# The Why of Weapons: The Great Sword of War



## Ankari (Jan 25, 2014)

This is a follow up thread to Malik's outstanding article he posted on Mythic Scribes' home page. You can find the article here.

The article describes the _gran espÃ©e de guerre_ as a specialized sword meant to smash metal more than cut anything. It could cut but, to use a phrase from your article, "you’d have to punch the edge of the sword to cut yourself on it."

Does this mean professional soldiers or mercenaries would carry two swords? One with a sharper edge, and one meant to cave in armor?

How did people back then weld the steel edge on an iron core? Do you mean they heated both items and hammered them into one blade?

What other ways were used to join steel edges to iron cores?

You wrote as a side note "authentic swords didn’t have secondary bevels the way modern kitchen knives do." Does that apply to swords from that era? Why didn't they have a secondary bevel?

Finally, if the object was to damage armor and pass the force through to the flesh below, why were these swords more popular than a spiked hammer?

Thanks Malik. I enjoyed the article tremendously.


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## wordwalker (Jan 25, 2014)

Ankari said:


> Finally, if the object was to damage armor and pass the force through to the flesh below, why were these swords more popular than a spiked hammer?



Before Malik and the other pros get in, I'll suggest a couple factors here:

Spikes are another way to build up enough focused force, but they can be inefficient. By trying to punch right into the flesh they're also more likely to glance off armor if they don't hit squarely-- or if they get that hit, they risk getting stuck. (Though a hammer spike's probably short enough that it might not stick too deep. Some kind of _pick_, on the other hand...) By the same logic, an "invincibly powerful magic sword" might be better as a hammer, so that even nicks would knock the target around instead of making minor flesh wounds and swishing on past.

For that matter, the "crowbar" impact Malik describes sounds like a better result than punching a spike into someone. The spike might make a deeper and maybe more permanent wound, but it wouldn't have as much guaranteed stopping power.

Finally, the _gran epee_ is a sword. Swords became the symbol of war, and of the idea that it could be a matter of skill and discipline rather than draftees carving up meat, as soon as that overspecialized knife started to be real competition with the spears and axes that could still double as peasant tools. Look at those Marine recruiting clips today: is that supposed to be a realistic, day-to-day ratio of the use of battle rifles to swords?

--Okay, the last argument probably meant the least to the warriors, since it wouldn't compete well with differences that kept them alive. But it means a lot more to us writers.


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## Guy (Jan 25, 2014)

Ankari said:


> This is a follow up thread to Malik's outstanding article he posted on Mythic Scribes' home page. You can find the article here.
> 
> The article describes the _gran espÃ©e de guerre_ as a specialized sword meant to smash metal more than cut anything. It could cut but, to use a phrase from your article, "you’d have to punch the edge of the sword to cut yourself on it."
> 
> Does this mean professional soldiers or mercenaries would carry two swords? One with a sharper edge, and one meant to cave in armor?


No. Anything that'll cope with armor will do a number on a soft, squishy body.


> How did people back then weld the steel edge on an iron core? Do you mean they heated both items and hammered them into one blade?


Basically, yes. It's a very technical process, and there were a number of ways to do it, but you've got the gist of it.



> Finally, if the object was to damage armor and pass the force through to the flesh below, why were these swords more popular than a spiked hammer?


The armor of the period Malik's talking about was mail. Mail resists cuts well, but it does nothing about impact trauma, so if you failed to penetrate it you could still beat hell out of the guy inside it. Padded garments were worn, but prior to the advent of plate beating the man up inside his armor was a perfectly viable option. Once plate became more common, penetrating spikes became more common.


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## Guy (Jan 25, 2014)

Good article, Malik. What were your sources?


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## T.Allen.Smith (Jan 25, 2014)

Ankari said:


> You wrote as a side note "authentic swords didn't have secondary bevels the way modern kitchen knives do." Does that apply to swords from that era? Why didn't they have a secondary bevel?


I haven't read the article, but knowing a bit about knife blades, I'll take a stab at this one....  

Sounds to me like he's talking about a convex edge, or similar where there is a gradual slope from the blade spine (or center if double edged) to the cutting edge. In this case the slope would be constant without the drastically steep angle seen on a beveled edge.   

