Underappreciated Historical Weapons: the WAR SCYTHE

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audible is just excellent and might I suggest you check out one of the greatest fantasy epics of all time the Wheel of Time beginning with the eye of the world and rated by the flawless Michael Kramer and Kate rating day it is wonderful in fact if you want to get the first book in The Wheel of Time at the eye of the world for free go to www.mooji.org/videos foreignlang.html for sponsoring this video and now let's get through the subject of this video our donors ratings I am Shannon welcome to underappreciated historical weapons and in this episode we're looking at a kind of interesting weapon because it is both underappreciated and in this kind of state it is over appreciated and it is indeed the scythe the sight is a kind of complex sophisticated subject when you really dive into it and there's a bit to cover so let's go right into it first of all the scythe as depicted in many pop cultures the Grim Reaper scythe this is actually a Grim Reaper's you know fiendish design right it's a skull head okay so the classic Grim Reaper's scythe no no it's not really a weapon though there's a way but that's quite similar to it that I'm gonna mention later because it's not really a scythe what is a scythe well a real sight is actually an agricultural implement that wasn't just used in the medieval period but all the way through to the 1800s and it of course looks very much like what you see here but with some very key important differences one of the differences is that there's actually two handles right about here on a real scythe and I moved back so he can see it so it wasn't actually meant to be held like this but in fact on the handles that protruded out of the main shaft and the other key difference is that the blade that was on this side was actually not lined up as you see this one being lined up through the shaft itself it was actually kind of tilted to an angle and the reason for this was for cutting grass and grain and sorry when you hold the scythe on an angle downwards like this the blade was actually in line with the ground and so you would hold it up the handles and you do these bigs swashes and sweeps and stuff and you would Thresh and cut grass in a very effective way I was a very effective farming implement it you know it was used for a very long time because it was effective and it wasn't actually a weapon yet farming implements have been adapted into weapons all throughout history it was done in Japan a lot of the martial arts weapons that we see were actually originally farming type implements like the karma and even the nunchucks right so they were actually farming implements and the scythe was one of those as well and in Europe another example the flail in its original form was actually a type of farming implement for the threshing and gray knocking grain stuff is on a big pole and everything but this is the thing some farming implements can actually be quite effective weapons even if they were originally designed as such and so if you had nothing to use except this you know you're a farmer right and you have this scythe with a pretty vicious sharp blade on the end and you needed a weapon well it's better than nothing isn't it so you can actually use the agricultural scythe without changing anything on it as a weapon in fact there's even a treatise describing certain techniques that you can try you know use a scythe in that full-on combat there is debate if this is actually meant to be taken seriously trying to establish it as a legitimate weapon or it was just a novelty something kind of interesting in all honesty it's very awkward weapon especially with the blade being you know off-center to the line of the shaft is like tilted on a different angle that makes it kind of awkward and so using it you have to use different kind of techniques and stuff but of course it's like I said it's better than nothing but still being competent with a weapon like that at first is someone who is also using the same weapon or even a better weapon that's designed for real combat you're at a bit of a disadvantage and if you can win that shows that level of competence and skill doesn't it yet in reality it's actually a very inefficient weapon design as it is and so there is an adaptation on the scythe that people have their speculation on to exactly how this war scythe really came about and people say it's because people started using scythes and weapons and realize you know these aren't actually fully effective as a weapon in fact there's a couple of distinct changes would want to make to an agricultural scythe to make them effective weapons and one of the things is the angle in which the blade is protruding from the shaft you can stab people really well with it but there's this big vicious blade on the underside it's actually really hard to strike people with I mean the only way you would do it is if you overshoot your opponent then try and pull it in and try and slash that way but when you do a big swing like that you're just stabbing them you're not actually using the blade and people seem to have noticed this and realized well if you want to get the utility out of display we're going to need to change the angle and sorry there is such a weapon known as a war scythe and this is the underappreciated weapon that I'm kind of talking about because the actual classic kind of cliche death scythe is not really effective okay yes there's a novelty and if you had nothing that's better than nothing but if you actually wanted to adapt this to combat the world there is such thing as a war site and it's not what this what it actually is is like a pole on with a scythe looking blade sometimes they will repurposed agricultural sites but people say that agricultural scythe their blades are too thin to handle the riggers are full on combat and they get damaged too easily and so a proper war scythe has a purposefully built blade on the end it's still shaped like a scythe blade but it's thicker and more robust curving forward on the end and because it's now instead of angled like 90 degrees from the shaft is actually sticking up fold with a Ford curving striking end well you can actually strike with the blade and it's a far more efficient weapon that is what is called and known as the war side and it's pretty darn vicious but we don't see it depicted very often in pop culture video games movies Rob thinking and stuff like that it's very I've known but having said that the variety and versatility of Poland's medieval Poland's there are so many that honestly people seem to default to some of the classics and that is like a halberd they pole axe and if they're a bit aware of one of the more common types of pole arms that were used by the more common soldier the billhook or simply known as the bill but there are so many other types of pole arms that are there's too