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Matthew Amt
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 Posted: Wed 09 Jul, 2014 8:35 am Post subject: |
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I realized something a couple posts back, a trick of perspective. *I* see Roman swords (and Greek) as thin and light and fast, because I've been doing a lot more research especially on Greek swords, and finding that the vast majority of our modern reproductions are massive and wide and thick and clunky by comparison. I also seem them as very tough and functional, with breakage or significant bending due to battle use being pretty uncommon.
Of course, to someone used to the highly flexible blades of fine steel from the later middle ages and Renaissance, sure, Roman blades are gonna look like choppers made by orcs! So I'm learning to be a little more careful in making or reading such comparisons.
On butted mail: IF you can find ancient European mail (Roman, Celtic, Iberian, Hellenistic, etc.) that has been proven by microanalysis/X-rays/etc. to be made with butted rings (not just repairs, bits of jewelry, or brass trim bits), lots of folks will love to see it. I have heard that the Kirkburn shirt is made with butted rings, but I'm not sure that was actually confirmed by scientific tests. There are LOTS of bits of Roman mail that survive, and so far they have all turned out to be riveted. When mail first appeared, it was used only by the wealthy (of course!), so there was no point in trying to make it faster or more cheaply, especially when such shortcuts would drastically reduce its effectiveness. Plus those cultures relied heavily on slave labor, so the only cost was the metal. Speed of production was almost never a factor, since most troops fought unarmored. If you REALLY needed something that was cheaper and faster than riveted mail, scale armor was well known. Leather armor (*not* boiled, from what we can tell) and quilted linen were also known, but I find it interesting that depictions of these, and finds of the metal fittings from them, all seem to predate the invention of mail.
None of this *proves* the non-existence of butted mail, obviously, I'm simply presenting counters to the arguments presented here. Things that seem logical to us may not have been logical to the ancients.
And I'm dragging things off-topic, sorry!
Matthew
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Dan Howard
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| Posted: Wed 09 Jul, 2014 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Jason S. Gleason wrote: | | Since butted maille was cheap and easy to produce compared to riveted maille, |
This is based on misconceptions stemming from our modern mass production society and the way the cost of raw materials and the cost of labour has been severely skewed towards the latter. The Romans couldn't simply go down to the hardware store and get a roll of wire for a few bucks. Wire production was extremely time consuming and expensive using the available technology. The majority of the cost of mail armour was in the production of the wire to begin with. The cost of labour to make the links and then weave the links together into mail is a minor part of the overall cost and the amount of labour required for the actual riveting process is just a portion of that. The difference between the cost of butted mail and riveted mail was therefore negligible. The reason butted mail was occasionally made instead of riveted mail in various times and places had nothing to do with cost. It was more likely a deficiency in the skills required to make riveted mail.
This may prove edifying
http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_mail.html
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen and Sword Books
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John Hardy
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| Posted: Thu 10 Jul, 2014 1:43 am Post subject: Re: Short swords versus longer single handed swords? |
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| Spenser T. wrote: | Hello again myArmoury,
I'm wondering what advantages (if any) a short sword (by this I mean a sword with the blade length of a roman gladius or shorter) would have over a longer sword (by this I mean such swords possessing a length of about a roman spatha, celtic la tene long sword, or germanic migration period sword).
I'm primarily asking this because one of my friends is an iron age germanic re-enactor and martial arts practitioner, and he has what I think is a better than average amount of knowledge on this stuff (so I generally believe what he tells me about these things). He said to me once in conversation that in the iron age it could be seen that longer swords were cavalry weapons and short swords were infantry weapons. He told me that this could be observed in the roman, mainland celtic, and germanic cultures of the time.
Why would iron age warriors outfit their foot-soldiers with shorter swords, instead of swords the same length as those given to cavalry? does this indicate that there was some advantage to having a smaller sword if you were an iron age infantryman? or would this have been this way for an entirely different reason?
