fought on horseback at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 Bill? I'm afraid that making sweeping statements about 'how knights fought' is not a very good way to earn respect. You clearly have a lot to learn, so I suggest you start reading more and writing less. I'm trying to be polite because you sound young.

"The men on foot most likely could not afford swords and used duel-use weapons like axes, spears and clubs. "

Sigh... Many armies chose to use their men-at-arms (who were not all knights) on foot. The English army at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt for example. At Poitiers Froissart tells us that the French men-at-arms dismounted and shortened their lances to fight on foot.
Seriously man, before going on an internet forum and writing stuff that's just plain rubbish, why don't you invest in some books and do some reading? In fact most of this can be found online now...

"I think that very few true battle swords have survived"

By this point I am almost weeping... Read Oakeshott's books. There are in fact many surviving swords with damage from use, and ones which have been found in rivers in barrels which are obviously loot from the battlefield (in this case, Castillon).

What is the point spouting off about a subject you clearly know so little about? I may as well say that all Americans wear cowboy hats and ride horses and that Sheriffs all carry Colt Peacemakers.. just because I saw it in a movie does not make it true. <img src="/forum/images/icons/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Matt

[Bill Tsafa]

I did not say that ALL knights fought from horseback ALL the time. I have researched this deeply and have found they knights prefered to fight from horseback. This is true in the time of Charlamain to the time of the Crusades extending all the way to the time of the Hussars.

I also did not say that swords did not break. One of the benefits of fighting from horse is that you can carry more then one weapon on the horse if the sword does break. This is also if you drop it which can also happen.

http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&amp;DocID=530

In medieval times, the knight on horseback was dominant on the battlefield. Then the British came up with a devastating anti-knight weapon: the longbow, which could penetrate chain mail at 100 paces. At the battle of Crecy in 1346, and again at Agincourt in 1415, charging French knights were mowed down in rows.
Yet the use of horsemen in battle persisted for centuries, even as combat mortality rates soared. A man on horseback was much faster, to be sure, than a man on foot, and cavalry could always be used to terrorize the enemy. Polish knights routed the Turks outside Vienna, Austria, in 1683 wearing feathered caps that whistled in the wind, like birds of prey. But the main reason that the military style of large-scale cavalry formations lasted for so long was cultural: Officers and gentlemen liked riding around on horseback.

The issue I addressing here is sword makers telling everyone that swords should not be used in any forceful maner to stress it. I am bringing to light that swords were in fact used very forcefully from horse back with more power then any man can generate from the ground.

[JeanryChandler]

Matt,

While I agree with your comments on the historical data about how knights fought, I don't think your tone is helpful or in the spirit of the forums here. Wrong or right Bill is earnestly attempting to discuss the use of swords in an historical context and with all due respect, dripping with sarcasm is not condusive to an enlightened discussion.

And quite frankly, he does have a point, knights did fight on horseback quite into the the late Renaissance and through the periods of all the battles you mention, in fact it is their primary if not exclusive use was as heavy cavalry throughout the period he discussed. Whats more they did wield swords and did strike each other no doubt at full gallop against armor.

Mocking his statement that few true battle swords have survived, is a bit extreme. Yes we have some... but what percentage of the original number would you say? I have Oakeshotts Records of the Medieval Sword and relatively few of the weapons he lists there have what he felt he could definitively describe as battle damage.

Bottom line, there is no conclusive evidence that Bill is wrong on his fundamental point about the durability of replica swords.


Bill, Matt also does have a point. Knights often fought on foot ... speaking of the Franks Charles Martel victory at the battle of Tours in 732 was won with infantry (foot soldiers) facing off the Arab Cavalry... many key battles in the Renaissance involved dismounted knights as well, as Matt indicates. This was particularly true of English knights as the British increasingly relied on their own regular infantry such as 'Yeoman archers'.

