So, following a question from @exocat regarding a battle scene I've been writing (Hint: Read it, it's fucking phenomenal :p), I decided to make this discussion post and include a few decent resources to help people learn more, both about weapons and about tactics.
Fair warning... this topic tends to draw rants from me. And yes, that includes explaining why some of your favourite movies and characters are literally the worst thing ever (and you should be ashamed of yourself!!!) :D
The Basics:
There are a few general principles of ancient warfare that hold true regardless of era. These will get you from the Bronze age to Napoleon and while every rule has its exceptions (Including the rule that every rule has exceptions), these things are true enough that holding to them in your roleplay will rarely draw you astray. I'll also say that my focus is heavily on European history. While a lot of these principles are universal and appear elsewhere, every culture and historical tradition has its own idiosyncrasies.
Early notes:
1. Everything Hollywood has ever shown you about ancient battle is wrong
2. If the movie contains Mel Gibson, add "And remarkably stupid" to note 1 (seriously guys, Braveheart is TERRIBLE. They took the fucking BRIDGE out of the battle of Sterling BRIDGE. YOU HAD ONE JOB. Who the fuck wrote this?).
3. D&D gets literally EVERYTHING wrong
Golden rules:
1. With almost no exceptions, the BATTLE is the least bloody part of any battle (it makes sense, trust me). When both sides are fighting, their formations are designed to keep as many of them alive as possible and are generally good at it (a tactic that gets people who use it once killed, doesn't get used twice).
2. The truly bloody part of a battle comes when one side's morale or formations break. This causes men to scatter or run and opens them up to attack. This frequently leads to incredibly lopsided casualties, as the side which never breaks, is never exposed
Cavalry:
1. Cavalry exists for three purposes. Light cavalry is used for foraging, scouting and harrying a retreating foe, usually not for direct head-to-head engagements until and unless the enemy is already falling apart. Heavy cavalry is designed for combat; They break enemy formations, kill enemy troops and are generally a tough nut to crack.
2. What they do not do is charge the enemy head-on. Horses are incredibly dumb. They are not "willingly charge onto sharp spears and die" dumb. They will swerve, they will stop, they will not complete a charge like that against a formation designed to stop them. They are useful for flanking attacks (attacks aimed at the side or back of an army), hitting positions already weakened by other means or killing troops not suited to countering them
3. There is a whole subtopic on horse archers which I won't get into because we'll be here ALL DAY
4. Cavalry is not faster than infantry over long distances. Horses are faster in bursts, but require frequent rests when travelling at speed and will literally be run to death if you try covering huge distances at speed without several horses for every man you can carry
Infantry:
1. Repeat after me: INFANTRY FIGHT IN FORMATION. The term for a group of people that rush forward to fight duels on the battlefield is "dead". This is why Hollywood movies are so bad for historical accuracy—because your hero leaping forward to battle a wall of spearmen and getting stabbed full of holes because he's a dumbass generally does not go over well. The idea of infantry as individuals with different tasks rather than a collective wall of death is a creation of modern weapons rendering formation fighting a recipe for getting slaughtered.
2. When it comes to infantry, Spears and spear-like weapons are the default. While there are armies that didn't use them (The Roman legions famously favoured the Gladius, a short sword with their large shields) they are far from the norm. Early middle ages tended to favour shield walls, often with spears instead of swords (They have a longer reach, require less training, less metal, less advanced metalworking knowledge and less stringent material requirements). Knights and heavy cavalry grew in importance through the late middle ages in both the medieval and Islamic worlds. Partially in response, pikes and halberds grew more common as they were better against cavalry. Basically: A generic medieval army with NOT be made of swordsmen.
3. Sidenote: Pike formations almost never fight each other directly. This is called a "Push of pike", but the less technical name is "EVERYBODY dies". Pikes are designed to deny the enemy access to an area, not crash into them.