Thank you for any input you may offer on this |
To drag this discussion directly back to the original question, I would suggest that the OP should widen his inquiry: Instead of asking why the Romans used short swords for the infantry and longer swords for the cavalry, he should better ask why almost everybody with regular standing armies of cavalry and infantry did so - right up until the age of the machine gun.
The last major European conflict in which swords could be considered to be important battle weapons was probably the Napoleonic Wars. With gunpowder warfare still predominantly fought with flintlock smoothbores of limited range and accuracy, most land battles ultmately ended in close-quarters hand-to-hand clashes. The average soldier could reliably expect to get his bayonet and musket butt bloodied in battle several times in the course of his career; a cavalryman or cavalry officer might carry a carbine and/or pistols but could expect to use his lance or sabre in almost any engagement; and an infantry officer, who would usually be equipped with a sword and a brace of pistols as his personal weapons, stood an excellent chance of eventually having to use that sword to defend himself from enemies armed with muskets and bayonets, cavalry sabres or lances.
Even at sea, a huge proportion of ship engagements were ultimately resolved by close-quarter boarding actions, and a naval officer could expect to use his personal sword at least once or twice in his career (and far more than that if he served on something like the frigates).
The average Napoleonic cavalry sabre or sword had a blade between 30 and 35 inches long. The British 1796 pattern Light Cavalry Sabre, for example, had a curved blade 33" long.
What did infantry officers carry? Generally something shorter.
The 'official' British infantry officer and NCO sword was the 1796 Pattern Infantry Officer and NCO Swords. They had a very nice shellguard and knucklebow topping a 32" spadroon blade. It was a straight, stiff, single-edged blade roughly an inch wide and 1/4" thick at the hilt (at least on the samples in my collection) that could give a stinging cut but was really optimized for a thrust. Essentially, it was a duellist's weapon. Naval officers in the same era were generally expected to carry similar swords.
The 1796 Pattern Infantry Officer's Sword was light to carry, nimble to use ... and almost without exception, every genuine fighting officer hated it. They said that while the blade was nimble, it was also ineffective: too narrow and too light to give an effective cut (especially to someone wearing a heavy woollen uniform), while at the same time, not stiff enough for an effective thrust (especially through someone wearing several layers of woollen clothes topped with a bunch of leather equipment). And, while it was too light to parry attacks from weapons like bayonetted muskets, or cavalry lances and sabres, it was also too long to use in tight quarters. In short, as a weapon, it was useless.
What did a lot of British officers carry instead? Sabres or short swords. Again, I have several in my collection. The majority of the infantry sabres - either Napoleonic Era officer's sabres or earlier infantry hangers - have blades between 20 and 30 inches long (roughly 5 to 10 inches shorter than a cavalry sabre). The blades are generally 1 1/2 to 2 inches wide. And the knucklebows and shellguards on the hilts can best be described as 'substantial'. In fact, in comparison to the genteel and gentlemanly 1796 Officers Sword, the swords and sabres carried by the professonal "officers and gentlemen" are positively 'Orc-like'.
On the subject of length, one thing to bear in mind is that the cavalry in different eras and places have often carried their swords in scabbards that were mounted on the saddle. The horse transported the sword, and the trooper either never wore it afoot (unless actually using it in battle) or else only carried it for short distances. An infantryman, by contrast, lugs his sword on his belt or baldric everywhere he goes.
On the naval side, the light spadroons were popular officers' swords from the 1770s to the 1820s despite their deficiencies as actual battle weapons. I personally believe the reason was that the swords were light and handy to wear with a uniform when gadding about town or going on leave - ideal for impressing the babes. But when it came time for battle, the officer was on board ship, where the dressy sword could be abandoned in his quarters in favour of a shorter, heavier standard cutlass grabbed off the racks. Certainly British naval memoirs and writings of the time suggest this was fairly common practice.
One sword in my collection that I find interesting is a British Napoleonic-era naval officer's custom boarding sword.
If I had to describe the sword in a short phrase, I would say it's "a Pompeii gladius with a knucklebow".
