The KATZBALGER: A "Pointless" Sword for Gigachads of History...

this used to be one of my favorite sword designs but now i'm not so sure anymore so let's take a look at the cuts bugger definitely one of the most unique and recognizable swords in history first off what do they do to the poor cats well it depends on how you interpret the term one interpretation is that it's named after the cat fur that it was carried in instead of a scabbard supposedly i think we can discard that interpretation because when you look at depictions of landscape mercenaries using these there's no sign of a cat fur anywhere you can clearly see they were using scabbards and we also have some surviving scabbards which just makes a lot more sense and different interpretation is that it refers to a bag made of cat fur that was part of landsnet gear and the third interpretation which i find the most likely is that it refers to the german term balgan which means to brawl or scuffle so basically a joking comparison to the way cats fight if you're interested in this topic 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a lifetime purchase which is also refundable within 30 days so check out campfirewriting.com and give the software a try the lens connect was an iconic german mercenary in the renaissance or renaissance if you prefer that pronunciation the swiss had their own version the holy roman emperor maximilian formed the first landscape regiments in 1487. a little fun fact for you since maximilian regarded their lives as brutish and short he exempted them from the laws regulating what the social classes could wear generally expensive looking fancy attire with lots of colors were reserved for nobility but the landscape mercenaries were exempt from that and were actually allowed to wear whatever they liked which is why they dressed in lots of colorful garish outlandish outfits despite being commoners as far as their armament is concerned they were well paid but had to supply their own weapons and armor and they had a reputation for gambling away their earnings so what they used depended on the individual budget so not everybody was able to afford armor as far as weapons most of them used pikes minions halberds and there were certain elite mercenaries called double zoners who received double income so they were able to afford armor and they used large two-handed swords more about that in another video i made specifically about greatswords link below if you haven't seen that yet and this was their sidearm the reason it's so compact is because they had to use it in the midst of the chaos that was two colliding pike squares so while the pikemen were trying to stab each other you also had other mercenaries in between that carry halberds and swords as said so they were trying to bind up the pikes maybe damage them and they were also trying to get past the points of the pikes to try to break up the formation because as soon as you're past the pike shaft basically you can attack the pikeman at will so they would also have to be protected by other mercenaries in their ranks so you need something that you can use in confined spaces while there's pike shafts everywhere and other weapons so this is what they used by the way there were also large two-handed versions that had the same s-shaped guard and a very similar blade shape which were used like great swords the elephant in the room here of course is why is it pointless i mean this one is very slightly pointed but usually they were just round so no stabbing tip at all maybe i shouldn't even say usually the more i look the more i find examples with blades that are pointed to some extent more about that later why is that well we can only speculate i'm not aware of any sources that mention the reason for this one good hypothesis is that they wanted to prevent the blade from snagging or getting stuck in something particularly when you think about the outfits all the large puffed slashed sleeves and all that there's a lot of loose material that blades could potentially get stuck in and by the way this kind of clothing also i imagine would offer a decent amount of protection just because it's pretty voluminous it might be able to deflect blades or i said make them get stuck or maybe twist the blades and throw off the edge alignment things like that so not as good as armor obviously but it would be better than nothing and also better than most other clothing really there's plenty of reasons to use thrusts in the midst of all this if you have you have to deal with limited space there's a lot of crap going on i said pike shots left and right of you so it would make a lot of sense to be able to thrust what's the benefit what's the return that you get from this sort of shape well one is that you don't have to give the blade any kind of profile taper so it's pretty much parallel edges all throughout which means that it cuts very well up here a different type of sword with a strongly tapered blade that thrusts better doesn't cut particularly well up here so the more strongly it's tapered in profile basically the lower on the blade you have to connect to get that sweet spot because up here you just don't have that much mass here i can pretty much cut all the way there which is still fine i mean you can't go too high up because then you're limiting the penetration depth but this would still be quite effective right here plus also it's rigid all throughout another reason why you have a certain sweet spot on the blade here is that you've got certain nodes of percussion so it vibrates here and there more and then you have a certain sweet spot where it vibrates a lot less on impact and thereby you can you achieve a smoother cut for the target it's going to penetrate more deeply this one is completely rigid if i tap the edge on something solid i can feel that the vibrations at a certain point become much less and basically stop this is pretty much the same all throughout so essentially the way i see it is this is a way of shortening the overall length without really giving you much less to cut with because i said if you taper it then you can't work so much with say about this much maybe off the blade again depending on the blade shape but you get more bang for your buck or rather more chop for your buck basically which is overall a pretty good idea generally this blade is optimized for powerful cuts everything about it you know it's a quite a wide blade but if you look at it from the side you can see it's not terribly thick and