Pick up a knife that you have and hold it up into the light so the glint of reflection shows the bevel that forms the edge. Now imagine there is no line in the reflection, and the blade tapers from thick to sharp with zero drastic changes (i.e. No bevel). That's a convex edge. Look up convex edge online, there's plenty of diagrams.

The convex edge has a couple key advantages. First & foremost, there is more metal behind the cutting edge which means it is stronger. It will be more durable and will resist chipping and rolling of the steel (stays sharper longer) than a beveled edge. Second, it is easy to maintain a convex edge with strops, a grinding wheel, or if you're practiced, stones.   

A beveled edge typically requires more elaborate sharpening systems that can keep an angle constant on both sides of the bevel. For example, if I'm sharpening a knife to an inclusive angle of 44 degrees, that means I need to sharpen each side of the beveled edge to 22 degrees. The more precise I am in the sharpening, the sharper my blade.   

As a side note, most axes are convex edged. That's because of the chopping they are required to do, even in the modern day. An axe with a beveled edge would not stay sharp very long. The edge would roll as the steel bent because there would not be enough backing metal to provide proper support. I assume the theory is similar in regard to war swords.


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## Malik (Jan 25, 2014)

Ankari said:


> This is a follow up thread to Malik's outstanding article he posted on Mythic Scribes' home page. You can find the article here.
> 
> The article describes the _gran espÃ©e de guerre_ as a specialized sword meant to smash metal more than cut anything. It could cut but, to use a phrase from your article, "you’d have to punch the edge of the sword to cut yourself on it."
> 
> Does this mean professional soldiers or mercenaries would carry two swords? One with a sharper edge, and one meant to cave in armor?



If they could afford it, then yes. A professional soldier or knight would carry an arming sword or a riding sword, typically a one-handed sword that tended to be much sharper. The arming sword or riding sword served the same purpose as a modern soldier's sidearm. It was also often worn when out of armor; this is the sword that a man allowed to carry swords would carry everyday. Also, the gran espee de guerre was generally so big that it could only be carried across the back. To draw it you would have to unbuckle the baldric, clear it, and rebuckle the baldric. It was carried into battle by hand. It wasn't the sort of thing you'd draw in self-defense. The arming sword or riding sword was the go-to in a spur-of-the-moment fight.



Ankari said:


> How did people back then weld the steel edge on an iron core? Do you mean they heated both items and hammered them into one blade?



Exactly this. Heated and hammered together. There's a link on my blog in the Armor Basics post about making shear steel. Also, this.



Ankari said:


> You wrote as a side note "authentic swords didn’t have secondary bevels the way modern kitchen knives do." Does that apply to swords from that era? Why didn't they have a secondary bevel?



This applies to almost all warswords. Secondary bevels reduce the durability of an edge while accentuating sharpness. People today aren't using their wall-hanger swords - or even their expensive reproductions like you get from artisans like Michael Tinker Pearce, Hanwei, Albion, etc. - for beating the hell out of people in iron armor. They're used to cut apart watermelons and 32 oz. bottles of Dasani.



Ankari said:


> Finally, if the object was to damage armor and pass the force through to the flesh below, why were these swords more popular than a spiked hammer?



Because the sword was a nobleman's weapon. The hammer and military pick were weapons of conscripts and were somewhat more limited in their application. Also, the spiked hammer and pick came about later, mostly as a response to plate iron.



Guy said:


> The armor of the period Malik's talking about was mail. Mail resists cuts well, but it does nothing about impact trauma, so if you failed to penetrate it you could still beat hell out of the guy inside it. Padded garments were worn, but prior to the advent of plate beating the man up inside his armor was a perfectly viable option. Once plate became more common, penetrating spikes became more common.



Mail does a fair amount against impact trauma but the _gran espee de guerre _ excelled at delivering impact trauma and was even better at quickly ruining mail. The _gran espee de guerre_ / great sword of war kept its utility and usefulness until the advent of full harness in the mid 1300's and even later. Eventually, the great sword of war was upsized into the Type XX -- the Danish two-hander, the Claymore, the six-foot Zwiehander, the Flamberge, etc.