The blade is 18 inches long, about 1/4" thick and 1 1/2" wide at the hilt. The blade is double-edged and straight with virtually no taper at all until it terminates in a stout triangular point much like the one on the Pompeii gladius (as opposed to the more gradual acute tapered point of the Mainz). The blade is diamond-shaped with a thick middle rib and no noticeable distal taper, making it heavy enough to deliver a good chop in either direction, strong enough along its entire length to parry a cutlass blow and stiff enough to deliver a wicked thrust. The knucklebow is steel. (It's also slightly dented in at about the point where the impact would be if you punched someone in the jaw while holding the sword...)
I've often wondered who the officer was that had this sword made for himself, because he clearly had very definite ideas about his personal weaponry and I rather suspect they were grounded in a great deal of personal experience.
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Thu 10 Jul, 2014 5:47 am Post subject: |
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Great stuff, Mr. Hardy, thank you! My knowledge runs mostly to the earlier eras, but I do remember from my Revolutionary War reenacting days that the British infantry hangers were not very long. I could never get our officers to let us carry big shields, though...
Matthew
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Wayne Kroncke
Location: Glos. UK Joined: 10 Nov 2008
Posts: 9
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| Posted: Thu 10 Jul, 2014 6:27 am Post subject: |
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y'all are concentrating too much on the equipment and not enough on the men.
early legions were citizen soldiers fighting for their country. the 6000 man late republican/early imperial legion was the culmination. the legion fought in tight formations and the object was to funnel the barbarians and their long swords tighter and tighter till they didn't have enough room to swing them. the romans then just kept advancing and thrusting, not at the guy in front, but the guy to your right - his sword side uncovered unlike his shield front/left side. a small number of legionnaires could, like in boudicca's last battle, defeat many times their number. in that battle the disciplined romans presented a saw toothed front made of many wedges, that bunched up the bigger stronger and longsword wielding brits into the buzz saw. the long sword needed room to swing it. and a trained warrior to use it effectively. there is a difference between a warrior and a soldier. warriors win duels for glory, soldiers win battles. warriors look out for themselves. soldiers look out for each other.
later legions got smaller, used non-citizen auxillaries, and started hiring barbarians as there became fewer citizens willing to enlist. in the late empire, a legion could be 600 men. all barbarians, with their round shields and long swords, axes and spears. they did not have the training or motivation the earlier legions did. they became warriors again. the horseman of the eastern empire, cataphracti, became the knights, and the infantry became less and less important, until hastings started the final defeat of the shield wall and rise of the cavalry in the west.
the above is of course a too short generalization. it would take a much longer dissertation to flesh it out.
CAVE CANEM ET SEMPER PARATUS
Dic, hospes Spartae nos te hic vidisse iacentes,
Dum sanctis patriae legibus obsequimur
If they don't want me to eat animals - why do they make them out of MEAT?
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Benjamin H. Abbott
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| Posted: Thu 10 Jul, 2014 6:35 am Post subject: |
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I respectfully disagree with presenting shorter swords for infantry and longer ones for cavalry as some sort of universal. Even to the extant that it's accurate, it still doesn't speak to the length difference between, say, imperial Roman infantry swords and mid-sixteenth-century Italian infantry swords. As example of how infantry and cavalry sword lengths didn't necessarily differ, Sir John Smythe in his 1594 military manual recommended swords with blades no longer than a yard for both infantry and cavalry. Humphrey Barwick, who fiercely opposed Smythe on many points, also wanted yard-long blades for infantry. Various Italian military writers of this period wanted 36+ inches of blade for infantry. A decade or two later, Joseph Swetnam even thought the long (4ft!) rapier could serve well in war. In short, a number of sixteenth century military authors wanted infantry swords to have blades much longer than ancient sword blades and in some cases to go basically as long as single-handed sword blades got. In at least one case - Smythe - we have an explicit recommendation of cavalry swords no longer than infantry swords. And when you've got infantry with yard-plus-long blades, it's unlikely for cavalry swords to be much if any longer.
