Spears are better than swords (longer version)

hello I am here at fight camp with Matt Easton thank you for inviting me Matt very welcome now I noticed that you're training all the people here in very very useful skills well what do people learning here so they're learning everything for example rapier sword and buckler longsword saver these kinds of things not thought there and it mostly swords it has to be said yeah but but surely I mean you know the universal weapon you know that the spear the spears that's a greatest weapon in the land you can't put it in your pocket but you can hold in your hand and it's the it's the universal weapon from from primitive Stone Age hunter gatherer tribesmen of Stone Age civilizations the Aztecs and the mayor and the Incas and and the ancient Chinese and the Romans and Africans and the Greeks and them and the Carthaginians in fact almost everybody in fact yes I'll go further everybody around the world up until even if as far as the 20th century used the spear a long pointy stick basically absolutely it's a universal weapon and it's pretty awesome as well against swords and yet huge amounts of time and effort went into developing steel good enough to make long blades out of and of course in the Bronze Age Bronze blade but a huge amount of money and effort and attention went into designing and building swords and yet spears are sort of better aren't they well I mean how many spear classes have you got this this is the three-day event zero spear classes there are forty classes at fight camp and there is not one spear class this is ridiculous we have to put this right because the spear is universal I suggest because it was good yeah I can't believe any weapon would be universally adopted probably independently invented several times and last such a test of time if it weren't flippin good but everybody wants a sword everybody on the internet wants to know about katanas or long swords or and everybody comes here wants to learn about how to use a rapier or a sword and buckler they're not wanting to learn to use a spear why is that why are these more what I can remember from my live-action role-playing days that you want your character used to be a hero and a hero's weapon is a sword right because it just is a broadsword a brooch or worn on the back yes yes and nobody wanted you know to be beaten by some peasant but who just poked him with a stick and yet when anybody ever actually came up against someone armed with something like this they found that they worked really well but these have to be better weapons don't they so huge treatises written about how to use these not how to use these yes the some that deal with these but all the attentions on these all the famous heroes from history used these Achilles is described as as being fantastically skilled as a warrior by by a very reference to his spear he won cities by the spear like which I can only think that there must be some things that the sword is better at there must be some scenarios where the swords triumphs so I think there should be an experiment I think we should pink trousers has a problem he can move about and parry with his sword to keep himself safe but to have any chance of winning the bout he has to close with his opponent who outreaches him will he manage it a southern charge can work disclaimer can also go fatally wrong another man tries his luck with a dagger a bit of quarter staff technique there can he close to stabbing distance next man has nomming sword same problem [Music] Spearman hits him while retreating their back sword no better arming sword against the rather short spear here you can see that the swordsman's eyes are open and here they are screwed tightly shut the Spearman scores a quick light hit here but the swordsman doesn't notice which is quite understandable it then gets all rather messy I think we'll call that a draw another man tries a quick rush fails tries to grab the spear fails and these pink legs attacks with a Messer he's doing well he closes he wins oh he goes too far another arming sword this hit is clearly with the flat on a forearm and would not end a real fight similarly yes there is a hit here but the mid shaft of a spear hitting the collarbone like this is unlikely to end a fight so it's fine that they keep going the less inexperienced spearmen they're actually doing worse than the complete novices yellow socks comes in with a rondelle dagger you can see by the way he holds it to that he's done his Hema lessons he takes a solid hit to the chest he ignores it and closes savagery breaks out white jacket grabs the dagger good knife defense there an epic struggle for control of the rumble come on white jacket he's on top you can do it and he beats yellow socks today pink legs now with the spear holding his ground showing some aggression with the spear using the full length of it there at last and he wins scarlet Rose taking his time here scoping out his opponent not rushing in rashly but going through all the options in his head waiting for a mistake to exploit he forms a plan and he's dead another sword style on display here perhaps this higher guard will work right but surely will be easier for the swordsmen to close with the spearmen if you had a shield so let's start him off with a buckler ah the snooker cue spear technique yellow socks now winding up for another bout of futile violence look at the way he faces down that thrust the man has nerves of steel he makes a big wide sweep with his Butler gets stoutly thrust in the center of his chest but laughs it off and lunges in with a massive haymaker of an attack while swinging his buckler out way behind him leaving him hopelessly exposed to another hit to his throat and then face keep your shield in front of you this swordsman looks serious until he takes a spear to the face read-throughs now only a clean thrust from the spear point counts he's in first victory for sword and buckler these two very smartly attired fighters seem well matched Oh spear to the chest and sword to the head this guy in the split gray trousers looks a bit dangerous he keeps his buckler in front of him keeps up the pressure and he wins good defensive work from gray skirt here all black is keeping up the thrusts but they're all at the same height all very good defense there with the spear with a circling motion he needs to go high low high low he does it that was quick a bigger sword so let's try some long swords everyone here has done loads of longsword this guy adopts a hi ox guard he gets in its Virchow victory another longsword err giving it a go oh very honest of him yellow socks he makes a grab for the spear he's only one hand on his own he's dead pink legs he's had a few defeats lately but he seems determined to win one back and he does a longer spear this one is a bit more like it a good solid eight footer let's see what the swordsman can do against that well alright yeah okay yep early days mmm that would hurt your thumb a bit but yes stitch that alright what if the sword is a lot bigger let's try a sake great big two-handed spy hander oh this swordsman looks a bit flummoxed he probably hasn't faced a spear like this before the fact that these long nylon blades are bit bendy isn't helping him big scary swings and he skewed yep he's learned the pattern big impressive swings but they are predictable that's not with the work a change in technique now sports fans as we pit spear