Are there accounts of duels between different weapon types?

[Andy Lee Chaisiri]

Like a sword and shield guy vs a spear guy

Or a thrusting sword user vs a slashing sword user.


I've read some accounts of 15th century tournaments, but they were all of the same weapon type (pollaxe vs pollaxe and so on).

[John Farthing]

Yes and no... Dueling etiquette was throughout it's history a highly ritualized and formal affair in which strictly observed 'rules' were employed. This frequently involved careful inspections of the dueling weapons prior to the duel itself, wherein pains were taken to insure that the appointed weapons were alike in every fashion. This is in evidence as far back as the Viking dueling traditions of Hólmgang and Einvigi, and extends well into the age of dueling with pistols.

Dueling culture while often employing elaborate rules, was not entirely immune to fanciful whims or impromptu changes in order to meet the needs of a particular 'affair of honour'. We have accounts of early courts mandating duels in order to settle any number of legal issues. In these cases we often see very different weapon types being brought into the fray. A notable example would be the duel between a man and a woman which has been imortalized in the martial arts literature produced by the Swabian 'Fight master' Hans Talhoffer in the 15th century. Such absurdities were not strictly limited to marital spats either, there is one Mediæval account of a man who, having been accused of murder, was ordered by the courts to face his accuser in a duel. The accuser was the dog of the murdered man!

[Stacy Clifford]

Such absurdities were not strictly limited to marital spats either, there is one Mediæval account of a man who, having been accused of murder, was ordered by the courts to face his accuser in a duel. The accuser was the dog of the murdered man!

I have to ask on this one... who won?

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

Such absurdities were not strictly limited to marital spats either, there is one Mediæval account of a man who, having been accused of murder, was ordered by the courts to face his accuser in a duel. The accuser was the dog of the murdered man!

I have to ask on this one... who won?

The dog
The story is named "the dog of Montargis", but its veracity is debatable. As far as I gathered it is in fact an invention of a poet of the twelfth century, even though the widely known version is set in 1371. But still it's not entirely out of place; I think there were trials of animals at that time too, so why not a judicial duel?

About the original question, basically all judicial duels try to make it more about the valour of the fighters than about their equipment, and thus regulations tend to minimize disparity of weapons. The exception being when there are obvious physical disparities. That said, at the time when duels became illegal, there are encounters between dissimilar combinations. A famous example occurs in the "duel des mignons" where one of the fighters fought single sword against the sword and dagger of his opponent, protested against the disadvantage and got told: "too bad for you, you made a big mistake leaving your dagger at home". He suffered heavy wounds and subsequently died.

Regards,

[John Farthing]

Sorry for the delay in responding Stacy, but yes, as Vincent has already so wonderfully answered.... It was in fact, the dog!

[John Farthing]

If I recall correctly, and I could be mistaken as I'm going entirely from my exhausted memory here, but I do believe there were court documents that recorded the accounts of the duel. One thing I do remember is that the accused man was made to stand in a pit, not unlike those in the aforementioned duel between a man and woman depicted in Talhoffer.

[Andy Lee Chaisiri]

I've seen fightbooks that illustrate using a curved blade vs a straight swords how about accounts of that?


Now is it known how weapon disparity matches up? Like if you have a spear vs a sword&board, will one have a strong advantage over the other?

It's things like that I'm interested in.

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

If I recall correctly, and I could be mistaken as I'm going entirely from my exhausted memory here, but I do believe there were court documents that recorded the accounts of the duel. One thing I do remember is that the accused man was made to stand in a pit, not unlike those in the aforementioned duel between a man and woman depicted in Talhoffer.

Perhaps another version then, because the famous one is that the man was given a stick and the dog a barrel to hide in. This page in French gives a lot of research on that story, but I can't say I've checked everything.

Thinking about it, there is one variant of duel which includes almost exclusively unmatched weapons: gladiators.

Regards,

[John Farthing]

Yes Vincent, perhaps it is another account. That does not sound like the same one I was referencing, but again I am also drawing upon memory. I've not had the time to look it up.

Andy, the fightbooks are filled with examples of mixed weapons combinations! I did not reference this earlier because they are seldom describing their use with a specificity towards the duel. If you are looking purely for combative examples however, there is a virtual cornucopia of examples throughout the vast corpus of extant martial literature!

In terms of addressing how well one weapon stood up against another, the sources by and large seem to take into account that each weapon is unique and therefore comes with it's own individual properties of strengths and weaknesses. In most instances the sources seem to factor this into their treatment of such. Once again however, there are certainly exceptions and there are some writers who clearly favour one weapon above another in a particular match up!