4. The advent of improved ranged weapons shifted the role of infantry. The goal became to keep the enemy cavalry away from your archers and eventually, artillery and gunpowder units while they did the real damage. Eventually, the advent of muskets on par with other ranged weapons and the creation of the bayonet allowed pikes to be replaced entirely, especially as these were also extremely easy to train people with.
Armour:
This is a big one, because a lot of "common knowledge" regarding armour is dead wrong. The truth:
1. Armour is ridiculously effective. This video demonstrates a 130 lbs longbow shot at extremely close range against a breastplate. It barely even scratches the steel. You CANNOT punch through properly made plate armour with a ranged weapon short of a high calibre rifle. Likewise with most other types of armour—you might cause one hell of a bruise, but odds are you don't get through it.
2. Swords don't work against plate armour. You might as well be swinging a pool noodle, except that you won't dull the edge of a pool noodle by hitting armour with it. Knights generally fought with either blunt weapons (which are good against armour) or flipped their swords around and used the haft as a blunt weapon. The BEST way to kill a knight is neither of these. Most of the time grappling someone to the ground and shoving a dagger through their visor is the best option.
3. ARMOUR IS NOT UNWIELDY. While a full set of plate armour is heavy, it is also built specifically for the wearer and distributes the weight well. You can easily find compilations of people online who sprint, perform gymnastics or even climb cliff faces in full plate. This would be even easier for someone who has trained in armour their entire life
4. "Leather armour" is not a thing and is almost entirely the creation of modern fantasy authors. Historical examples are few and far between. Leather is an incredibly poor choice for armour in every sense. It can't be repaired like chain mail or gambeson (because sewing a hole shut doesn't restore the strength of the material), it offers none of the protection of plate and requires a fairly expensive resource (leather) to provide this sub-par protection. The default light armour is gambeson. This is a type of layered cloth armour which is incredibly light, easily repaired and uses a readily available material, all while being more than capable of stopping an arrow and otherwise making someone extremely difficult to kill. Historical usage of it spans from before Alexander the Great to the Renaissance.
Swords (Or, the section where James just RANTS) :
1. Swords are not that heavy. Even massive two-handed greatswords rarely exceed 10 lbs, with the massive unwieldy behemoths of popular culture coming from museum pieces that were never used as combat weapons.
2. Swords drawn from the back are also not a thing. Even relatively short blades are too long to be drawn from the back and long ones (Bastard swords, greatswords, etc) would be completely impossible. Anyone carrying a sword on their back would be doing so for transportation. It's also deeply impractical, as unlike drawing from the front, you can't protect your chest while in the act of drawing a sword from the back (even if you could). You can even see this in popular video games featuring sword-on-back protagonists, where the end of the blade inevitably needs to clip through the sheath to make the drawing motion work—and this for characters that can be designed from the ground up
3. Rapiers are no lighter than standard arming swords. They are used in different ways (particularly focusing more on stabbing than slashing) but they are still a long piece of steel.
4. Swords are, with very few exceptions (like the Romans and their Gladius), a creation of popular lore. Historically, they were almost always a secondary weapon to be drawn when all else failed. Knights generally used their lances, Samauri generally favoured spears (Or bows, depending on the era) and so on.
5. Swords are almost always wielded with two hands, except when carrying a shield. Frequently this can involve "Half-swording", where the attacker holds somewhere low on the blade in order to get better control and leverage. Dual-Wielding is not a thing. It existed only in some highly stylized duelling forms, martial arts and basically the only time it would be useful is if you don't have a shield and use the second weapon defensively. Hold both hands in front of you, try moving one hand up and down, while swinging the other in a counter-clockwise circle—even if you manage it, imagine doing it with your life on the line—the human brain is bad at dividing tasks like that and the risks outweigh any possible gain.