against long sword used half sordid using a sword this way turns it into a spear so this is really spear against shorter spear nice gloves oh and it worked will it work twice on the trot yellow socks now will he go in for the kill it wasn't you touched him it wasn't a clean thrust go will green Greaves even the score oh you could have had him there no same again nice gloves having another try ok nice gloves this time sword like an axe and dies Oh [Applause] so far it seems that the spears are carrying the day but surely it will be much easier for the swordsmen to close with the spearmen he has a big shield to help him science I don't think this man has ever fought with a large shield before the man with the shield has a huge advantage he should be able to charge down the spearmen of there's not a lot the spearmen can do but the longer he hangs back out of his own range but in the Spearman's range the more charges the spearmen has to land a hit which eventually he does this man has used large shields before and knows what to do charging keep going job done this guy blinds himself Lois's shield leonito yellow socks massive haymaker dead oh man again charges in done this man hesitates pink legs is doing well here keeping him back with varied thrusts he goes low gets him in the knee there draws the shield out then goes high and lands a good thrust to the throat you can see by how much the head bends that that would have been fatal but it doesn't register and as read-throughs attacks with his right hand he swings his shield out to his left exposing himself and he gets speared keep your shield in front of you gets a nun doesn't stop that's how to do it and again the spear is dude ah yellow socks some controversy here he does another big haymaker swing his shield out to his left exposed he gets thrust in the throat and then he goes on to land an arm hit now some might say that that's a double but I'm counting that as one for Spears look how much the whole spear bends on him as he comes in you can see here in the reverse angle that it's a solid central hit long before he lands his after blow this sorts bent rise gamely but he ducks his head and blinds himself behind his own shield a Spearman winds in well and lands a hit around all over the shop he's gone he's gone fellows to protect and the formations be part off so what did the spearmen can't move around much honestly man sometime the problem for the swordsman remains how to close once he's in the result is the same whoa keep your shield in front of you now here is an unusual move fancy pants hooks the pommel of his sword around the spear and brings his shield over his opponent and leave as him into a throw exploiting his foes tenacious grasp on the spear and then hits it oh man so reliable hitherto does something very odd he halts niels blinds himself with his own shield and then shuttles forward the spearmen just side steps and has him not the most stylish skill this get hit trip over and hit your opponent by accident but it did the job sword and shield against spear and shield I don't think anyone here had fought with one-handed spear before yellow sucks going at it with his favored manner lots of big wild swings but he demonstrates that what a man might lack in style he can make up for with extreme violence right fancy pants should win this the one-handed spear is easy to fend off with a shield and doesn't have the lateral strength to force its way through a determinable guard ah now we tried this just the once spear and buckler is a stupid combination it swaps all the vigor of two-handed spear for the feeble protection of an overgrown thimble a lefty this gave him a slight advantage in attacking the swordsman as open side but not enough to offset the drawbacks of one-handed spear danger pounced now with a tomahawk pink legs is using his spear over arm the main problem with this method is that it doesn't work I would not serve them life insurance at this point [Applause] another example of why you should not hold a spear like this the result is very predictable a spear and shield didn't do so well but the spear used by itself did pretty well but spear and shield was used all over the world for thousands of years by lots of different cultures so is it rubbish no it's not rubbish because it was used with a shield in large formations if you've got a man either side of you who can skewer anyone trying to close with you then you can keep yourself safe you see keep your fellow safe but then you got famous jewels from antiquity you know the Iliad where where people are using Spears and shields we sit in on Greek vases why didn't they just put out a sword you know difficult it is to draw deep scenes and perspective on a Greek verse right come on let's try this science right now spear man you have no idea what they're doing against a charge of vengeful expert swordsman and the spearmen win second belt and well it's all very confused but the spearmen win again somehow everyone wear black in this hobby so never don't buy that you sit on this side bout three and out of the chaos comes a third spear victory little quick spam n [Applause] oh yeah that's sauce bad your dad good fourth group out sure did a randomness of it all evil things out come on help him out nope the spear still reigns supreme yes good well sure that go going in with half sword you see you there now the swordsmen are not required to start by attacking from the fretwork one swordsman gets round behind takes out his man and that decided this you quick I suggested that the spearmen counter charge but they didn't danger pants runs freely round to the back start as he is now being allowed to and quickly ends up in a wall on one the spears get spread a bit thin and then gets one again I suggested the spearmen a pre-emptive count charge and this time they heeded me a bit well use that one now let's just sit back witness the pinnacle of spearmen ship achieved by this day's activities [Laughter] well ladies and gentlemen we have now done the science and what can we conclude from the science Matt many things conclude not a conclusive not as black and white as I expected no there were it was but we did have you note some of the people were more experienced with Spears than others some of the people no experience of clothes in fact it never as far as I can tell held a spear in their lives and bless their cotton socks and thank you to all of you who volunteered to help out and I people tell me they had a lot of fun but I did feel that they're in expertise did show a bit yes but I think that was part of the interesting experiment because clearly people actually you know if you imagine levees for example given here you go you're forced into do military service here's your spear right this is how you use it now we're going off to war that was sort of interesting yes but it did it did did mean that there wasn't a nice level playing field for the for the scientific impartial T because all of those people were very familiar with the use of the sword and a lot of them had never used a spear and those who had used the spear hadn't used it much and I don't think any of them had used spear and shield mm-hm and that I felt really showed not just in the use of the spear and shield but also when taking on someone who is armed with spear and shield there were seals man who should have been taking those guys apart who were not doing so so equally and in that