Guy said:


> Good article, Malik. What were your sources?


Most of this is just applied analysis.

I have the good fortune to have one of the world's foremost swordmakers, Michael Tinker Pearce, as my mentor, my _Fior de Battaglia_ coach, my writing partner and technical consultant, and, while the story is longer than I want to get into, here, for all intents and purposes my brother. I've spent a good chunk of my adult life talking swords with Tinker, performing and attending demonstrations with him, and beating the crap out of each other in our backyards fencing, grappling, working out knife techniques, and generally alarming the hell out of our neighbors.

I've researched the history of a few specific styles of swords and weapons in the twenty years that I've been researching my book, and I settled on the _gran espee de guerre_ as the primary battlefield weapon in my milieu. 

I have studied edged-weapon and hand-to-weapon combat and advanced combatives, which include combat in modern armor, in the military. I have carried both a tomahawk and a khukri downrange and I won't say any more about that so don't ask. I box competitively and taught at a boxing gym, which has ingrained the finer points and practical considerations of battering a physically comparable human being until he no longer represents a threat. 

What I wrote in the article is mostly just critical thinking applied to all of the above. 

Thanks for the kind words. Keep those questions coming.


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## Guy (Jan 26, 2014)

I've got a couple of Pearce's swords through Hanwei, the one-hander and the great sword of war. Love 'em.


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## Ankari (Jan 26, 2014)

Concerning affordability of swords. How much wealth would they fork over for a quality sword?

You never mention this, but I'm curious about what happens after a sword is broken. Would they melt it down and make a new sword?

Someone on Reddit (I posted a link to this article there) raised a question concerning this statement:



> it was likely the single greatest casualty-producing weapon on the medieval battlefield until the development of the longbow.



Could you address that?


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## Malik (Jan 26, 2014)

Ankari,

Prices would vary. I really have no idea; economics isn't my thing. It'd be pricey, though.

A sword would likely not be melted down. Most swords were iron spines with steel edges. There'd really be no way to melt it down without mixing the iron and steel into something that the swordmaker may not want. I guess the piece closest to the handle could be ground into a shorter sword, though. If the smith was really good, he could work in some other metals and fold into a Damascus-type alloy.

I believe that the great sword of war was, in all likelihood, the greatest casualty-producing weapon of its time. It was fairly common and devastatingly effective and specifically built to do only one job, which is to neutralize opponents very quickly. Spears certainly killed more people overall -- the spear was the most common weapon on the field but that's another article -- but the guy with the great sword of war would have a very impressive scoreboard at the end of the day. It was the medieval equivalent, tactically, of a belt-fed weapon: it was big and heavy, supported by smaller weapons, and it caused catastrophic damage in a very short amount of time. 

Today the M249 "SAW" (Squad Automatic Weapon) is the largest casualty-producing weapon in the U.S. military arsenal. Do M16's and M4's kill more badguys overall? Yes; there are many more M16's and M4's issued. A fire team fields three M4's to every M249. But when the SAW opens up, it tips the odds. I see the _gran espee de guerre_ as its equivalent at the time.


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## Ankari (Jan 26, 2014)

Another question about this sword versus metal shields. If the sword could dent a helmet, did it do the same to a shield? Or, because of physics (the give or swivel of your arm mitigates some of the force), shields didn't suffer as much physical damage?


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## Guy (Jan 26, 2014)

Ankari said:


> Another question about this sword versus metal shields. If the sword could dent a helmet, did it do the same to a shield? Or, because of physics (the give or swivel of your arm mitigates some of the force), shields didn't suffer as much physical damage?


Most shields at this time were made of wood. Repeated blows from this sword would eventually compromise a wooden shield.


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## Ankari (Jan 26, 2014)

Guy said:


> Most shields at this time were made of wood. Repeated blows from this sword would eventually compromise a wooden shield.



And what of metal shields?


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## Malik (Jan 26, 2014)

I don't know why anyone would use a metal shield. A metal shield would typically be iron, and any shield made of iron thick enough to be of use would be insanely heavy. Metal shields were used in jousting, but they were usually attached to the armor mechanically. 

