From another thread, but I thought it would do everyone good to cover these points:

1 - Broadswords...
The term "broadsword is not medieval, it refers to basket hilted swords from about the end of the 17th century. Having handled several antique braodswords and katanas, I would say that the weight is more or less equal, with the broadsords tending to be up to 0.5lb heavier

2 - "I have seen western sword demos and ..."
western swordsmanship is almost never well represented, even by museum interpretation staff who are actors primarily and certainly not by re-enactors, who practice a safe form of entertainment combat. Displays form these groups tend to re-inforce myths of western swordsmanship, not dispel them. By all means look for the western martial arts youtube group for some decent reference.

3 - Medieval combat involved trying to smash thorugh plate armour". Armoured combat and unarmoured combat are almost comlpletely seperate arts as described by the extant combat treatises. Armoured combat (with the sword) focuses on leverage, use of weak and strong and attacking the un-armoured targets such as the armpit, groin, inside joints etc. It is simply not possible to "smash through" plate armour with a sword. Some weapons, such as the pollaxe were designed to smash/dent armour or to penetrate with a spike. These weapons are coverd by some treatises, where they are still used with a remarkable degree of finesse

4 - Longswords are heavy. Nonsense. Utter, utter nonsense. The average weight of a medieval longsword would be between 1 - 2kg. There were larger heavier swords than that, but the 10kg swords you keep hearing about were very rare "bearing swords", intended to be carried before a noble or official in a ceremonial procession.
In order for a well made longsword to weigh 10kg, it would have to be about 9.5m long.

5 - Medieval martial arts favoured the strong over the weak. This is a fundamental missunderstanding of what the terms weak and strong mean. Better terms would be "hard" and "soft", which refer to actions from a bind, feeling the level of displacement and intention of the opponent and acting "Indes" (in the moment/instantaneously)

6 - Medieval weapons were clumsy and hard to weild.
Oh dear. http://swordfightbradford.com/index_files/resources.htm
Have a look at the "What is the point of an Ubershinai" video. The salient points are about 2 mins in

7 - Modern martial artists who claim to do medieval/historical arts are making it up.
Please go to the webpage above and read one of the PDFs.

Good idea to put that up Paul.

I think one of the points I'd make in an environment like this, where there are lots of people with Asian martial arts backgrounds, is that in many ways the martial arts of medieval Europe are similar to the older Japanese martial arts (Bujinkan, Kenjutsu etc - not the more recent ones like Judo and Karate). Medieval wrestling has many parallels with Jujitsu, medieval swordsmanship has parallels with Kenjutsu, and many of the specific armoured fighting techniques in Bujinkan have parallels in European medieval martial arts.

For anybody who wants to look at really good replicas of medieval swords, copied from museum examples, with their sizes and weights, then have a browse of these: http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/albion/swords-albion-mark-nextgen.htm

The big difference between Japanese and European arts is of course that in Japan there has been a continual living lineage, whereas in Europe most of these arts died out, and have only survived via extensive technical treatises (like manuals) - sometimes illustrated. This comes with disadvantages and advantages on both sides - living lineages can change, especially over so many generations, to end up being quite different to how they started. Whereas books are set in stone - we can literally show a technique as taught by a 14th or 15th century master. But of course living lineages can carry information and subtleties that books may miss out. Learning from books it can also take much longer to become proficient without human guidance. So there are plusses and minuses in both directions.

Another myth you might want to include - medieval European armour was not incredibly heavy: It tends to weigh about the same as a modern army infantryman's backpack, but it is distributed all over the body, instead of just on the back. You can do cartwheels and forward rolls in medieval armour. It does change the way you move and does tire you out a bit quicker, and it gets hot, but you can get on and off a horse easily and get up off the ground if you fall. 15th century armour is good proof against sword cuts and thrusts and against most arrows (unless they find an opening).

Matt

Matt Easton wrote:

You can do cartwheels and forward rolls in medieval armour.



Cool! I cant do cartwheels out of armour, but I will give it a go.