sense it went both ways because whilst the people using the Spears weren't necessarily very experienced using the Spears the people using the swords sometimes had maybe never closed on the spearmen before or had only done it handful of times in the past true so these are all factors that we have to take into account I would say from my when I was did reenactment many years ago I I was doing it we would fight every week about four years so I did a lot of work with spear and shield and if you were on your own with spear and shield against someone with sword and shield you were dead however of course when we were fighting we didn't just have the spear we had a sword dangling from our waist as well so when we reel oh he's got me we would just drop the spear and then draw a sword mm-hmm so the formation armed with spears would always beat swordsmen because the spearmen were also swordsmen yeah and I would also say you know we're talking about swords and spears here but shields were a major part of this whole experiment and a lot of humor people for want of a better term don't do much with shields right so that the inexperience with shields was also a factor whether they were on the sword side or the spear side true yes but despite everything we've just said it remains the case that the spears usually won yeah which confirms certainly what I expected yeah and I think some people have a perception that Spears are a are all weapon to equip a number of people to fight together in a formation with but my view is very strongly that if you can use the spear as an individual weapon even it you know in a duel situation if it was an option choose the spear over the sword most of the time it's pretty handy and of course you can always have a dagger and a or a hatchet or some secondary backup weapon if the guy does manage to close with you to follow up with and what's more we instructed our spearmen not to use them like quarter staff so if you have quarter staff skills as well with a spear hmm even more options are open up for you so Spears were a universal throughout history for a flippin good reason because they really work absolutely yes and even if we bring other factors which we didn't include in our test into it such as armor or clothing or you know that we often talk in humor about the effects there's a sword strike or thrust may have on someone wearing different degrees of clothing or padded armor or if we're going into actual Armina such as a mail or plate even or Brigantine things like this a lot of the time these blows wouldn't have any effect through the clothing or through the armor that's being worn but a spear very often will because it's a long rigid object with a point on the end with a fair amount of mass and body behind it and even if it doesn't puncture you where as a cut a draw cut or whatever doesn't sort of stop you in your cracks physically a mere thrust straight into you stop you even if it doesn't punch you absolutely yeah yeah and and and you know I think so the reach advantage of a spear is the obvious that's that's what it really comes down to isn't it it's the fact that that the person with the spear can hit the person with the sword when the person from with the sword can only try and close distance so so that's the that's the initial advantage to it but I did see some interesting occasions where the swordsmen either took such an insignificant graze on the way in or no hit at all right that immediately they were closed the spearmen was now having to backpedal and we did these experience where they had to stand their ground and I felt that that went in two directions because number one sometimes when the spearmen had to stand their ground they got charged down they couldn't backpedal and they got closed down on by the swordsmen and that was the end of it but sometimes psychologically I saw with our spearmen when they had to stand their ground they were a bit better with their use of the weapon because they weren't thinking run away run away run away and him off yeah point ups I'd felt that my spearmen generally just were not aggressive particularly when there are solo spearmen because you can threaten someone in the foot and that's very difficult that you can go from foot head foot really quickly with a spear it go high low high low and just constantly I just I just wanted to admittedly in between some of the shots I what I was trying to encourage the spearmen to do with it to get a bit more aggressive and if you just keep thrusting you're constantly opposing the the problems for the swordsmen to deal with and I think connected to that point as well it was interesting lots of people who got hit by the spear got hit in the groin there were a lot of groin hits going down and I think that was partly because because it was going high-low like this and people were trying to either take it up or take it down and divert it from the line and that middle area where a result of getting caught in was the groin and the groin has huge stopping power if you get lunged in the groin then it's going to be extremely painful or they also because it's in the center of your body mass has this sort of crumpling effect on you so it was quite interesting too yeah I want to see them add more aggression also to use more dip attacks you can like fencing you can go forth and dip against with the erection of the defender the reaction of the swords well then come up and circling as well people weren't going around in it yeah yeah I think I'm true and I think as well as up and down left and right there was also not very much use of the spirit to come in from different angles so usually the thrust was coming in from mid height like this one of the good things that you can do with the spear is lift the back end up and come over particularly with shields so you're coming over the top of the shield but quite quickly by moving the back hand down and moving the lead hand down at the same time you can now be coming underneath something so there wasn't there was a lot of changing where the point was without changing where the back end was and that makes a big difference to coming around I also felt people weren't using the the full reach of the spear a lot of people were holding them with a lot of useless spear reasoning at the back they weren't getting full Reed's particular when they went to one hand some of them are holding them in the middle yeah you lose half the length of your spear as soon as you do that so hold it hold it near the back and use the full length yeah and if you need to withdraw with a spear you can withdraw very very quickly and you can half spear you can you can shorten that shorten the length of the weapon yeah things you weren't seeing being done with it with other spear that who knows one day we may see that that will be exciting it's a project yep and so I think maybe what we need to do in the future is train some spearmen to kill swordsmen or to beat swordsmen trained some swordsmen to close down spearmen and then go a sit again with people who have been trained for that specific task yes watching the film Troy and apparently they got loads of extras and trained them for months in spear and shield fighting didn't show did it really it's still a good film though there are aspects of that film which I would say were pretty decent but the spear and sword fighting is not doesn't make the list well anyway science [Music] the man [Music]

