Thought Experiment - Origins of the longsword art

[CalebChow]

We see longswords (although they were called "greatswords) clearly being used from at latest the 13th century.

I've always wondered how exactly the ancients would go about creating the longsword art from relative obscurity.

The use of the sword in two hands is not unique to the 13th-16th century period or the European continent, but something militarily would have warranted its development in the early stages prior to the documentation of the art and skills of using the weapon.

How, then, would one decide how best to use the longsword in combat if it was a new development?
In other words, how would they have figured out that the longsword and its art would be worth investing into when they had no guarantee that the art that develops around the new weapon would match what they already had?

Surely the guards, mastercuts, and binding/winding techniques were not developed as soon as the first longsword was forged.
As a result, wouldn't there have been a time in which skill in the longsword was universally rudimentary, but somehow still managed to prove effective enough militarily to warrant the art's development?

Thoughts?

[william_cain_iii]

It probably developed more organically than you're imagining.

It wasn't as if you had Knightly/Arming swords, and then suddenly there was a "different" sword on the battlefield that they had to figure out to use.

More likely you had knights with, for example, arming swords fitting the Oakshott type XII and XIII mold but with a longer grip per their own tastes. Then if they lost or discarded their shield in combat, they choked up and fought using single-handed techniques but with some variation for the new way they were holding the thing. From there, refinements continued and grew to be more broadly used as armors, weapons, and social conventions adapted to allow for the newer iterations of the sword.

The longsword as we knew it didn't 'arrive,' but rather 'grew' into the battlefield out of older weapon types, and it is likely the Art of same followed a similar evolution.

So if one were to try and propose a mechanism for this, one would probably be best served by examining the single-handed sources we have (Walpurgis/I.33, Ringeck's sword and buckler plays, etc) and comparing them to the longsword texts in order to examine the parallels. If two techniques have a common route, we may have the path of transition you're seeking out.

As ever, this is only one way of looking at the matter.

[Jonathan Hill]

I’d say william is pretty correct in that it’s more of an arms race. We can clearly see a transition from the single handers as it moved to an arming sword, to a side sword with a complex hilt to a rapier and it moves down to the small sword. I don’t know the history of the longsword as well, but I’ll make up something to entertain you.

Prince Molekisize was being held hostage in his enemies camp when he noted that all the opposing army was using blades of only three feet long. He decided that he should add an extra few inches to his soldiers swords so they can all feel better about themselves when they pull out their swords and see that their enemies are smaller than theirs. This gave his army a great deal of confidence and they easily wiped out the other army with this bigger new…swords.

The commanders on the other side decided they too can handle bigger swrods, so they made their sword two inches longer than the blades Prince Molekisize was using. Now with their increased confidence they started winning the hearts and ‘minds’ of their people back. It was not long before they chose to make their swords even longer and they could only be carried in two hands and used like a spear.

After Prince Molekisize died his wife took over and cut the budget of the army. She made them cut the swords back to one handers and told them ‘size doesn’t matter, learn to use it.’

[Stacy Clifford]

In addition to William's comments (I believe there are accounts in the sagas of Vikings taking their sword in both hands to fight), you're forgetting that the longsword was not the only two-handed weapon around. Early steel quality may not have supported blades four feet long, but wood has never had that problem, and stick and staff weapons have been around as long as our ancestors have had hands to swing them. While some principles of longsword are specific to steel and sharp edges, many are universal to a great variety of weapons, such as binding, fuhlen, range and timing, footwork, etc. Many of these were probably worked out long before with short staffs, clubs, axes, and anything else 3-4 ft. long and skinny that you could hit somebody with. Combine this with 2000+ years of experience with metal short swords cutting, parrying, binding and whatnot, and it doesn't sound like such a great leap to combine the two styles as soon as technology made it practical to do so.

[Sripol Asanasavest]

How did they manage money back then? It seems like such waste to have thousands of armors and long weapons. Did they come with better tactics to fight centuries later. Didn't they develop bigger shields, if I remember correctly? And make use more crossbows against the pikes? Aren't crossbows much easier to use? I can't remember who said that....