Some shields were banded and/or edged with iron or even steel, but generally a shield was made of wood or leather. _Cuir boulli _would have made terrific shields; very light and very tough. 

Any shield you could reasonably wield in combat is going to be lighter than the force of a greatsword blow, so the sword will have a pool-ball / cue-ball effect. The edge of the shield would likely dent your armor and leave your ears ringing. If you parried by punching outward with the edge of the shield, the sword would hack into it; if the blade wedged, you'd both have a whole new set of problems to solve.


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## Guy (Jan 26, 2014)

Ankari said:


> And what of metal shields?


Most any metal shields that would've existed would've been small  bucklers, perhaps a foot or so in diameter. They were typically used in deflective beats and I suppose would've worked against a large sword, but I don't think I'd want to bet my life on it. A large metal shield would've been constructed from several small pieces riveted together, so it probably would've come down to how well the rivets held, but they would've been very few in number.

One of the things that's very important to keep in mind is all these arms and armor were hand crafted. We're accustomed to assembly line manufacture, a world were one G.I. issue rifle will perform pretty much like another. In a world were it was all hand crafted, there was huge variation in quality, even in products from the same maker, so it's difficult to say with any authority how one piece of equipment would've fared against another. One small buckler might've held up well to an onslaught from a greatsword while another would've been smashed.


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## Ankari (Jan 26, 2014)

Guy and Malik, those two posts are insanely helpful.


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## Malik (Jan 26, 2014)

Guy's last post might be one of the best answers to anything that I've read on this forum, ever.


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## Guy (Jan 26, 2014)

Malik said:


> Guy's last post might be one of the best answers to anything that I've read on this forum, ever.


Thank you very much. I is but a humble little history major.


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## Malik (Jan 26, 2014)

Guy said:


> They were typically used in deflective beats and I suppose would've worked against a large sword, but I don't think I'd want to bet my life on it.



Agreed. There is not enough beer in the world to ever make me think that engaging a greatsword with a small buckler was a good idea.


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## Guy (Jan 26, 2014)

Like blocking a Danish axe, it's technically feasible but in the words of Malcolm Reynolds, "That ain't exactly Plan A."


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## Feo Takahari (Jan 27, 2014)

Malik said:


> Most of this is just applied analysis.
> 
> I have the good fortune to have one of the world's foremost swordmakers, Michael Tinker Pearce, as my mentor, my _Fior de Battaglia_ coach, my writing partner and technical consultant, and, while the story is longer than I want to get into, here, for all intents and purposes my brother. I've spent a good chunk of my adult life talking swords with Tinker, performing and attending demonstrations with him, and beating the crap out of each other in our backyards fencing, grappling, working out knife techniques, and generally alarming the hell out of our neighbors.
> 
> ...



I know it's rude to say this, and I know you know more about this subject matter than me. It's not my intent to insult you. And yet . . .

It's a clear statement of fact to say "the swords of this type that have survived are blunt." You could probably demonstrate "swords of this type are good at breaking armor." But if you're going to make the statement "swords of this type _were made to_ break armor," you should probably cite a historical account or two of them breaking armor. Even if "breaking armor" is the most obvious use for this sword type, it's not good practice to make such detailed, confident statements without sources (and it's not unheard of for a new source to undermine previous assumptions about what some historical implement actually did.)

(I have the feeling you do have an account or two of them breaking armor, and you just haven't pulled it out yet. I really do want to see any sources you can provide--I put a lot of value on firsthand accounts.)


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## Malik (Jan 27, 2014)

Apparently I don't understand your question. 

The sword wasn't blunt. It was a very specific type of sharp.

Armor exists to protect from weapons. Swords with razorlike edges and thin secondary bevels cannot penetrate the armor of the time. You can find a hundred YouTube videos on this - all of which are wrong for one reason or another (steel armor, secondary bevels, poor technique, butted mail, etc.) - but they get the point across. 

Greatswords from the time that have been recovered are in poor condition. We don't know for sure what the edge was like. We can only speculate.

