Why were MASSIVE SWORDS used instead of POLEARMS?

why were giant swords used when there were other options available hey folks matt easton here scholar gladiatoria now the question that i want to pose in this video is why were giant swords developed in various parts of the world not just in europe this is a european uh zavajanda montante spadone whatever language you want to use for it but a great sword essentially but similar large swords which we'll look at in a second were developed in china in japan in india and elsewhere as well so why were these giant swords why did they have a purpose what did they have a role doing when there were pole arms available which debatably could have done the same job in fact probably the earliest claimants to the throne of who developed the big two-handed sword first probably is china um if we go all the way back to the han dynasty we find large two-handed swords some of which have been featured on my channel in the past so clearly this recurring theme of this very big two-handed sword bigger than you can comfortably wear comes up and there seems to be a need for it throughout history in different places at different times so the question is why why were those swords needed and secondly why couldn't that roll why couldn't those needs be fulfilled by a more common or practical type of pole arm that is a shafted or a wooden shafted weapon instead but before we delve deeper into the question of why we're two-handed swords used as opposed to pole arms and other more common types of weapons we're first going to have a little look at our sponsors for this video who are the awesome raid shadow legend have you taken down the demon lord crushed the oas golem or ascended the doom tower yet what about fighting against millions of opponents in the arena well now's the time to get you a lifephone order and it's time to raid with hundreds of artifacts and 500 champions there are countless ways to combine your teams and fight opponents and fight your own way and enjoy raid the way that you 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you in game so thanks for sticking with me now let's get back to this main topic of two-handed swords why did they come about why were they so popular they appear time and time again in different parts of the world at different periods why they're big complicated things to make and i think for any of you are thinking well why not you've got to bear in mind that making a large two-handed sword of this size in those periods was a considerable mechanical and scientific accomplishment in fact if we go to the european uh spherehander we do find or montante whatever you want to call it and we do find examples of so-called bearing swords going back into the 14th century probably the earliest big ones so we do find giant swords being made in the 14th century but arguably that's probably the earliest time in europe that they were really practically able to make really really big swords and these don't become common really until the end of the 15th century and into the 16th century partly for technological reasons it just wasn't that easy to make a blade of good carbon steel of this size that wouldn't just fall apart in use so the simple fact is and that's you could arguably say when rapier blades come about in the 16th century as well that's partly perhaps led by technology of the time making those types of narrow long blades more reliable i won't say possible but more reliable and you can say a similar thing probably of the large two-handed sword now what's interesting is we if we go back to china with the earlier types of two-handed sword yes in fact this is a 20th century meow dao but this has its ancestors in the 15th century so not dissimilar period to europe but there were large two-handed swords in the han dynasty which i've considered previously in in previous videos on this channel so in fact china as i said pretty much holds the crown probably for making the earliest really big two-handed swords but as mentioned there are other places that did this as well we've got the noddachi in japan we've got large forms of two-handed sword occasionally appearing in india admittedly these big two handles didn't appear everywhere but they did appear in enough places that there must have been some kind of common impetus and desire to make them and they were difficult and expensive to make so the real question here is given the difficulty and expense of making these large two-handed swords in the 16th century or earlier why did they bother why did they make these rather than just going for a more easily to manufacture and more commonly available type of pole weapon like a glaive or a bill or even a sword staff or something like this why did they go to the effort and expense of making these well before we go into answering that question let's just consider what the commonly held views are for why these exist okay now this could be applied either to this this is a very nice example by kaveetan armory incidentally but we could be talking about european two-handed swords here or the chinese meow dao or the japanese nodaci for example and it seems to be that usually the interpretation is there and aren't there a response to something else okay that's the broad answer the more precise answer that you'll often see people say is they are either anti-polar weapons or anti-cavalry weapons but there's another big role that we actually see if we look in the historical sources that they were used in which i'll come to in a second so first of all anti-polar weapons were they that well you could say the anti-polar weapon could be anything couldn't it it could be missile weapons it could be other pole arms um or indeed could it be a two-handed sword well possibly um but an army of people with