[CalebChow]

How did they manage money back then? It seems like such waste to have thousands of armors and long weapons. Did they come with better tactics to fight centuries later. Didn't they develop bigger shields, if I remember correctly? And make use more crossbows against the pikes? Aren't crossbows much easier to use? I can't remember who said that....

Don't derail my thread!

Many of these were probably worked out long before with short staffs, clubs, axes, and anything else 3-4 ft. long and skinny that you could hit somebody with. Combine this with 2000+ years of experience with metal short swords cutting, parrying, binding and whatnot, and it doesn't sound like such a great leap to combine the two styles as soon as technology made it practical to do so.

I was thinking on these lines too, but couldn't the same be said of all iron-age cultures? Why is it that the straight, 4-footish two-handed sword only achieved central prominence in the Western European continent and not, say, Eastern Europe?

Granted plenty of others did employ similar weapons (in China, India), but they never rose to being nearly as central as the longsword is to Western Europe if I recall correctly.

Is the primary reason for longsword centrality in W. Europe the development of full articulated plate that enabled the shield to be less important?

[Stacy Clifford]

Is the primary reason for longsword centrality in W. Europe the development of full articulated plate that enabled the shield to be less important?

I don't think there's any one single reason for such a broad cultural development, but that certainly had something to do with it. I think the nature of the enemies being fought probably also played a role. In the 1300s when the longsword was really coming to prominence, Germany, Italy, England and France spent most of their time fighting each other, who all had similar armors and weapons and military styles. Eastern Europe was busy repelling the Mongols and the Turks and other more mobile, lightly armored opponents from very different military traditions. It may be that the battle environment in the east didn't favor the development of the longsword as much. Or maybe it was more prominent than we think, but we just don't know because the cultural environment in the west was more favorable to writing that sort of knowledge down. There are lots of possibilities which probably all played a role.

[william_cain_iii]

The arms race east v west analysis does come up against a problem though, Stacy.

Note that many West European nations fought in the crusades, particularly France, England, Spain, etc.

They fought against these same lightly armoured, light-cavalry oriented enemies that the Eastern Europeans were to face, and despite accounts of Knights dying from exhaustion and heatstroke in their armour, the knights of the west saw fit to retain their style of arms. They seemed convinced in the efficacy of their equipment. There are contemporary reports of Muslim archers being infuriated and frustrated that their arrows were doing nothing to the gambeson and mail clad knights, who fought on despite looking like hedgehogs.

I think part of it is that in the West you had more advanced armormaking and weaponmaking resources overall, married to a (comparatively) stable social structure. In the East things were much more fluid in terms of who owned what or where (just look at the history of Poland). Compare the relatively lightly armed and armoured boyars of Wallachia and Russia to the Knights of the western nations.

Part of this is that Islam was dynamically pushing itself at the gates of the east for well over 500 years. I may be wrong, but as I recall the Turks at one point were laying seige to Vienna. Add in the Mongols and their similar dynamic presence throughout the Steppes from about 1230 onward, and you can see that the East was far more consumed in survival than the West, which by virtue of being shielded from such depredations was able to develop a more stable economic base.

This is all broad and shameless conjecture, of course. I'm not offering any facts to back up what I'm saying, just pointing out elements that may have influenced things.

[Stacy Clifford]

I thought about the Crusades, but the last Crusade ended in 1291 and the longsword doesn't become established in the literature (that we know of) until almost a hundred years later. My speculation is that if single swords were working well in the east as they did in the Crusades, then maybe they stuck with them while fighting the same enemies with little rest, while the west moved on to developing better ideas to compete against each other as the Crusades faded into history for them (except for Spain). It is just speculation and I'd welcome more information, but it fits the timeline.

