Most Dangerous Two Handed Weapon on Horseback

i was watching a youtube channel the other day scholar gladiatoria with matt easton presenting it he talks all about weapons use and swords and in this particular one he actually mentions me and he mentions the modern history tv channel in particular because he was talking about two-handed weapon use from horseback and i thought that's something i should investigate in a little bit more detail so that's exactly what this video is all about [Music] how can you use a two-handed weapon on a horse so i've got some of my two-handed weapons here i have my tournament pollacks this is a museum quality replica it's blunted it's rebated which again is a very medieval term it doesn't mean it won't hurt or kill if it hits somebody but it isn't specifically sharpened or pointed this does resemble a meat tenderizer which is exactly what it is this is designed for imparting impact to the target we obviously have pyramidal bolts as well so theoretically if you want to subdue somebody you could hit them that way and possibly not kill them and then we have the bladed axe which would be razor sharp if it wasn't designed for tournament and last but not least the top spike this one again is blunted quite nicely beautifully shaped actually so this is a high status weapon it's quite heavy but it doesn't feel quite so heavy when you're in harness actually when you're on foot without armor on it does feel quite heavy but it is in fact i'll weigh it it is in fact three and a half kilos in weight or eight pounds so it's actually quite heavy um and of course the weight distribution of this kind of weapon um is uh very end heavy so when i'm doing a simulation i've got some ideas about how to uh how to simulate that trouble is using this on horseback um is going to be necessarily quite dangerous but i might try it but we'll see i have another much lighter bec de corba crow's beak this type of device this crow's beak or pick is mentioned in the records of the battle of agincourt as something that a lot of the archers actually used and i think for me for my money anyway this kind of vicious point is designed to avoid sticking into a target and it's also particularly designed to get through armor it won't get through all armor but it will get through some of the thinner armor and you can hook with it as well and it has a kind of crushing end as well this is a sharp though so i certainly won't be getting this anywhere near a horse because it's just too many things that can go wrong when you're doing testing and it is completely lethal of course this one is much lighter this one weighs just under two kilos or about four pounds so this is much much lighter this is much faster than my other pollacks i have a training pollacks this is slightly longer than my tournament pollacks this one's made of wood slightly different dimensions doesn't have quite the same weight but being wood is not going to do too much damage to anybody so i might try this on horseback and last but not least because i wanted to test out the distribution of weight on horseback because the way a weapon works in and how it feels in the hand isn't just to do with how absolutely heavy it is it's where the balance is so i have followed a strong tradition i have wrapped the end of this pole in lead i've just quickly stapled it here and then i've tied it with a piece of rope just to keep it all together so this has a small amount of lead on the end which means that it balances what is what is that two-thirds of the way there so this should respond a bit differently when i'm trying to use it as a practice two-handed weapon from horseback now lead lead weights are of course completely used and completely normal in medieval combat particularly in later medieval combat the concept of a lead mall or a lead-weighted club is heavily used in fact the archers at agincourt were all armed with their longbows of course but then each man carried we're not quite sure what this weapon was like but it was a lead and maul now it might have been a little bit like a hammer like a sledgehammer for example with a with a lead head and we do have some illustrations of that kind of things called mallets but in other documents it's called a mall and it could have just been lead wrapped around a sturdy piece of ash it could have actually had a hammer shape it could even have been a hollow piece of steel filled with lead because that would make it last a bit longer but it was said that these things were on long handles and if they hit you you died so they were quite fearsome but they're also quite heavy this isn't quite that fearsome or quite that heavy and i quite like the look of wrapping something with rope i might try this whole lead weighted element in another video but we're going to try these and see if what matt said makes sense i have put together a new target this is the sfk i wonder if you can work out what that stands for this you will recognize the trusty helmet that i've used as a target in other videos and you'll recognize the breastplate that has been shot with various different weapons including medieval guns medieval longbow arrows and bits and pieces so it's trusty rusty key thing is it makes a noise though which is also good for horse training because every time i do one of these videos i'm aware that i'm also training a horse and i train off camera of course but training on a horse and crashing and bashing against targets is a really important part of it so the sfk is going to be my target for today good boy it's not so much climbing into the saddle with a mounting block and a medieval saddle it's more sitting down into it right let's have a look at the size of the target relative to me and we'll walk past it good boy now you can see i've got