two-handed swords are they going to do well against an army of people with halberds or pikes well that's that's an open question and we don't know the answer to that we know that these were used by specialist troops in europe in the 16th century doppel soldiers paid double to use them and they allegedly apparently were used for certain types of actions on the battlefield to protect the flanks perhaps to disrupt pike blocks to make more vulnerable to other attacks and these kinds of things and in fact if we look at morozo's manual treaties from 1536 called opera nova we actually see a picture of a large two-handed long sword or a small two-hand saw being used and there is some chopped up pole arm on the ground more about that later so arguably yes they could be a specialized weapon perhaps not the sort of thing you equip a whole force with but something you equip some specialists with to go against pole arms or on a one-on-one basis as well and we'll talk about more more about that in a second now in terms of anti-cavalry well funnily enough in europe there isn't an awful lot of talk about these as anti-cavalry weapons but they very well could be used against horses and there are numerous sources of the time which do categorically state that an active swordsman on foot is more than a match for a swordsman on horseback for example and the general trend would be if you're on a horse you want a lance to counter a swordsman on foot so actually yes you can use the horse as a weapon itself but the human on foot can probably be more nimble on the ground and move around and offend the horsemen more easily than vice versa unless they have a lance but if we go over to china we do occasionally find and japan as well in fact we do occasionally find these sorts of large bladed weapons not just the swords incidentally but also things like naginata or glaives being referred to as horse cutting swords and weapons and indeed you can imagine that with a long with a long blade it is something you can keep a horse at bay with and offend the horse man more easily because you can reach them but also you can attack the horse as well its neck its legs and so on so indeed probably these were regarded to some extent as swords which were more capable of taking on a horseman with their increased reach and the large animal they're sitting on than a typical sword but the third and perhaps i think perhaps most important use of these swords these large two-handed swords are actually for these kind of specialist soldiers so if you've got a specialist soldier that has a specialist role such as storming a breach in a fortification or defending a bridge or defending a doorway or as a bodyguard defending the king or defending the emperor or whoever then indeed there does seem to be a general tendency for giving them a different type of weapon than what you would give typical majority of the kind of battlefield troops and the reason for that is they might often have to fight in a different environment they might often have to fight by themselves and they might often have to fight against multiple opponents and in fact if we go to the european sources for the use of these uh svehander they are very dominated by these big turning circular emotions of taking on multiple opponents at the same time and occupying a space so i think that by and large it could be a situation that these two-handed swords are very offensive weapons that you're able to occupy if not kill but occupy many other opponents with at the same time so therefore they often have a common role in the hands of either bodyguards or specialist attack troops kind of stormtroopers of their time but then the question for me always comes back to why go to this great expense and difficulty to make these large two-handed swords doesn't matter whether you're in japan or china or renaissance europe the fact is that it was difficult to make these large steel blades of a reliable enough steel and heat treatment that they wouldn't bend or break very very easily when you make a blade this long it has a lot of technical challenges it's a lot easier for us today with modern steel and modern heat treatment back then it was more of a challenge for them and those swords can become quite fragile so why go to all of that expense and effort and risk when you could have just given them some form of polar now i've taken a hewing spear or winged spear here but i could have taken a glaive or a bill a pole axe those weapons are known to be very offensive and very effective so much so that they were used by a lot of troops on the battlefield including all the way up to high status you know knights and samurai samurai often used a naginata knights fighting on foot often used a pole axe or a spear sometimes even a glaive and then there's heavily armored men at arms who often use bills and halberds and things like this so the simple question is why go to all of that effort to make these big two-handed swords when all of these pole arms are available and there are some very obvious advantages to these pole arms now what are those advantages well number one they're a lot cheaper and easier to make because you've got a wooden shaft which as long as you have access to some good quality wood preferably ash wood or something like that or you know male bamboo will work as well if you're in asia and then you have a smaller amount of steel for the head that is under less stress okay arguably you can make a stiffer blade as well so it's better for penetration it can also be longer you can make the weapon longer in many cases they're lighter not always it depends on the sword so the meow dow for example is very light and some pole arms certain types of billow and halberd can be quite heavy and of course as i've shown in previous videos we've