A bevel like we find on cleavers, mauls, and some recovered katanas, on a steel edge, will wreck armor but not penetrate it consistently. Wrecking armor neutralized opponents on a medieval battlefield as effectively as killing them. A durable edge was a beefy edge; a beefy edge with a wedge-shaped or appleseed-shaped bevel would bite armor. Such an edge was easy tech -- it's far easier to make a wedge-shaped edge (or, on an ovoid cross-section like the gran espee de guerre, an appleseed edge) than a long, razor-thin edge -- and such an edge on a heavy sword is an effective solution to dealing with all the guys running around a battlefield in armor.

To give the sword any other kind of edge and any other purpose would make it useless. In mortal combat, you don't reach for something useless. No one who fights to the death for a living would spend huge amounts of money on a non-ornate, heavy sword that didn't work, and then carry it into battle.

There might be research out there on this. I haven't seen it.

The only way the sword would work is as an armor-wrecker. The only way the sword would wreck armor is with a stout edge that we wouldn't recognize as sharp by our modern (and fantasy) definition.


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## Feo Takahari (Jan 27, 2014)

Blech; I forgot we were talking about the pre-printing press era. (I hate dealing with European history before the Renaissance.) Still, I know some arms manuals have survived from this time. Are there really none left that describe the use of this sword against armored foes?


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## Malik (Jan 27, 2014)

There are plenty of manuals on longsword combat, but the actual design and purpose of the weapon is lost to history as far as I know. The greatsword shows up in artwork and writings from the time and examples have been recovered. We know it existed. 

I specifically wrote about the great sword of war because it is rarely mentioned even though, to me, it seems like an obvious and workable solution to the biggest problem that a soldier of the time would face.

The designers and smiths of the day may not have realized what they were doing the way that we see it, now; smiths weren't experts in mathematics and metallurgy and engineering, and most were illiterate. There would have been an accepted body of knowledge among the artisans of the time that this is how you make a greatsword that will keep your customers alive. Dead customers don't generate referrals.


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## Guy (Jan 27, 2014)

Both Hank Reinhardt and John Clements have done experiments of cutting mail, the predominant armor type of the period Malik is referring to. You can read article from both here: Essays - Swords & Swordsmanship Additionally, they have numerous video demonstrations. Reinhardt's book _The Book of Swords_ is a very readable and entertaining source. Neither Reinhardt nor Clements have any scholarly credentials, as far as I know, but they've both spent a great deal of time cutting things with swords, both reproductions and originals. Reinhardt was able to hack through mail and damage pork shoulder underneath it with one handed swords, so it's reasonable to conclude a greatsword would do at least as well. In those cases were he didn't penetrate the mail that was placed over meat without any kind of padding, he still did significant damage to the meat, busting it open instead of cutting it open and making it look like it had been run through a cheese grater, but the wound would have almost certainly been incapacitating.

The period manuals for longsword covering armored combat are for plate armor and focus on jamming the sword's point in the gaps and joints of the armor. Many of the wounds probably wouldn't have been fatal, but they would've ended the fight. For example, one shows the point of the sword being forced up under the cuff of a gauntlet and piercing the back of the man's hand or wrist. This would've crippled the hand and likely ended the fight.

My master's thesis was on the forces behind the rise of the rapier. My schooling had trained me to evaluate a source for the scholarly or historical material used, which is why I asked about Malik's sources. However, and I made sure my professors understood this when I wrote my thesis, practical experience is as important as scholarly research when it comes to the history of weapons. This is why the writings of guys like Reinhardt, Clements and Malik are just as significant as the writings of professional historians and other scholars. Researching the historical sources is crucial, but in the case of the history of weapons, so is practical experience. Ewart Oakeshott was the first to combine the two. Until he started writing in the 1960s, the Victorian notion of the heavy, clumsy medieval sword reigned supreme, and it's proven to be a very stubborn myth. Oakeshott actually picked up swords, and when you do the first thing you notice is most of them aren't nearly as heavy or clumsy as people think.

Anyway, I'm rambling. It's a topic I'm quite passionate about, so it's easy for me to go blathering on and on. The point is in this particular subject, practical experience is as important as scholarly research.


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