I reccomend taking a cue from Matt and investing in some of those good old Osprey Military books. They range a bit in quality but are often written by quite knowlegable experts in the field, many of them are quite good technically accurate military history overviews, they usually cite primary sources and have plenty of photos of actual surviving kit from the period(s) in question. Perhaps best of all they are relatively inexpensive and have good bibliogrophies. You can gradually build up a library of them one subject at a time, and they can provide a good starting point for researching a particular period you are interested in.

You might also enjoy tackling some meatier historical overviews. Hans Delbruck is said to be somewhat dated in his overall analysis but I enjoyed his Medieval Warfare immensely, it includes many detailed accounts of specific battles in the period and for a military history reads pretty well.

Jr

[Bill Tsafa]

Thanks for you help Jeanry. I will continue to research this further. It is imposible to research evrything at once. Evently I will get around to rounding everything out. The main purpose of the research that I am doing is to find instances were swords were used in high-speed, high-impact shock tactics.

I do not presuppose that I know anything, nor that my sources are the only sources, nor that they will be 100% correct all the time. That is why I am bringing my research to this forum. So we can discuss, anylize and research further. In the future I will open another thread to specifily discuss medieval and calvery tactics. I would like the focus of this thread to be the use of swords in those calvery charges that did occur and the historic durability of those swords. We can then compare them to our modern replicas.

Here is another source regarding the Polish Hussars and their caverly charges against armored opponents:

http://www.jasinski.co.uk/wojna/comp/comp06.htm

Once the lances were discarded and the hussar was in close melee he could chose from a selection of weapons. Against heavier opponents he would pick his 'palasz' (broadsword - see right) or 'koncerz' (estoc - see left), both carried below the saddle. The palasz was used early in our period, it was a heavy slashing sword most useful against heavily armoured opponents but as the use of armour declined it tended to give way to the preferred koncerz.

[Shane Smith]

Jeanry is correct. Please keep it scholarly gentlemen. Points of discussion can be stated and refuted without direct insult or exchanging barbs.

[Josh Welsh]

Everyone here has a point. Let's all try to keep things civil if possible. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

In reallity, there were so many different battles, and we are talking about such a huge span of time, things changed. Unless we pinpoint one specific point in time, and talk about how a particular battle was fought, we can't say one person is always wrong, and another always right. Tactics and weapons changed overtime, and according to the situation, as they do today. Now we fight with fully automatic rifles, C4 plastic explosives, aircraft, guided missles. 150 years ago, automatic rifles were unheard of, tnt was the best explosive of the time, aircrafts were just being born, and a missile, what's that?

So let's all try to work together to unravel the mysteries of the past. Arguing won't help.

[Craig Peters]

Bill,

One thing that has to be taken into consideration, I think, is what a given sword was designed to be able to do best. Your argument has better application with swords that are specialized for horseback. I think it becomes less valid as we start to look swords designed for other functions.

There's a couple of other things to consider. Swords, as we all know, are cutting weapons, and in order to cut effectively, they need to have fairly thin edges. Inevitably, thin edges leads to the increased capacity for damage to accrue from use. It would seem to me that no matter what one does, thin edges are going to be fairly prone to being damaged, and I'm not sure there's a whole lot that a swordsmith can do about this, whether he is medieval or modern. There's also surviving period original swords that are in quite good condition such that it's possible to see, very accurately, how thick the edges are. I'm sure someone like Peter Johnsson has come across a few of these in his research. Thus, if Peter faithfully reproduces a sword based upon extensive research on the edge thickness, and then people complain that the edges are too easily damaged, we are the ones with the misperceptions about the weapon.