got a point of balance question here and i'll come back to that as well um but nevertheless overall they're often often pole arms things like glaives and winged spears and and things like that are often lighter than a big two-handed sword so they're lighter they're easier to transport you can have a pile of these actually on your arm one person can carry several pole arms fairly easily more very very difficult to do with two-handed swords for numerous reasons with european ones particularly because of the guards the guards kind of get in the way and even if you have uh meow dao for example a bunch of them they've got guards on them as well and with if they've got scabbards on as well they just take up more space so it's easier to carry and transport more of these as i say they can be stiffer there's very little flex in this and because the blade is shorter there's not much flex in the blade so they're stiffer and better for penetration more appropriate to use as things like lance's or indeed against cavalry because they can be longer they're better against cavalry than two-handed swords are i would argue most of the time so the general uh the most common type of anti-cavalry use of a weapon is with the with the point presented forward like a giant you know pike block essentially and you can do that even with pole arms that aren't particularly long so i mean this is longer than any of the two handed swords this is fairly short for a pole arm but it's about seven foot long but with a seven foot long pole arm you can hold it right at the back and you have a lot of weapon in front of you which you don't have so much of with the two-handed sword and the two hand saw blade flexes so if a horse does come into it it will get penetrated but the blade might flex and this kind of stuff you can also have lugs up here on various types of pole arm remember that things like bills and halberds they don't look like they have lugs but because they have projecting blades they have hooks axes whatever those act as things so the thing which gets impaled for example a horse or a horse man will only come down a certain part of the shaft whereas with a sword it will come all the way down and keep and probably hit you in the face so there are a lot of advantages of pole arm and but i think the overwhelming one has to be they're a lot easier and cheaper to make so the question comes back again well so what are the advantages of the two-handed sword that meant that people actually bothered going to huge expense and effort and technological not know how to actually make them why did they make them when they had access to cool things like this already so i'm going to list some of what i view as the advantages of a two-handed sword over a pole weapon that's not me saying that this is better than nepal weapon they have slightly different strengths and weaknesses and probably better in different contexts but these are what i classed as the advantages of the big two-handed sword and the first of those is that it has a long edge surprise surprise because it's got a long blade so pole arms usually by definition have a long pole and a short blade a two-handed sword by definition has generally speaking a short-ish pole might the hilt might vary in length but the blade is usually longer okay with a few rare exceptions so you've got more edge now what does that mean well that means two very very important things number one it means you've got more area of offense so something with like a bill or a halberd or a polax and axe blade in other words like the danax behind me you only have about that much edge to hit the opponent with that actually means there's a fairly large chance that you'll miss them with the edge and hit them with something that isn't the edge either the projecting point or the shaft underneath that does mean if you hit with the shaft underneath you've got some hooking potential but let's push that aside for now so you've only got a small amount of edge to actually hit them with if it's a beak or a point on it like a lucerne hammer or the back spike of a halberd then if that point goes a bit too far or a bit too close you miss you miss the target if you're aiming at someone's head aiming someone's shoulder whatever the leg if you're a bit too near or a bit too far you miss with that with the edge wherever you hit them with that edge it's going to do them some damage okay so this is going to do damage to them regardless of whether it hits there there there there there there there so you've got this much of edge so that's a major thing okay offensively also don't just think about people think about horses as well so if you've got a bloody great horse careening down on you and you're thinking bloody hell okay you don't want to put the point in because you think it will just barrel through you and you want to sidestep and and hit the thing as it comes through you're more likely to hit its leg or neck or whatever you're aiming at with a long blade than with a short blade that's the first advantage of having more edge the second is that if you're fighting against someone with a pole arm one of the absolute prime techniques that you want to be able to do is grab their pole on okay now grabbing a shaft that's being swung at you is not easy but it's a lot easier than grabbing a sharp blade that's being swung at you usually these techniques where we actually do a grab on the blade involve stopping the blade and kind of catching it on our blade for example here or here or here before we then do the grab so for example a person swings at me i might stop it here grab their blade and then hit them back or thrust or whatever equally maybe they thrust at me i push the thrust thrust to the side grab their blade here and then cut through or thrust whatever you