6. Swords are never razor-sharp. They're sharp enough to do the job, but if you can shave with it and it isn't made of some special magical steel, you'll blunt or chip that blade immediately and be worse off than if you had just left it alone
7. Folding steel does not make swords stronger. Folding is used in places with poor quality materials in order to remove the impurities and slag (hence its frequent use in Japan, which had extremely poor quality iron deposits and largely relied on iron sand deposits). If working with high-quality materials, folding is not only unnecessary, it likely weakens the blade substantially. By the late middle ages, metallurgy and the sourcing of metals was good enough to reach this point consistently in Europe, which had access to high-quality iron as a natural resource (though it wasn't until modern times we really understood WHY steel is stronger than iron and took full advantage). So... yes, anime lied to you, Katanas are not super-swords (and on that note, there is no appreciable difference between straight swords and curved ones)
Okay... that went WAYY longer than expected. Now, for the resources, I promised in the first place. Let me stipulate up front, I'll rate the people I share as "Pretty good on the whole". They still tend to have flaws, biases, blindspots and make mistakes:
1. Lindybeige. A LARPer and medieval weapons enthusiast, he does some excellent, simple demonstration videos regarding weapon usage. Here's his rant on fire arrows. And here he is demonstrating my whole "sword on the back" rant. Fair warning on him: Anything post-Napoleon should be taken with a grain of salt. He's got a slight tendency to... overstate his case when that case makes Britain look good
2. BazBattles does some excellent tactical breakdowns of historical battles
3. Kings and Generals do the same basic thing, but is slightly more focused on the wider strategy and history versus individual battles
4. Metatron does breakdowns of historical weapons and armour, though he does have an unfortunate tendency to ramble and talks. Really. Slowly. Here's a video of his about armour designed for women.
Other, potentially odd recommendations are The Wheel of Time and Malazan Book of the Fallen series. While neither is perfectly historical (for obvious reasons), they both DO draw fairly heavily on real military history and logistics and provide good frameworks for incorporating historical realities into a fantasy series. A counter recommendation: A Song of Ice and Fire, the books which Game of Thrones is based on. It provides an excellent example of getting everything completely wrong about medieval warfare.
I am going to end this here, because otherwise I'll never stop... but I might add to it/clarify some things at a later date.
/endrant
Fair warning... this topic tends to draw rants from me. And yes, that includes explaining why some of your favourite movies and characters are literally the worst thing ever (and you should be ashamed of yourself!!!) :D
The Basics:
There are a few general principles of ancient warfare that hold true regardless of era. These will get you from the Bronze age to Napoleon and while every rule has its exceptions (Including the rule that every rule has exceptions), these things are true enough that holding to them in your roleplay will rarely draw you astray. I'll also say that my focus is heavily on European history. While a lot of these principles are universal and appear elsewhere, every culture and historical tradition has its own idiosyncrasies.
Early notes:
1. Everything Hollywood has ever shown you about ancient battle is wrong
2. If the movie contains Mel Gibson, add "And remarkably stupid" to note 1 (seriously guys, Braveheart is TERRIBLE. They took the fucking BRIDGE out of the battle of Sterling BRIDGE. YOU HAD ONE JOB. Who the fuck wrote this?).
3. D&D gets literally EVERYTHING wrong
Golden rules:
1. With almost no exceptions, the BATTLE is the least bloody part of any battle (it makes sense, trust me). When both sides are fighting, their formations are designed to keep as many of them alive as possible and are generally good at it (a tactic that gets people who use it once killed, doesn't get used twice).
2. The truly bloody part of a battle comes when one side's morale or formations break. This causes men to scatter or run and opens them up to attack. This frequently leads to incredibly lopsided casualties, as the side which never breaks, is never exposed
Cavalry:
1. Cavalry exists for three purposes. Light cavalry is used for foraging, scouting and harrying a retreating foe, usually not for direct head-to-head engagements until and unless the enemy is already falling apart. Heavy cavalry is designed for combat; They break enemy formations, kill enemy troops and are generally a tough nut to crack.
