Medieval weapons: What weapons did knights use?

welcome to modern history here's a question for you what's the difference between a tool and a weapon this amazing artifact this is a reproduction of a genuine and widespread medieval knife form you may be recognizing some of that it is called a Baalak knife pretty clearly and obviously you know why it's called a Baalak knife these were tools these were use for eating these were used for cutting your cheese these are being used for doing your fingernails basically it's not a weapon but it is a tool but it is also I think a wonderful illustration of the human side of the medieval period you have to remember Catholic Church was ubiquitous so everybody was a Catholic the process intrepid even begun yet until the end of the medieval period and so ribaldry and awareness of sin and personal circumstances everybody would have been wearing this and I think that would have been absolutely fantastic I'm sure there are many jokes many fights broke out over the size of your bollocks knife and I'm sure some of these we use to kill people or kill rivals especially when the alcohol was flowing and I just think it's an illustration of human touch this is not really a weapon it is a tool but it also shows the sort of human human side of the medieval period in that it's such an obvious representation of male anatomy that's what I call a tool this is specifically built and designed and engineered to kill people this is used from horseback bashing on the top of people's heads so the theory goes it is supposed to be very easy to use as you ride past somebody who's running away crack them on the back of the head and they goes through the helmet through the skull huge amount of damage they drop down dead and then the person falls off the end and then you can go and do it again so it doesn't really use too much energy you can hold it sort of here and way if you want to just be a bit more controlled or if you hold it towards the end they've got a lot more angular momentum on it to do a bit more damage if you need to we know that it is likely these were used from horseback because we have the skulls of dead people from battles like tauten we have some of the grave pits from tauten and some of them have small holes triangular ones or square ones the back of the head towards the top that people have talked about them being executed now it might be that those soldiers were on their knees and were executed by somebody's standing I personally think it's more likely that they were running away one side had broken and then the horsemen ran after them and pop them on the back of the head as they rode past killing as many as they could before they went away we don't know though because I've not used this yet so I think we should go and ride past a target and try to use this as see how easy or difficult it is to hit somebody in the head and kill them [Music] well then what you thought but that was pretty grotesque that was incredibly easy to go all the way into the center of somebody's skull with this it hardly took any effort I was being a bit careful because I didn't want to sort of swing too far I wasn't sure what would happen it slid into the forehead of that skull in a really unpleasant way the closest I can come to it is imagine imagine a chocolate Easter egg and imagine hitting it with a hammer it kind of a sort of biscuit ebrake to it a really unpleasant kind of feel under the hand that's the closest I ever want to come to doing that for real it was slightly shocking and terrifying and most surprisingly incredibly easy it took virtually no effort I could have in the right circumstances hit a dozen two dozen targets without being too tired and that's the terrifying beauty of a weapon designed to do its job so well this could kill a lot of people in the right circumstances here are two devices that are on a long shaft of oak this is another tool this is actually for hunting this is a boar spear you do get illustrations of these used against people but broadly speaking this is a boar spear used specifically for hunting the cross pieces the wings or lugs whatever you call them are designed to stop the actual shaft going all the way through it ball and the ball running up the shaft and killing you but it's not dissimilar to this in some ways this has got a lot more stuff going on in the end this is the quintessential battle weapon of a knight this is the ak-47 have the medieval period if you like this is called a Pollux Pio mm not a pole axe as in pol II but pole as in the top of your head this is a very nasty weapon quite heavy designed to be wielded by a man in full armor fighting against other men in full armor this one is blunted for safety because I fight in tournament with this and I'm not aiming to actually kill anybody but it's blunted too to make it a little less dangerous it is still very dangerous though you've got a spike at the end you've got an axe blade straight axe blade here and then you've got a hammer for doing damage to armor this can cut obviously these bits can poke and hook for this bit can stab you can even subdue by hitting with the flat side of this so if you wanted to take somebody prisoner which we talked about a little bit and was a very important part of medieval combat and warfare you wouldn't necessarily want to hit them with this bit or this bit or this bit so what you do is hit them with this really hard knock them out and then take them prisoner and ransom them so it's a very flexible weapon and when you're in armor it doesn't feel too heavy when I'm holding it like this it actually feels quite heavy it's quite end heavy umm I can't show you sitting down but basically you fight with it in a very different way we'll go outside and I'll show you how this would actually be used and how you would advance with it this is not the end you use all the time this is the end the cue end and then you bring this round to do your killing stroke or finishing stroke the idea is you'll be moving around like this waiting for your opportunity take the other person's weapon and then you bring the deadly end down if you want to cut their arms off you use the axe if you want to break their armor you use that kind of hammer and if you find an opportunity you can stab with it as well but the great thing is it's actually quite easy to move around with it this is for opening up men in armor so again and then swing it round so if we step back okay carefully prepared melon here so you'll be filling around this arm and smash it doesn't take much energy to put a lot of deadly force into this horrible horrible weapon it's also a Knightly weapon because it's heavily decorated so this shows your status you've got this you're a knight in armor your noble you're wealthy and you're very very dangerous [Music] you might ask yourself why I haven't talked about swords yet well swords are an important topic in themselves obviously a sword represents knighthood and first still today the sword is arguably the quintessential knight's weapon but probably on the battlefield have been using a Pollock's or a mace or other kind of percussion weapons the problem is a sword is relatively light it's very sharp it's got a point it doesn't do much damage against a man in harness so if you have plate armor you can't cut through no matter what the movies say you can't cut through plate armor with a blade it's just impossible you have to pierce it puncture it or do percussive damage a sword is still carried by nice though as a symbol of their knighthood and as we talked about night two it is symbolic it represents an ideal it represents a type of achievement at your you're trying to aspire to so a sword was as much a part of the knight as all the other weapons but perhaps represented more thanks for watching please like and subscribe and we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Modern History TV

Views: 1,238,821

Rating: 4.9442644 out of 5

Keywords: history documentary, jason kingsley, medieval, middle ages, knight, weapon, bollock, dagger, sword, axe, pollaxe, pole axe, spear, armour, armor, combat, tournament

Id: MZUgxWLfCwY

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 30 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/GreenAppleGummy420]

I wish to be passionate about something as much as this guy

[u/apex8888]

He did not mention the name of the first killing weapon, the “Easter Egg Cracker.” Im curios to know what that weapon was called.