[Sripol Asanasavest]

They were looking into more mobile tactics. The key to winning the battle also is the ability to move your soldiers into positions as quickly as you can before the enemies can counter the attack. If your army march for two days straight, it helps if they don't have much added weight, especially during the hot months. They could ambush you after your soldiers have been marching all day; at this stage even an inexperienced group of soldiers can defeat you if you planned things out well. I think that's the idea behind the men on horseback firing arrows at the enemies. Fighting in one big formation does have the advantage, but if they can outflank you and go around, you're probably done. You see the Romans dividing their army into legends, each commanded by a centurian. The legends work together as a team, but can also break off if they see an opening.... What they did was: they analyzed their enemies weapons, armors, and make note of any weaknesses, and come up with strategies, accordingly, too help them win. The armors were also very expensive to make and they would have used up all the money resulting in them not being able to feed the soldiers; thus, halt their abilities to wage a long war if necessary.

[william_cain_iii]

The Crusades themselves did end in 1291, yes. However, the Crusades were only the beginning of the exposure that the West had to the Islamic world.

The Ottomans continued to push against Byzantium, and foreign mercenaries continued to fight in the east who came from Western kingdoms. The 'kingdoms' we see the feudal states as were very fluid entities, with quite permeable borders. Liechtenauer was probably Swabian, Fiore may well have been from Austria.

So it wasn't as if the end of the Crusades signaled the end of contact with, conflict with, and observation of the empires of the East.

Basically, the West encountered the East, and decided its own arms were worth continuing to maintain. Part of this was that the westernmost kingdoms were busy fighting like on like, particularly the French kingdoms with the English and Holy Roman Empire, but one still cannot discount the contact that such lands had with those outside. It was truly an international society for the Knightly elite, if the literature was to be believed.

[Sripol Asanasavest]

Why do you think the Turks hadn't push deeper into Europe? Do you think they had richer picking and didn't see any benefits in invading Western Europe?

[william_cain_iii]

Sripol, this is a topic on the evolution of the longsword.

It';s not strictly about the military advances of the Turks. I only brought them up to shed light on how encountering them may have influenced the origin of the longsword. Please try to stay on topic.

[Sripol Asanasavest]

Sorry about that! But it is very interesting and I couldn't help myself.

[Jonathan Hill]

Strategies in Europe need to be different than strategies in Eastern Europe to the steppes and the middle east. Europe is mostly forest land, large rivers and cities that stayed where they are. You get cornered more easily and don’t have the ability to give ground when you are keeping a large army together, and you can back your enemy up against a river and force a fight. Europe valued heavy infantry, heavy cavalry over light mobile troops for the basic reason this is what worked in their area.

The other extreme is the steppes witch had mobile people and no real cities that stayed where they were. When you have a large area and the ability to give ground you don’t fight a stationary battle (land war in Asia thing), you give ground, make them chase you and take them when you are good and ready.

Europe did have the technological advantage. Germany produced most of the world’s steel at that time and a greater history of inventiveness with weapons and armor was centered in Europe, the Romans took the Spatha and chainmail from the ‘barbarian tribes,’ Celts, Gaul, Germanic tribes. Europe fought a less mobile, but better armored battles while the middle east and east fought a mobile, less armored fight. Part due to access to equipment part due to the area’s they lived in. A good example of tactics that worked in Europe not working in the open areas is the battle of Carrhea from the Roman times - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae . The crusades also had problems once they faced armies that fielded groups of horse archer as even though the armor protected them you can’t kill something you can’t catch. The peasant’s crusade was basically wiped out due to them being footmen facing mobile horse archers. They did learn to deal with it (when the armor showed up and the stallions got to fight mares in heat!!!) and were successful for a time.

As to the weapon, cavalry wants a single handed weapon, curved, strait, axe, mace or lance it needs to be a singer hander. If the grip is too long the blade becomes a problem using. A hand and a half sword is an infantry sword not a cavalry sword, thus it makes sense that a long sword is developed in an area where infantry can be better used.

Turks into Europe…One theory why the Mongols didn’t go further is the forests. The land and forests did not lend themselves to their natural way of fighting. This is just a theory though.