Spear vs Sword

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Two-handed Spear is popular with non-battlefield users like martial artists and re-enactors (perhaps because it's easier than Spear and Shield) but it wasn't all that common historically among soldiers.

Pike squares?

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by martinl

Pike squares?

Pikes and spears are different weapons and, while some limited overlap existed, they were mostly used in different ways at different times, with different mixes of other weapons.

Pike and crossbow, or pike and shot, functioned very differently from spear and shield wall with short sword or pilum as backup.

[AlexanderHowl]

The primary advantage that seems to come from two-handed spear does seem to be the ability to switch to Staff pretty quickly. Of course, you can further modify a spear to do horrific things to people as well. For example, you could give a spear a barbs, a butt spike, a hook (it can be swung using Staff), and prongs. Instead of a butt spike, you could do a kusari, since you would be intending to use it two-handed.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The other issue that misses getting addressed is which weapon do you invest time and energy in training on. The answer is probably "the best weapon I can carry most of the time.". There were a pretty fair number of periods of history when at least some people could walk around wearing a sword as a usual thing. So when an unexpected self-defense problem come supo you can jsut draw your sword instead of asking "Would you lads mind not starting this affray until I can nip home and get me spear?".

That has been the sword's primary attraction throughout history - it's a sidearm, so you can have it on you all the time. It's good for attack and defence as well. IF you couldn't afford a sword, a staff was the next choice - not quite as easy to carry around, but more useful for long walks on less than perfect paths.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Pikes and spears are different weapons and, while some limited overlap existed, they were mostly used in different ways at different times, with different mixes of other weapons.

The sword guys in the video used everything from daggers to greatswords, and also a hatchet. Calling pikes out of bounds for spears seems a stretch.

Pike and crossbow, or pike and shot, functioned very differently from spear and shield wall with short sword or pilum as backup.

Yes they did, but they were military units where most soldiers were using a two handed spear, and they were a dominant tactic in their day, not slaughtered by bows. Now yes, close co-ordination with their own missile support is what made it possible (munitions armor probably helped), and the same era saw military units of swordsmen using multiple tactics, but the pikes were deadly.

I mostly agree with Fred and Rupert about sword dominance - smaller swords are just handy.

Why greatswords were competitive with pole arms is more of a mystery to me.

[Flyndaran]

If we're talking the late middle ages onward in Europe, you had to be exceptionally poor to not be able to afford a crap-sword.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Rupert

That has been the sword's primary attraction throughout history - it's a sidearm, so you can have it on you all the time. It's good for attack and defence as well. IF you couldn't afford a sword, a staff was the next choice - not quite as easy to carry around, but more useful for long walks on less than perfect paths.

Yep. The sword is the most versatile weapon ever invented. It wasn't particularly good at any one task; you could always find a weapon that had been optimised to do a better job, but as a "jack of all trades", the sword is king.

[AlexanderHowl]

Actually, I would suggest that the staff was the most versatile weapon ever invented. Towns would peacebond swords, they would not look twice at a staff.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Kromm

... and from skeletons with holes in them, who rarely get up and talk about what they were wearing when they were killed.

The best example of this is Wisby. Thordeman's analysis of the skeletal injuries suffered by the recovered combatants:

Tibia injuries: 98
Skull injuries: 97
Forearm injuries: 69
Upper arm injuries: 21
Torso injuries: 0
Thigh injuries: 0

It obviously doesn't include soft tissue damage but we have a sample of hundreds of injuries yet not a single one on a torso or thigh. It suggests that torso armour was effectively invulnerable to penetration at this time or that nobody ever aimed for the torso or thighs.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Actually, I would suggest that the staff was the most versatile weapon ever invented. Towns would peacebond swords, they would not look twice at a staff.

Which explains why fighters all over the world for thousands of years carried staves as a backup weapon and not swords.