one hand free for a weapon but i'm holding the reins good boy good boy so obviously with one hand it's relatively easy just to hit good boy and you're completely controlling everything but that's a simple single-handed weapon when we move to a two-handed weapon obviously matt talked about doing it this way it's actually quite heavy with the end like that just go slowly it's actually quite possible if this was sharp you could just hit and move on it wouldn't be as good as a lance but it's going to do quite a lot of damage what we see though is rains being dropped so effectively like this good boy i'll do it a little statically good boy right so we see good boy stand so we see quite a lot of close-in melees um in the crusader bible for example or the morgan bible we see a lot of close in attacks like this and the people are hitting hard are doing this but it's pretty clear at least i think it's likely to be the case that that's bogged down that's a static situation where horse is against foot everybody's crowded together and you're nice and static and you can obviously swap hands quite easily and smack down really hard with a long long pollax or something like this ah my leather my expedient weapons falling to pieces oh well i should hit things slightly less hard let me show you what happens at a bit more speed this is static this is fairly easy i can strike on this side i can thrust i can hit this way round i can hit this way round i can also if i'm on this side i can hit this way i can hit this way i can hit this way i can hit this way you know so they've got a lot of flexibility with moving things notice i typically want to have my hand a bit further down to control it so if i'm like this it doesn't feel sensible it feels like i need to use my hands as a bit of a pivot um nice and straightforward but if i am not riding the horse with reins i could strike like this but i am going to be constantly affecting the uh neck raining and control so i'd be better off just dropping them so what i'm going to try to do now is go past just a walk drop the reins and see what we can do so let's line that up come on them boy good boy so walk on good boy come on let me try that again good boy come on come on good boy set you up go in this direction right one of the things i've noticed just by doing that is if the reins are left completely loose warlord tends to wander off because it's a big change in his control so i'm going to tie a knot in the reins because that should make them less flappy and less sort of long and in the way and if i ride him like this maybe i can use some personal movement right come on come on right good boy yup i can hit quite hard that way but i am only going at a walk so uh let's try this a bit faster good boy line you up a bit good boy come on come on the problem of course is controlling the direction of your horse when your horse is not particularly trained to do it when you are hitting you are naturally moving your weight which is different to the way you would move if you weren't striking somebody so you're actually giving signals to the horse in a way that the horse doesn't necessarily understand so from my perspective you lean and try and hit and you're actually shifting your weight on the horse which is giving the horse a signal so what you'd have to train you'd have to train the horse to ignore certain signals of weight movement as much as you would to get the horse going in a straight line now obviously one-on-one encounters are different if it's a jewel if somebody is standing there and it doesn't really matter if i miss them a few times then i can have lots and lots of goes at it if however i'm in a line of cavalry and basically everybody is squashed together from the outside just in a solid mass then maybe i wouldn't need to do anything with guiding my horse at all because quite frankly my horse is going where all the other horses go so you could imagine in a close on melee combat situation where everybody is going in the same direction very very close together knee to knee then two-handed weapons would actually be quite useful although you'd probably want to just drop the two-handed weapon and pick up the reins if you wanted to use any more kind of extreme control now what i'm going to do next i'm going to pick up my real pollacks my blunted tournament pollacks and have a go at swinging that at speed against the sfk and see what it does i just better rearrange his head a little bit right come on then right good lad come on both of you good horse good target my leaden weapon is actually fraying at the edges right let's get the actual pollacks there it is good boy this is um significantly heavier actually but it's a little shorter so let me just try this at speed against uh the man come on then whoa whoa good boy good boy i would say that was perfectly possible in fact it felt very doable um going at speed means you don't have to swing the weapon so fast because you've got the additional speed of the horse i'm just going to do one more and then call it quits but basically matt you were correct in your assumptions about two-handed weapons from horseback it is possible you can do it it has some advantages and some disadvantages and as one of your famous catch phrases is it depends very much on the context goodbye you

Channel: Modern History TV

Views: 307,331

Keywords: documentary, history, kingsley, jason kingsley, medieval, middle ages, knight, bannerlord, scholagladiatoria, mount and blade, horse, weapon, expert, two handed weapon, Medieval, fantasy, dnd, dungeons and dragons, historical, hema, historical european martial arts, video, game, roleplaying, role playing, rpg, lord of the rings, adventure, adventurer

Id: n5kiJrSC7SU

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 20 2020