want to do or close in and grapple and wrestle so you can grab blades but grabbing a pole arm shaft is a lot easier and a lot safer and it's easier to get a secure tight grip on a shaft because the shaft was intended for that it was made for the users to do that so when you've got a great long pole arm shaft it is easier to grab and control or wrap your arm around than it is to do against the blade now the next advantage i'm going to list to the big two hannah sword spy hander is that it is overall a stronger object it's entirely made of metal by the wood on the grip but by and large the full structure or skeleton of this weapon is fully made of steel whereas of course a pole arm has a pole has a wooden shaft now that's not to say that pole arm shafts are easy to cut through or easy to break but the fact is it did happen does happen you can still demonstrate it you can take an ash spear shaft and cut through it with a few blows or at least you usually cut through the kind of with the first one or two cuts and then it splits or cracks breaks across after that i noticed recently the arms and armor channel actually did a demonstration cutting some wood and they did a hickory axe shaft now hickory's really really strong really tough stuff used for modern axes and sledgehammers and such like american woods so it wasn't available in medieval europe but nevertheless even that after one hit split across as well so the fact is that pole arm shafts whilst they are strong and can take a lot of abuse and admittedly some of them have langettes on them to protect the shaft not this early type of danax but later kind of bills and halberds and foshards and things like this have language to protect them and in fact prevent them breaking or at least hold them together if they do break um that being said the wooden shaft is still perishable can be destroyed damaged broken sometimes even actually hitting with these can actually break shaft and we see this in period artwork not to say we don't see broken blades we do see broken blades in period artwork as well and bear in mind i'll just reiterate once again that old produced steel was not as reliable as modern produced steel and that leads to less regular and less reliable heat treatment as well but the simple fact is that pole arm shafts were perishable probably more than blades were and we come back again to that image in morozzo from 1536 where the person's holding the two-handed sword and there's a load of broken pole arm shafts on the on the ground now i don't want you to go away with the idea that that's what these were for like a lightsaber hewing through the pike shafts that doesn't happen easily but it can happen and wooden shafts are more likely to break than a tempered flexible steel blade well so that is a major advantage for these weapons and also if we put this into the context of this being for an elite bodyguard type you know stormtrooper type character doppel soldier then that makes a lot of sense because you're giving them the really expensive but almost indestructible weapon right my next reason i think is also pretty important but i think perhaps often gets overlooked and that is quite simply that the point of balance on these means that for their mass and size they are debatably more nimble now i'm not going to say that they're more nimble in the thrust than a spear for example and there's a huge variety in pole arms and a light spear handles completely differently from a heavy spear that winged spear is a relatively heavy spear but you can have a small spare head on the end of a long light ash shaft it'll be very very nimble it will be less durable and more likely to be cut through or broken than that one and you can't cut with it but nevertheless recognize that there's a big variation and we when we get into things like bills and halberds though they are quite cumbersome because whilst they're not overall very heavy usually about four or five pounds maybe six pounds sometimes as much as seven or eight pounds not usually that's more like a poll axe but all of the weight is at the end so as i've mentioned many times in videos the difference is that a two-handed sword whilst it is similar to a pole arm in some ways and often gets compared with them as in this video the point of balance is the complete opposite so for this to handle like a pole arm we'd almost have to hold it upside down which would be a murder strike incidentally but by and large the usual way you're holding these swords they're like an upside down pole so they handle very very differently and that does mean potentially that you can chamber through and lead up numerous hits and attacks with the two-handed sword that you can't so easily or numberly or for as long do with something like a bill or a halberd which is also able to cut like this is obviously we can't compare this in that regard to a light thrusting sphere because i like thrusting sphere doesn't do those kind of motions so it is a major difference and we have to recognize that these do balance surprise surprise like swords and not like pole arms right the next advantage major advantage that i consider of these big two-handed swords and it varies a bit with different um examples and we're talking about the meow dao and the noddachi in a second is hand protection now the one uh elephant in the room with pole weapons with things like spears and halberds and stuff is they don't really have any hand protection and you may argue all the people using them would have gauntlets or whatever actually no not usually according to period artwork and records the majority of people using things like spears or or halberds or bills even in the 15th century when we've got loads of armor around it seems that a lot of them weren't wearing any corners at all so hand