And then there's matter of infantry using what we'd call longswords, swords with grips long enough for two hands. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century artwork often shows Swiss pikers wearing longswords on their sides. This differs notably from Landsknecht armament in the same period (though the German pikers also wore longswords at times), later and contemporary Spanish/English/Italian practice, and ancient Roman practice.
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Thu 10 Jul, 2014 7:53 am Post subject: |
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| Wayne Kroncke wrote: | y'all are concentrating too much on the equipment and not enough on the men.
early legions were citizen soldiers fighting for their country. the 6000 man late republican/early imperial legion was the culmination. |
To a certain extent, I agree with that. The citizen-soldiers of the post-Punic War era carried the gladius hispaniensis, which typically had a blade 25 to 27 inches long. It's only in the more professional legions of Caesar's day that we find the shorter styles coming into use. Not necessarily a *lot* shorter, though the difference between my 27" hispaniensis and an 18" Pompeii can be alarming! But yes, better-trained and more aggressive troops don't need a longer blade to be intimidating and do a lot of damage.
| Quote: | | the legion fought in tight formations and the object was to funnel the barbarians and their long swords tighter and tighter till they didn't have enough room to swing them. the romans then just kept advancing and thrusting, not at the guy in front, but the guy to your right - his sword side uncovered unlike his shield front/left side. |
Careful. It is clear from ancient writings that the Romans prefered to have some elbow room, and they usually fought in straight lines like most other cultures. Though I completely agree that if things *did* get cramped, the shorter gladius would be much handier than a longer sword, spear, axe, etc. There is *no* evidence that attacking the next man to the right was a regular tactic, nor something they specifically trained for. Sure, it could happen, but it wasn't planned.
| Quote: | | later legions got smaller, used non-citizen auxillaries, and started hiring barbarians as there became fewer citizens willing to enlist. in the late empire, a legion could be 600 men. all barbarians, with their round shields and long swords, axes and spears. they did not have the training or motivation the earlier legions did. |
Weeelllll, as you say, a short generalization! The later Roman army was still very well organized, trained, and well-equipped, and continued to be successful. The Romans had been eagerly recruiting ferocious tribesmen for centuries, and it made sense to let them fight with the equipment they were familiar with. Spears especially were needed against a growing number of cavalry opponents.
| Quote: | | the horseman of the eastern empire, cataphracti, became the knights, and the infantry became less and less important, until hastings started the final defeat of the shield wall and rise of the cavalry in the west. |
Hmm, except that the Western medieval nobility arose from *western* cavalry tradition, and the higher status of cavalry never meant that they ever outnumbered infantry or could operate without them. And infantry shield walls were a common feature of warfare LONG after Hastings! Even after shields fell out of common use, infantry fought in lines. But we're off-topic again!
Mr. Abbot, you make excellent points, too! Even if we stick to just ancient warfare, I don't think it's safe to say "Better soldiers used shorter swords," or even "Shorter weapons worked better in close combat". I certainly don't think we can say, "They used short swords because they couldn't make long ones"! Complicated question!
Matthew
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Benjamin H. Abbott
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| Posted: Thu 10 Jul, 2014 11:00 am Post subject: |
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| Matthew Amt wrote: | | The citizen-soldiers of the post-Punic War era carried the gladius hispaniensis, which typically had a blade 25 to 27 inches long. It's only in the more professional legions of Caesar's day that we find the shorter styles coming into use. Not necessarily a *lot* shorter, though the difference between my 27" hispaniensis and an 18" Pompeii can be alarming! But yes, better-trained and more aggressive troops don't need a longer blade to be intimidating and do a lot of damage. |
I know it's a standard narrative, but I'm skeptical of the notion that later Roman soldiers were necessarily better-trained and more aggressive than the citizen-soldiers of earlier periods. I'm even more skeptical of the notion that better trained and more aggressive troops necessarily favor shorter blades. For example, Swiss pikers and halberdiers 1450-1550 often carried longswords at their sides.