[Stacy Clifford]

One thing to keep in mind is that although examples in the manuals of mismatched weapons are not uncommon, it's pretty rare for them to spend much time on any one pairing. You'll get a couple of plates on sword vs. spear, one on spear vs. poleax, a paragraph on sword & dagger vs. staff, and so on, but no extended treatise covering all the possibilities for one combination like you get for matched weapons. It's more like helpful tips for the most obvious encounters between the two weapons, and in some cases I think it may even be a teaser to get the noble reader to hire the author and see what else he knows. In any case, with time and imagination you can usually build on those tidbits using the principles you've learned in the rest of the book, and I think that's the main intent.

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

in some cases I think it may even be a teaser to get the noble reader to hire the author and see what else he knows.

One particularly glaring teaser is the plate about rapier vs. polearm at the end of Fabris's book...

Unarmed vs. dagger is the most thoroughly covered mismatch, I think, probably because of its relevance for self-defence. Outside of that, there are some pretty detailed advice in Thibault (rapier vs rapier&dagger, rapier&round shield, greatsword, even musket). But he has the attitude common to most martial artists, he looks at what you can do in the situation, but not really at who has the advantage. No matter how asymmetric the situation is, there are things you can do and this is what matters, more than knowing who has the advantage. There are exception to that though. George Silver, for example, details which weapon has the advantage over which other.

All of this is quite likely later than your interests though...

Regards,

[James Brazas]

Joseph Swetnam, Paulus Hector Mair, Albrecht Durer, and George Silver all have a decent amount about how to fight against a different weapon from your own.

Silver and Swetnam cover staff vs. sword. (Staff and spear are used almost exactly the same.) Swetnam especially seems to like the staff vs. sword-and-dagger or staff vs. rapier-and-dagger.

Silver also covers "short sword" vs. rapier (Silver's "short sword" being a military cut-and-thrust sword, or "sidesword").

Durer has some Longsword vs. Messer material. (The Messer is the "Great Knife" of Medieval Germany. It's a knife so big that it's basically a sword - a curved, single-edged, one-handed sword optimized for cutting.)

Mair has a smattering of different matchups between various polearms and swords. The weapons include spears, pollaxes, longswords, sideswords, and dussacks (basically a cutlass). Unfortunately, I'm not sure if an English translation is available of that section of Mair's manual. Mair's manual is absolutely gigantic, so it's often translated in pieces.

(As a sidenote, if anyone knows of a place where you can get Paulus Hector Mair's entire manual in English, please let me know. I have access to English versions of specific sections, but not the whole thing.)

As has been said before, the most common dissimilar matchup is unarmed vs. dagger. There are also a few unarmed vs. sword techniques here and there. I can't remember every manual I've seen them, but I've been going through Lechuckner's Messer manual lately. I remember Leckuchner had some unarmed vs. Messer techniques in his Messer manual.

It's usually only a few techniques here and there - so nothing exhaustive or too terribly detailed.

Most of the manuals will teach longsword vs. longsword, pollaxe vs. pollaxe, etc. It allows you to learn both how to use the weapon and how to fight against the weapon. So a skilled fighter who has learned, say, the longsword would know good ways to defeat the longsword as well.

Using a different weapon than your opponent changes up the advantages and disadvantages, of course. Yet if you have trained in both weapons, presumably you would be able to figure the rest out.

Plus, there are the occasional passages in the manuals that teach specific techniques or tactics to fight in dissimilar weapon matches.

And as has been said before, duels were almost always between two weapons of the exact same type. So dissimilar weapons training would normally be for either war or when you are spontaneously attacked by someone who happens to have a different weapon.

Most masters spend the vast majority of their time exploring the possibilities of each weapon rather than raking them as "better/worse" or building some sort of elaborate "rock, paper, scissors" arrangement. But there was one master who delved into the subject a great deal: George Silver. He was rather opinionated and often didn't agree with the Italian and Spanish masters (who loved the rapier, a weapon that Silver looked down on), but Silver was a very good fighter and well-trained in virtually every weapon you could ask for. So even though his ranking system was controversial, it's at least based on the experience of a life-long swordsman.

Basically, it went like this:

Sword ("short sword" or "sidesword") > Rapier

Sword and Dagger > Sword alone

Sword and Target (large round steel shield strapped to the arm) > Sword and Dagger

Sword and Buckler (small steel shield held in the fist) > Sword and Target

Two-Hand Sword > Sword and Buckler

Pollaxe/Halberd > Two-Hand Sword

Spear/Forest Bill > Pollaxe/Halberd

He also mentions that, in tight quarters and dense battles, that he especially recommends the two-hand sword, sword-and-target, or pollaxe.