2. What they do not do is charge the enemy head-on. Horses are incredibly dumb. They are not "willingly charge onto sharp spears and die" dumb. They will swerve, they will stop, they will not complete a charge like that against a formation designed to stop them. They are useful for flanking attacks (attacks aimed at the side or back of an army), hitting positions already weakened by other means or killing troops not suited to countering them
3. There is a whole subtopic on horse archers which I won't get into because we'll be here ALL DAY
4. Cavalry is not faster than infantry over long distances. Horses are faster in bursts, but require frequent rests when travelling at speed and will literally be run to death if you try covering huge distances at speed without several horses for every man you can carry
Infantry:
1. Repeat after me: INFANTRY FIGHT IN FORMATION. The term for a group of people that rush forward to fight duels on the battlefield is "dead". This is why Hollywood movies are so bad for historical accuracy—because your hero leaping forward to battle a wall of spearmen and getting stabbed full of holes because he's a dumbass generally does not go over well. The idea of infantry as individuals with different tasks rather than a collective wall of death is a creation of modern weapons rendering formation fighting a recipe for getting slaughtered.
2. When it comes to infantry, Spears and spear-like weapons are the default. While there are armies that didn't use them (The Roman legions famously favoured the Gladius, a short sword with their large shields) they are far from the norm. Early middle ages tended to favour shield walls, often with spears instead of swords (They have a longer reach, require less training, less metal, less advanced metalworking knowledge and less stringent material requirements). Knights and heavy cavalry grew in importance through the late middle ages in both the medieval and Islamic worlds. Partially in response, pikes and halberds grew more common as they were better against cavalry. Basically: A generic medieval army with NOT be made of swordsmen.
3. Sidenote: Pike formations almost never fight each other directly. This is called a "Push of pike", but the less technical name is "EVERYBODY dies". Pikes are designed to deny the enemy access to an area, not crash into them.
4. The advent of improved ranged weapons shifted the role of infantry. The goal became to keep the enemy cavalry away from your archers and eventually, artillery and gunpowder units while they did the real damage. Eventually, the advent of muskets on par with other ranged weapons and the creation of the bayonet allowed pikes to be replaced entirely, especially as these were also extremely easy to train people with.
Armour:
This is a big one, because a lot of "common knowledge" regarding armour is dead wrong. The truth:
1. Armour is ridiculously effective. This video demonstrates a 130 lbs longbow shot at extremely close range against a breastplate. It barely even scratches the steel. You CANNOT punch through properly made plate armour with a ranged weapon short of a high calibre rifle. Likewise with most other types of armour—you might cause one hell of a bruise, but odds are you don't get through it.
2. Swords don't work against plate armour. You might as well be swinging a pool noodle, except that you won't dull the edge of a pool noodle by hitting armour with it. Knights generally fought with either blunt weapons (which are good against armour) or flipped their swords around and used the haft as a blunt weapon. The BEST way to kill a knight is neither of these. Most of the time grappling someone to the ground and shoving a dagger through their visor is the best option.
3. ARMOUR IS NOT UNWIELDY. While a full set of plate armour is heavy, it is also built specifically for the wearer and distributes the weight well. You can easily find compilations of people online who sprint, perform gymnastics or even climb cliff faces in full plate. This would be even easier for someone who has trained in armour their entire life
4. "Leather armour" is not a thing and is almost entirely the creation of modern fantasy authors. Historical examples are few and far between. Leather is an incredibly poor choice for armour in every sense. It can't be repaired like chain mail or gambeson (because sewing a hole shut doesn't restore the strength of the material), it offers none of the protection of plate and requires a fairly expensive resource (leather) to provide this sub-par protection. The default light armour is gambeson. This is a type of layered cloth armour which is incredibly light, easily repaired and uses a readily available material, all while being more than capable of stopping an arrow and otherwise making someone extremely difficult to kill. Historical usage of it spans from before Alexander the Great to the Renaissance.