| Quote: | | Though I completely agree that if things *did* get cramped, the shorter gladius would be much handier than a longer sword, spear, axe, etc. |
Notably, various sixteenth-century military authors wrote that pikers frequently had to resort to their daggers when the press grew tight. The Landsknechts who wore short-bladed katzbalgers apparently did so in order to fight well in the press, while those who preferred longer swords inevitably had a dagger for when things got too close. But that's all in the context of pike formations more similar to the Macedonian phalanx than any Roman formation.
| Quote: | | Mr. Abbot, you make excellent points, too! Even if we stick to just ancient warfare, I don't think it's safe to say "Better soldiers used shorter swords," or even "Shorter weapons worked better in close combat". I certainly don't think we can say, "They used short swords because they couldn't make long ones"! Complicated question! |
Yes, I think it's combination of factors. From my perspective we can say with certainty that both 18-inch imperial Roman swords and the 36-inch infantry swords common in the Renaissance era got the job done well enough. Beyond that it gets murky. I'm not even sure we can say the same for katzbalgers, given how Francesco Patrizi criticized the design. Based on Alan Williams's work, we shouldn't dismiss metallurgy in the matrix of factors. I suspect longer swords became relatively more attractive in an era of refined heat treatment and flourishing iron/steel industries. There may something particular about the Roman style of throwing the javelin and striking with the shield boss that encouraged shorter swords, but in later periods longer swords went alongside large shields, albeit ones of different designs.
As an aside, I recommend J. E. Lendon's Soldiers and Ghosts and Ross Cowan's For the Glory of Rome. This recent scholarship complicates that standard portrayal of Roman soldiers as exemplifying the sort of discipline valued in modern society. In period terms, Roman soldiers balanced virtus and disciplina. At the times the aggressive courage of the former overpowered the latter, as when Roman soldiers insisted on fighting or sought out single combat despite commanders orders.
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J.D. Crawford
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| Posted: Thu 10 Jul, 2014 11:42 am Post subject: |
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| Jason S. Gleason wrote: | | In a duel without armor, I'll take a rapier, thank you very much. |
Ever watch the movie Rob Roy? 
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Thu 10 Jul, 2014 12:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Benjamin H. Abbott wrote: | | I know it's a standard narrative, but I'm skeptical of the notion that later Roman soldiers were necessarily better-trained and more aggressive than the citizen-soldiers of earlier periods. |
Well, they were full-time soldiers who did daily weapons training. So it's hard to avoid calling them "better trained". That does *not* prove they were better disciplined or more motivated, I'll grant you!
| Quote: | | I'm even more skeptical of the notion that better trained and more aggressive troops necessarily favor shorter blades. |
Oh, I wouldn't say "favor", either, necessarily. I just think trained troops can get better results with short swords than untrained troops usually would.
| Quote: | | As an aside, I recommend J. E. Lendon's Soldiers and Ghosts and Ross Cowan's For the Glory of Rome. This recent scholarship complicates that standard portrayal of Roman soldiers as exemplifying the sort of discipline valued in modern society. In period terms, Roman soldiers balanced virtus and disciplina. At the times the aggressive courage of the former overpowered the latter, as when Roman soldiers insisted on fighting or sought out single combat despite commanders orders. |
Oh, yes, Lendon's book changed my whole mental image of a Roman army! I tend to think of them more like Zulus, now, a buzzing mass barely held in check until their officers unleash them. I know Cowan's done some good stuff, but I haven't read that title.
Matthew
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Timo Nieminen
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| Posted: Thu 10 Jul, 2014 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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Regarding the use of long swords by cavalry, it isn't always the case. Qing cavalry swords tend to be on the short side (I have one, 71cm/28" of blade, and there were shorter ones). They were side-arms; the main cavalry weapons were bow and spear. using the bow means much less need to resort to the sword, compared to using the pistol.
"In addition to being efficient, all pole arms were quite nice to look at." - Cherney Berg, A hideous history of weapons, Collier 1963.
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