protection is a major thing now obviously this big two-hand sword is used by a different class and type of people and ironically the people using these in war might often have some form of hand protection because they were higher paid professional soldiers who may be wearing armor as well the lance connect for example that we're using these are often shown in what we call a demi well half harness so usually down to the knees and may or may not have arm harness but usually had a cure ass that might be pistol bulletproof as well so the simple fact is that these were used by a variety of people that who are often a slightly different group of people to a lot of polars but not always and we do get elite people using partisans and and glaives and bills and things like this but the on the surface just comparing weapon for weapon obviously these have a fair amount of hand protection you've got a big old crossbar and don't underestimate actually how much protection these crossbars do offer to blows coming in and and hitting you and of course you've got side rings you've got these lugs up here which are also defensive they prevent opponents weapons not just blades but also pole arm shafts coming right where the way down to the guard down here and they actually stop up here so very very useful lugs they're there for a good reason they're difficult to make so you know they have to be there for a good reason um and some of these two hand swords have considerably more hand protection than this does in fact some of them you even get two-handed swords with protection around the sides and stuff as well um but if we go over to the meow dao so this obviously doesn't have just with all chinese swords basically doesn't have as much protection as the european equivalent two-handed sword but it still does have a hand protection that being said i have to say some pole arms and i know some of you might be shouting at the screen at this point some pole arms do have hand protection so in the 15th and 16th centuries certain types of uh pollacks famously have a disc actually quite similar to this certain types of glaive sometimes al spice various types of pole arm essentially sometimes have discs or rondels like a rondelle dagger to protect the hand sometimes at both ends sometimes top and bottom that being said a lot don't and because of the nature of a polar you're moving your hands around a lot on the shaft up and down so your hands are not going to be right up by the guard so they fulfill a slightly different function they might arguably even be more hand stopped rather than for thrusting into armored gaps a bit like a rondelle dagger rather than literally hand guards but they would still function partly as hand guards and protect an opposing blade that happens to be thrusting down the same line coming into the top of your gauntlet for example if you're wearing gauntlets or into your bare hand if you're not so yes sometimes polams did have hand protection but usually not and it doesn't operate in quite the same way because of the length of the shaft and yes admittedly two-handed swords in china and japan for example or korea don't have as big hand guards as european ones do but nevertheless it's worth mentioning hand protection so the final reason that i want to mention or the final advantage that i want to mention for two handed swords and the reason why people might have gone to great effort and expense to make and equip their soldiers with these or themselves in some cases is to be fancy and to be intimidating and both these things all at the same time so think about status think about the fact that it is an expensive fancy object so therefore that actually conveys that to the opponent the fact that your bodyguards have these instead of partisans actually tells you something okay it's a show-off thing but i don't want you to think that i'm just saying it's just for show it's just for showing off i do think these have some mechanical advantages as well but you never underestimate the importance of showing off your wealth your power the fact that you had access to these the fact that you could equip a bodyguard with these or elite soldiers with these it's intimidating they look intimidating i would argue that people who are used to seeing things like spears and and bills and stuff when they see one of these they think holy crap that's a big giant impressive sword you get a bunch of guys walking down the street looking hard as nails carrying these on their shoulders you know that they're elite and it tells you about the soldiers and it tells you about their boss it tells you that their boss is super rich super powerful and that they have probably been chosen they are the best of the best it's like the sas or the navy seals or whatever it marks them out as elites so it's not just the weapon that's scary it's the people who are holding them that's scary so as always i hugely appreciate your comments and responses underneath the video do you think i've missed any of these pros and cons and reasons why these were made in europe and china and japan why giant two-handed swords were popular can you think of any other reasons or even do you disagree with any of the reasons that i've given do you think that some of them are flawed or can be mitigated so as always i'm super interested to see your comments underneath and hopefully i'll see you back on the channel really soon for another video cheers for watching folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our facebook a like and subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks

Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 126,455

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Id: gPEHGgKxf-k

Length: 30min 54sec (1854 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021