Swords (Or, the section where James just RANTS) :
1. Swords are not that heavy. Even massive two-handed greatswords rarely exceed 10 lbs, with the massive unwieldy behemoths of popular culture coming from museum pieces that were never used as combat weapons.
2. Swords drawn from the back are also not a thing. Even relatively short blades are too long to be drawn from the back and long ones (Bastard swords, greatswords, etc) would be completely impossible. Anyone carrying a sword on their back would be doing so for transportation. It's also deeply impractical, as unlike drawing from the front, you can't protect your chest while in the act of drawing a sword from the back (even if you could). You can even see this in popular video games featuring sword-on-back protagonists, where the end of the blade inevitably needs to clip through the sheath to make the drawing motion work—and this for characters that can be designed from the ground up
3. Rapiers are no lighter than standard arming swords. They are used in different ways (particularly focusing more on stabbing than slashing) but they are still a long piece of steel.
4. Swords are, with very few exceptions (like the Romans and their Gladius), a creation of popular lore. Historically, they were almost always a secondary weapon to be drawn when all else failed. Knights generally used their lances, Samauri generally favoured spears (Or bows, depending on the era) and so on.
5. Swords are almost always wielded with two hands, except when carrying a shield. Frequently this can involve "Half-swording", where the attacker holds somewhere low on the blade in order to get better control and leverage. Dual-Wielding is not a thing. It existed only in some highly stylized duelling forms, martial arts and basically the only time it would be useful is if you don't have a shield and use the second weapon defensively. Hold both hands in front of you, try moving one hand up and down, while swinging the other in a counter-clockwise circle—even if you manage it, imagine doing it with your life on the line—the human brain is bad at dividing tasks like that and the risks outweigh any possible gain.
6. Swords are never razor-sharp. They're sharp enough to do the job, but if you can shave with it and it isn't made of some special magical steel, you'll blunt or chip that blade immediately and be worse off than if you had just left it alone
7. Folding steel does not make swords stronger. Folding is used in places with poor quality materials in order to remove the impurities and slag (hence its frequent use in Japan, which had extremely poor quality iron deposits and largely relied on iron sand deposits). If working with high-quality materials, folding is not only unnecessary, it likely weakens the blade substantially. By the late middle ages, metallurgy and the sourcing of metals was good enough to reach this point consistently in Europe, which had access to high-quality iron as a natural resource (though it wasn't until modern times we really understood WHY steel is stronger than iron and took full advantage). So... yes, anime lied to you, Katanas are not super-swords (and on that note, there is no appreciable difference between straight swords and curved ones)
Okay... that went WAYY longer than expected. Now, for the resources, I promised in the first place. Let me stipulate up front, I'll rate the people I share as "Pretty good on the whole". They still tend to have flaws, biases, blindspots and make mistakes:
1. Lindybeige. A LARPer and medieval weapons enthusiast, he does some excellent, simple demonstration videos regarding weapon usage. Here's his rant on fire arrows. And here he is demonstrating my whole "sword on the back" rant. Fair warning on him: Anything post-Napoleon should be taken with a grain of salt. He's got a slight tendency to... overstate his case when that case makes Britain look good
2. BazBattles does some excellent tactical breakdowns of historical battles
3. Kings and Generals do the same basic thing, but is slightly more focused on the wider strategy and history versus individual battles
4. Metatron does breakdowns of historical weapons and armour, though he does have an unfortunate tendency to ramble and talks. Really. Slowly. Here's a video of his about armour designed for women.
Other, potentially odd recommendations are The Wheel of Time and Malazan Book of the Fallen series. While neither is perfectly historical (for obvious reasons), they both DO draw fairly heavily on real military history and logistics and provide good frameworks for incorporating historical realities into a fantasy series. A counter recommendation: A Song of Ice and Fire, the books which Game of Thrones is based on. It provides an excellent example of getting everything completely wrong about medieval warfare.
I am going to end this here, because otherwise I'll never stop... but I might add to it/clarify some things at a later date.
/endrant