you can this this one here is just ground very smoothly like like lenticular cross section basically and it can taper all the way from center of the blade to the edge which means very little resistance in the cut so this should be devastating i say should because this one surprised me quite a bit during the test cutting we'll get to that later in terms of raw chopping and slashing power cramped into the smallest possible package you probably can't do much better than this however some of them did have sharp points in fact there are some designs from the early 16th century that some people consider more proto cuts bugger there is a bit of a typology going from an earlier type so it depends a little bit on exactly how you want to define it which characteristics does it have to have to be considered a cuts bogger so depending on that more or fewer of them with pointed tips would be considered an actual cuts bugger but either way there are some that i think otherwise in terms of design are very much that just that they are somewhat pointed at least and of course you would still against an unarmored opponent be able to thrust even with a pretty rounded point it would be sort of more like a push cut basically so whether or not they did that not sure it wouldn't be obviously as effective as a more tapered blade but you shouldn't discard the possibility altogether that's the functional analysis the problem is always with weapon designs from history that we don't have a period statements about we can go a little bit into over analyzing mode and interpret things as functional decisions that had other reasons if we look at the way they were wearing the katz bulgar it's usually a horizontal on the hip and a lot of depictions you can see the grip placed suggestively let's put it that way and this was probably intentional because basically the landscape mercenary was sort of like the giga chat of his time was seen as extremely virile and so could this also be a case of well let's make this look more like a certain part of male anatomy by making the tip round as opposed to point it maybe just putting it out there putting it in there then we've got the other unique feature which is the guard so you can see the quillons were bent into this s shape which is quite unusual usually you have either a discard or rings perhaps usually in addition to straight quillons this is different and quite a strange design if you ask me so for one this offers no protection against thrusts i mean a lot of guards don't this doesn't either to the point where i imagine even a pike head could fit through here and nail you in the hand although you've pretty much fulfilled your purpose at that point if you get the pike stuck in that guard even if your hand gets maimed and you've done something positive for the greater good i suppose but either way definitely an odd design it does provide a lot of protection against anything coming down like this of course particularly if it's something like a pole arm shaft that would quite easily be caught here but again the question is how much of this is functional purpose and how much is style and clearly landscape mercenaries care a lot about style about swagger and flamboyance and all that so this is also probably the reason why they wore it the way they did i read one hypothesis about how they were like this horizontal basically and sometimes more toward the back to prevent it them from being disarmed by someone else which i don't find that convincing somebody standing in front of you could still pull this out you could still potentially be disarmed in some situations i think this has more to do with the fact that you can't really comfortably carry it like this a lot of swords were worn either vertical or at like forward diagonal angle that's just not really happening with such a large guard that sticks out to the sides that much so you pretty much have to wear it like this and depending on the position i find this a little bit awkward because as it dangles it might very well hit you in sensitive areas which may not be a problem because they had something on their pants which looks like a cod piece so if that was rigid that would have provided protection either way i'm not a big fan of this i have to say the way it carries this is already as high as i can carry it without putting my belt even higher so it's just it does not feel very secure it dangles a lot it's kind of awkwardly in the way i'm just i'm not digging that part and overall i'm not really liking this as much as i would have expected it's still a very interesting design aesthetically i mean i can't say that i consider it to be all that pretty but it's it's kind of cool looking and it's different so let's move on to this particular reproduction here this is made by arms and armor the blade is made of 6150 high carbon chrome vanadium alloy steel which is known for excellent toughness shock and abrasion resistance so definitely a good choice here overall the blade is very well made it's got these double fullers here which are executed flawlessly and very even all good the grind on the blade overall is also done very evenly and the blade is perfectly straight i'm not seeing any flaws there now same with the guard the decorations here are done quite nicely the finish is very good i like that it's got a satin finish so it's sort of a little bit more dull gray which contrasts nicely with the blade then we've got the leather wrap grip the stitching on the side is extremely tight very well done the risers are nice the shape overall is great widens a little bit toward the end to keep your hand on it and then of course this pommel also makes sure that there's really no way the hand could slip off feels very good in the hand i mean until you swing it again we'll get back to that later i quite like the decorations on it this is modeled after an original find at a museum by the way and uh judging by the pictures the peen block is a little bit different in the originals those like not all the details are 100 but it's very close overall it looks fantastic and the scabbard is also nicely made great job on the leather work here it's adjustable for a number of different positions higher lower you can also angle it if you want and the belt looks quite nice as well as sturdy and all this absolutely nothing wrong with this maybe with the exception that the fit is very loose like to the point where this could like on on the real-life battlefield this could create problems this may very easily