many to list but if you just look them up there's heaps there and the war scythe is one of them the thing is though there's actually another historical weapon that in terms of shape and proportions it matches quite closely what this thing is hear the cliche scythe the death scythe that's not a real agricultural scythe because it's just made the base again somewhere so what weapon is is this well it's called the BIC de Corbin or the war pick and it's pretty her the name explains it so quite adequately it's a polearm weapon long shaft with a peak on the end except again this was made for combat it wasn't made to mirror at real scythe it has no blade on the bottom or top end it's a pick and because it's a peak you don't need something so long which will add unnecessary weight and it doesn't really increase its functionality at all it's as long as it needs to be to be effective but no longer and so the Victor Corbin or war pick the blood the actual spike only comes out to about this far sometimes even shorter but my goodness with the leverage that you can get from a big pole weapon with that pick on the end right well they penetrated power and just the deadliness of this ribbon is crazy and we see spikes like this put on many other whole arm weapons kind of combining the uses so for instance the halberd has an accent on one end and on the other side we see a big old spike or the picked up Corbin is actually kind of takes one thing from that classic halberd and one thing from the classic pole axe because with a pole axe you have an axe head and a hammer head on the other side well generally with a Victor Corbin you'll have a spike on one end and a hammer on the other and so there is a danger with even if you were to say use a classic kind of spike scythe kind of thing like this and it wasn't a true war pick where it was longer and stuff you'd be using it in almost the exact same fashion as what has one another they're about the same and there is a potential weakness that you can get with either one and it's their weakness of you know Peaks and spikes like this is that it gets stuck in the opponent especially they're wearing metal armor this is the thing they people say that weapons like the Victor Corbin or even the spike on how was everything were universally used to get through metal armor yes and no you see there are high chances that it can pierce metal armor but generally it only puncture the metal depending on how strong the metal is because sometimes the metal is much lower quality so I'll be able to penetrate much deeper but if it's a good quality metal armor breastplate and stuff it only penetrates about this much and then they're padding underneath and it actually doesn't really injure the wear and even if it does it's certainly a tiny little puncture wound it's not big they'll bleed a little bit but definitely not fatal right and then there's a big problem that usually results out of trying to strike that metal plate some armor with a weapon like that Victor Corbin or the spikes on how birds and even pole axes and stuff is that they get stuck in the metal that gets jammed the metal you know doesn't want to push aside so there's a lot of friction when it gets jammed in from a big swing and more often than not you can't pull it out you know almost disarmed yourself you're trying to pull it out a person will be standing there fine and they can attack you and you don't have a weapon and so to save yourself from that that is why in my opinion they have a hammer on the other end because a hammer can do devastating strikes against middle armour and you don't have to worry about it getting stuck in the armor does that mean you would never use the pick or not at all because there are other types of armor that have far less you know chances of you the weapon that peak part getting stuck in like gambeson and when it comes to weapon like that Victor Corbin that would be out of do some pretty good damage to a gambeson especially with a good swing mail as well piercing strikes have much higher chance of penetrating mail and so a weapon like a war pick which is really what the classic scythe is kind of real that's what the classic scythe is except as much longer it has a useless plate on the bottom and that you can't really use it is essentially a war pick it's actually not I decide there's more it's got more in common with a war pig or a Victor Corbin then the actual war scythe from history that's kind of interesting but there are some armor types even metal plated armor types that even if you get a small amount of penetration on you could still kill someone and it's not like on the breastplate it's on helmet okay even if you penetrate a helmet by that much and you're able to extract the skull and fracture the skull that can be game over right then that's a full-on debilitating attack and so one of the main targets for a war pick like this would be helmets absolutely and they would have much greater chance at penetrating and subverting the whole protective purpose of a helmet in and of itself and the head is one of the most vulnerable parts that's one of the main areas you don't want to get hit especially by a weapon that has chances are penetrating it and so that's what you really and this is basically a headshot insta-kill weapon and it's not guaranteed that you get a penetrate to the helmet in all circumstances but even if you know penetrated all that force is concentrated on such a you know small area so much force is getting transferred onto the helmet and then even if it doesn't penetrate all that blunt force is knocking and if it you get knocked on the head so much that your brain then sloshes around and hits the inside of your skull concussion you're down and if you're incapacitated in a battle you're dead yep so there we go there's kind of three sides of this discussion of a scythe use in combat wine it was an agricultural site and yes they were used in combat there's even a treatise depicting it to the real proper war size were actually quite different to what the standard classic site that you see depicted and the weapon that has most in common with this classic scythe isn't a safe at all but a war pick or the vector Corbin's there we go very interesting savage to cover I hope you have enjoyed and of course I hope to see you again so until that time [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 1,269,256

Keywords: scythe, war, sickle, bec de corban, war pick, history, historical, medieval, grim reaper, weapon, weapons, halberd, sword, swords, castle, castles, knight, knight's, poleaxe, poleax, beak, warhammer, dungeons and dragons, dnd, d&d, roleplaying, skyrim, anime, game of thrones, lord of the rings, top 10, top ten, rpg, game, video, farming, cut, thresh, agricultural, blade, sharp, hema, historical european martial arts, longsword, reenactment

Id: _fujM6vvgF4

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 28 2019