How common were sword accidents in history?

[Jonathan_Kaplan]

I was wondering, historically, how common were swordsmen SEVERELY injuring *themselves* in accidents in training? Don't most accidents also require someone else to be there, ie, you accidentally injure the other person? Based on the historical record, how common were self-inflicted accidental injuries during actual fights, ie, something the swordsman did to themselves, and not what the other guy did? What sorts of things were common?

Do the manuals have much to say on ways to prevent accidents and safety measures? What are some relevant descriptions or accounts on this topic? Thanks!

[s_taillebois]

Might be more a matter of what we would not think of as a potentially lethal accident.

Wasters not being considered, if practicing with live steel the largest issue would have been fairly minor (by modern standards) cuts leading to infections.

If one was using a battlefield weapon for practice it would be covered in various blood, and bacterial pathogens. And the cleaning practices of the time, namely urine, sand & tow would have done little about that condition. And most of the oils of the time were animal based which might have even encouraged the growth of such pathogens.

In that case what today would be a hospital visit and some stitches and a stern lecture from the doc and some antibiotics, back then would have been very likely systemic infection.

That all said, these men trained with these weapons from childhood, and so would be much less likely than people today to be having individual accidents. In sparring more so because the training standard was much, much more rigerous...'training with intent' to the nee plus ultra.

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Other injuries were training related but not as likely a solo condition. In the book about the Towton dead, there is quite a bit of medical stuff about the changes in bone et al which was a result of the intense training these men had...bone spurs, impingements and the link. Which today would be considered injuries, back then norm for the course.

At both Towton and the swordsman buried at Jamestown, a fair amount of long term stress injuries to bone, distortions and the like as a result of training and use of these weapons.

[Jonathan_Kaplan]

What about stories or anecdotes regarding these trained people *injuring themselves in such a way as their foe doesn't do it for them* in a real duel or in a street fight or a war? Say, messing up to harm themselves due to the pressure? Are there any stories of that happening?

[s_taillebois]

What about stories or anecdotes regarding these trained people *injuring themselves in such a way as their foe doesn't do it for them* in a real duel or in a street fight or a war? Say, messing up to harm themselves due to the pressure? Are there any stories of that happening?

They had a more indirect means of acheiving that end. One was to leave the sword at the altar of the local church and check into the monastery for a while as a lay confraternity.

The other, as was shown when Bernini went after his brother over a argument about a woman, was to run into the church as sanctuary, which wasa more temporary solution. Caravaggio was trying to do the same thing when by trying to get to the Vatican before the Knights of Saint John could get him for attacking one of their men.

Not sure if the boundary stone tradition applied to duels.

Outright wounding oneself or other means to run out of a duel may have been rare. Using Shakespeare as a example of the attitudes of the late period, Mercutio is contemptuous of Romeo for trying to avoid the duel with Tybalt (who'd threatened to kill Romeo, but was Juliets cousin) and so starts a fight with Tybalt as means to reduce his friends dishonor.

In earlier contexts in Njals saga he tries everything he can do to defuse the tensions for his friend Gunnar (Gunnars wife, Hallgerd was prideful and contentious and tried to cause vendettas. Njals wife Bergthora violently opposed Halgerds insults). Gunnar is banished for various killings his wife had provoked, decides not to leave, and is killed. Njals son, kills the man who'd killed Gunnar, which drags Njal into fighting his own vendetta.

Essentially in Njals saga he tries to mitigate the duels and vendettas but despite his efforts ends up dying in the sequence of fights, duels and ambushes. So that saga might indicate how hard it was to actually get out of these situations...at least for the Norse.

[Jonathan_Kaplan]

I meant by accident. Not intentionally... like, accidentally messing up due to the pressure of a real fight and seriously injuring themselves, maybe still able to ultimately win the fight, but probably their foe exploited their mistake and self-inflicted injury.

[s_taillebois]

I meant by accident. Not intentionally... like, accidentally messing up due to the pressure of a real fight and seriously injuring themselves, maybe still able to ultimately win the fight, but probably their foe exploited their mistake and self-inflicted injury.

Offhand the closest that might come to that condition would be the furor Celtica, or the Beserkers. They would occasionally wound themselves in their fury.

Whether their opponents could benefit from that probably varied a great deal. The Romans said of the Celts that they did not have endurance, which could have been a condition related to body damage and fatigue from the Furor Celtica.

The Viking sagas mention that Beserkers would be exhausted and unable to fight after their beserker phase, which may be one of the reasons that particular tactic faded away. But offhand cannot think of any case where the Saxons or Franks were able to take advantage of a self injured or exhausted beserker.

[Stacy Clifford]

Once you've developed proper muscle memory and spatial sense through training, it's actually pretty difficult to injure yourself with your own weapon. I've heard of it happening once or twice among modern practitioners, but don't know of any historical examples. I'm sure that everything that can happen in a fight has happened to somebody somewhere at least once, but the vast majority of fights in human history weren't written about by anyone, so I would expect such a rare circumstance to be rarer still in the literature. You're probably far more likely to blow out a knee or twist an ankle by taking a bad step than to cut yourself with your own sword (though I suppose the former could cause the latter). As for self-injury happening in training, I would imagine that was kept out of written records to avoid embarrassment if it ever happened.

The one exception I can think of would be fighting with knives. If a fight with knives goes to the ground, it is not that difficult to roll onto your own dagger in the struggle.