There's another thing to consider; it was an idea that came to me after reading Matt's post. Sure swords break, and the event is sometimes recorded within historical documents. But what about edge damage from battle? I'm certainly not an expert on primary medieval sources on the subject of battles and wars, but I don't know of any sources off-hand that even mention edge damage that occurred to a sword. If someone knows of an instance, correct me. Assuming that this is the case though, we could draw the conclusion that sword edges were rarely damaged in battle. But, this doesn't seem to be consistent about how we know that swords respond to use and abuse. So another possible conclusion is that damage to sword edges after battles was so common that no one would even think to write about such a trivial thing in a historical chronicle. If that's the case, then we might need to rethink our complaints about edge damage. Something from MyArmoury.com speaks to this:

"This is why Oakeshott believed the Type XII to be one of the hardest swords to classify. Many swords that appear to be of Type XII designation may be, in fact, of Type X or even Type XIV. Due to continued sharpening throughout their working life, many swords will exhibit more profile taper, or a different profile altogether, than they possessed when new. "

http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_spotxii.html

Assuming this is correct, namely that historical blades were resharpened so often that they can be confused within Oakeshott's system of typology because of radically different profile, it would suggest that medieval swords were sharpened and resharpened to a high degree. I'm not sure how often a given medieval sword would have seen battle, and for how long it would have been reused, but if it's profile could be altered that radically, that would suggest that edge damage is very common and might have occurred for a variety of reasons.

So, when we consider the three main points, namely that swords do have thin edges; thin edges inherently are prone to suffering damage, whether they were crafted by medieval smiths or modern; and that numerous swords were sharpened so extensively that identifying their blade type becomes difficult, I think we can be more confident in modern manufacturer's blades that some of you currently are. One of the ideas that lends support to being able to reconstruct historic European martial arts is that there's only so many ways to use a sword; the same might also be said about making one. I don't want to imply that modern swordsmith's edges are perfect, (if for no other reason than the fact that perfection means the smith can become apathetic in trying to improve their skills), but I think they may be a lot better than some people give them credit.

[Risto Rautiainen]

I remember one. It was in a late viking saga IIRC. It was about a battle, where the blades of the men got so nicked that they wouldn't cut properly anymore. At that moment the leader of those men passed down new swords from his own depository. Sorry I can't remember where I read that, but if anyone else has read it they can clarify.

[Matt Easton]

Good replies - I apologise for getting agro before.
Whenever we are talking about medieval swords there is something vital we need to keep in mind - CONTEXT.
Sword were rarely the primary weapon, they were a *sidearm*. Like a pistol. The assault rifle of the time was usually the lance, spear, pollaxe, bow, crossbow etc. (Ignoring the light cavalry/hussars of the renaissance and after).
In most battles the majority of the loosers ran away, they were not slain during the battle proper (and the exceptions to this, where large numbers were killed, like Agincourt and Towton were instances where many prisoners were killed after surrendering).
Therefore we have a situation whereby most of the swords on a typical medieval battlefield might not actually get used... And even if they did get drawn, how long do most mortal encounters on a battlefield last? A couple of seconds maybe, before being disengaged from your enemy or one of you being incapacitated, winning or one of you being swamped/outnumbered.

Before considering what medieval swords were made to resist, you've got to understand the context of where, when and how they were used. If you look in Froissart's chronicles (the illustrated late-15thC versions) there are broken weapons of all types littered all over the ground.. So what happens if your spear breaks? Well, you pull your sword out. What happens if that breaks? Well you pull your dagger out and wrestle. Or you pick up a weapon from the ground.
At the end of the day weapons of all types did break in use - there is masses of evidence in art and literature for it. But the training of a medieval knight, as shown in Fiore dei Liberi for example, means YOU are the weapon, not the sword or dagger. You can fight on regardless of whether your sword breaks or not - and according to Froissart, who lived and witnessed acts of the Hundred Years War, swords did break.