fall out there's pretty much no retention there the good thing is it doesn't really rattle as such there's really no sound while i shake it other than the leather creaking so the fit in and of itself is great it's just it just doesn't retain it very well so that could be better but otherwise it's also nice how the leather covers it quite well to prevent rain from getting inside so overall beautiful work there is one problem that i'm not fond of at all especially at this price 1215 us dollars currently which is i didn't do abusive testing at all all i did was cut water bottles and some tatami mats some of them had wooden cores and that was enough to loosen up the pommel so i can twist it now it's still staying in place but the fact that this starts to shift around from fairly gentle use worries me this is not a good sign again especially for the price i would expect it to be assembled more tightly and durably so that's something i don't like that's definitely a flaw other than that well the cutting did not go as i expected at all i had a lot of trouble cutting with it actually this is a clear example of user error i had it grossly misaligned during that cut yeah i'm just gonna brute force it that is rarely a good idea nope i just threw off the edge alignment even more wow what a surprise everything about this blade says that it should cut exceptionally well particularly the blade geometry and even when i do the paper test totally fine this is definitely a sharp blade you know by whatever metric you go you know the thumbnail test also is fine it doesn't slip off so it's a sharp edge it's a remarkably smooth blade it's pretty thin it's wide this should cut like an absolute monster yet i had trouble with it and this is most likely user error i'm not used to this kind of grip and uh definitely struggled with a little bit in the beginning my first instinct was to use a handshake grip which you do with a lot of swords but this does not work at all the cuts were terrible that way and also it just the pommel shape does not lend itself to that and you can just tell the whole design is intended for a hammer grip the leather wrapped section is just about all that you can wrap your hand around in this position if you use a handshake grip you're not on the the leather wrap section the entire time and also the the pommel just keeps your wrist at a certain position so this is just how it's meant to be used and once i changed to that it went better that was better yep that's the way to do it this is just that's not the right kind of grip for the sword but the tatami cutting was still pretty difficult edge alignment is a little trickier on this of course you always have to keep in mind tatami mats are not a good analog for anything really it's really more of a test of edge alignment sharpness things like that but there are just certain limitations to that you know like if if you struck some sort of human body analog you know like a synthetic arm analog or a rib cage things like that that have certain amount of resistance from the bones with some squishy material on top and lots of mass behind them obviously this should do quite a bit better so i think those tests in this case are misleading this is just not the kind of blade that does well on materials like that i wish i had had the time and opportunity to do some harder cutting you know against wood considering that they were most likely intended to chop at pike shafts as well that would have made a lot of sense but i also didn't really dare because well if it looses up from the tummy mats already then this would probably get really rattly from trying to chop into wood despite those results i still think that this should be a remarkably powerful cutter just on you know more real targets that we don't do anymore these days i don't like it as much as i thought i would i said the grip is for its intended purpose it's great but i just i'm not a fan of hammer grip slashing chopping this kind of thing it's just much more limiting this pummel also kind of beats up the palm of my hand because it just stays just this corner that digs into it like just on impact like this i don't feel it but on impact when it just kind of overextends it just digs right in there even though it doesn't weigh all that much due to the size it feels a little bit clunky i mean not terribly so i've definitely handled way uh more cumbersome swords so it's you can still swing it pretty fast and all but it just it doesn't feel lively it's not really supposed to because you want a blade heavy chopper basically for this purpose so you know handling is not amazing it's just a different sort of weapon and the thing is even for the intended application i don't really see why you would go for this over something like that you know this messer right here is basically the same length it's also extremely compact it has a remarkably wide blade as well so absolutely devastating cutter at the same time it has a point that you can thrust with it has a sharpened false edge so it's functionally double edged basically because you wouldn't really cut much lower than this anyway and it's got the extra guard here it's got a guard on the side you could also modify this some more you could use a ring or a longer nail guard on the side etc etc there are a number of ways which you could improve this for use in a pike formation and i just personally think this is just better in every way than the cuts bugger it may not look as fancy for sure but i would rather take this in this sort of situation which would have absolutely been available to them so even though i can see plenty of good reasons for the design the way it is i think it could be better so it still looks cool no doubt about it and again very iconic sword for sure i just yeah personally don't like it as much as i thought before trying it out that's all so hope you found this interesting there will be links to other videos you might you might find interesting in the description as well check that out of course also a link to this where you can buy it all of that good stuff let me know what you think thanks for watching and have a good one folks [Music] foreign

Channel: Skallagrim

Views: 676,558

Keywords: Skall, Skallagrim, landsknecht, katzbalger, mercenary, sword, history, historical, reproduction, greatsword, zweihander, arming sword, medieval, middle ages, 16th century, renaissance, weapon

Id: JEASl6vRAsw

Length: 25min 28sec (1528 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 30 2022