Channel: Lindybeige

Views: 1,348,771

Rating: 4.9162307 out of 5

Keywords: spear, spears, pike, battle, test, experiment, hema, sword, swords, shield, shields, medieval, ancient, better, win, bout, bouts, trial, science

Id: afqhBODc_8U

Length: 28min 47sec (1727 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 23 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/biggreencat]

But you cant wear your spear into a tavern

[u/snakeoveer]

I've seen people who are good with spear and shield and it seems like it is about as good as sword and shield in duel, and better than spear alone, unlike in this video.

[u/Hazzardevil]

I took part in the video. I have a Muppets character and an RAF patch on my left arm for the curious.

I find the four on four fighting at the end went wrong when we didn't have a way to prevent flanking. Also, the side with shields couldn't take advantage of the ability to fight in a denser formation. If there were more people,you could have a line of advancing shields and spears overwhelming any longsworder, by having two or three thrusts targeting someone at once while staying safe from counters.

[u/ShapesAndStuff]

Would've been nice to see two shield formations take on each other

[u/UnfulfilledDesires]

While I completely agree that spears trump swords for unarmored dueling in the open and in many other scenarios, I consider this dubious evidence.

1. The number of trials is very small. For a remotely convincing experiment, you'd need hundreds of people each doing hundreds of matches.
2. Sparring isn't the same as lethal combat, for a many reasons. Folks act differently because it's just a game with no consequences. You never really know the effect of any hit, because response to wounding varies dramatically. Sparring weapons differ from ones for the fight in earnest: for instance, few if any fencers strike full-force blows with staff weapons because of safety concerns.
3. The spear simulators used differ from many historical spears/staves. For example, George Silver's staff, which he considered the ideal weapon for dueling in the open, was 8-9ft and delivered mighty strikes as well as thrusts.
4. The spear users aren't very experienced & the overall skill level may not be that high. Pietro Monte specifically wrote that reach matters more as skill increases.

As far as the historical record goes, Monte, Antonio Manciolino, Silver, and Joseph Swetnam were all clear that staff/spear beats sword, and that longer weapons are better in general, at least up to a point. For Silver, that point was a 37-40in blade for a sword and a 8-9ft total length for a staff weapon.

[u/Thatoneguy0311]

A spear is like a modern day full caliber battle rifle and a sword is like a pistol. I rifle is way better in a fight, but a pistol is good when you don’t have a rifle.

[u/damnmaster]

It’s possible that as stated in the beginning the meta for most fights are against swords which makes it difficult to know how to fight a spear when most don’t use it.