Three further notes:
1) Let's not confuse British with medieval English The Scots and Irish would not like it..
2) 19thC light cavalry, using sabres, also found that their swords sometimes broke. This is well documented in reports of the time and shown in 19thC art.
3) Medieval swords have been well studied metalurgically by Dr.Alan Williams, who has pulished the seminal a massive work 'The Knight and the Blast Furnace'. They are of similar hardness on average to modern replicas (50 Rockwell), and so prone to similar surface damage, and in some cases more prone, as they contain slag deposits, which modern steel does not. However, a feature of original *longswords* that I have noted is that they are often thicker at the forte than most modern replicas. In examples we measured it was not unusual to have blades which were 7or 8mm (and up to 1cm) thick at the base of the blade (and therefore tang), while most modern replicas are often in the 5mm range. Albion make blades thicker though, as they are correctly modelled on historical blades, and Angus Trim is starting to make longsword blades of this proportion as well, up to 9mm at the base of the blade.

Regards,
Matt

[Bill Tsafa]

Hi Risto, I have heard of such acounts. I even remeber reading somewhere that due to the thinness of the swords they would often fold and the Vikings woul have to straigthen them out. Sorry I can't remeber where I read that either.

As some of you have noticed the time period that I am looking at is rather broad. My reason for looking at such a broad period that spans all of Europe and beyond is because I want to get an overall consensous of how durable swords historicly were and their use in hard hitting tactics that stress the whole sword from point to pommol. I did not want to confine my research to a smaller period because that might be subject to isolated cucumstances. I am trying to discover the overal rules rather then the exceptions relating to the forceful use of swords in combat.

Below I present another example for discusion from the period of the Crusades:

http://www.ordotempli.org/knights_templar_armour_research1.htm

The mounted Knights Templar preferred the "conrois" tactic, consisting of squadrons of 25 or 50 men, charging in single line, so close that they rode knee to knee. Such tactic was so successful it remained the core charge for three centuries, as recorded during the 12th century with " the charging Knight being able to punch a hole in the walls of Babylon" and a scholars statement made during the 3rd Crusade being " one group of Knights rode so close that an apple thrown into their midst would not have touched the ground".

The charge consisted of two initial stages, the lance was first couched then raised with the charge begun at the slow trot, only breaking into the full gallop with the lance lowered at the very last moment so as not to tire the horses, and most importantly, not to lose the formation.

The Knight was taught never to look at his opponents lance or sword point during his charge, as this would make him close his eyes or flinch at the time of impact. His role was to either "drive the iron" into the enemy, unseat his foe or overthrow the enemys horse by squarely striking the knight or his shield.

Upon the success of the charge breaking through the defence line, the Knight being thrust into the melee, would draw his secondary weapon and rain blows in a well aimed but expeditious manner, never turning round as this wastes time and tires the Knight.

I wish to draw attention to the last paragraph. The statement of interest is that the knight would draw his secondary weapon, very likely his prized sword with the crusiform hilt. I would also like to draw attention to where it says the knight "would not turn.... waste time" but rather continue the forward momentum and "rain blows". It is also interesting to keep in mind that while in Jerousalem, the knights did not have the same access to the raw materials that they had in their homelands. This is something that I want to research further to be certain, but it seems on the surface that whatever armor and weapons the Crusaders used had to be durable.

I am not looking for evidence that these swords stayed shiney any new after a battle, afterall even modern axes used to cut wood get worn and need to be sharpened before used again. What I think that it would be enough to expect that those historical swords remained functional after a good sharpening.

I have seen in a few other threads pictures of swords bending at the tip and breaking completly in the tang. I myself have had three of my own swords break in the tang just from striking semi-hard targets on the ground. The force I applied is a fraction of what charge on horseback would generate.

[Bill Tsafa]

Hi Craige, I read your post. I do agree with that some swords were not designed for hard charges. A rapeer and other civilian weapons are prime examples. I think we should discuss posible ways of trying determing what was the breakdown of different types of swords produced in different periods and in what quantities. Such statistics should not be caculated from the surviving antics because that might favor the least used swords. I think we would have to focus on hints in writtings of different periods.

For a long time I wondered why crusading knights used one hand swords at all instead of hand and half ones. The answer became a little more clear when I factored in warfare from horseback.