C13th "chopper" ?

[Thearos]

FWIW

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-handed_glaive

[Wolfgang Ritter]

Oh dear, do I have to mention a list of all effective weapons against armour in general and mail in special before comparing that thingy to a sword??
Are we at least of the same opinion that a "chopper" = a shortened glaive is a weapon relying on force and impact and therefore at least a better bludgeon than a sword. Or do you doubt in general that busting people under their mail happened or was a sufficient tactic?

The latter ... Ironically enough it was re-enactors who convinced me - though of course that doesn't mean it has to convince you. Seeing some Viking re-enactors go at it with (probably heavier than realistic) axes while wearing mail convinced me cutting weapons don't make good blunt instruments against an armored opponent. Maces and hammers yes of course. And more to the point, I think in a 13th Century context there would be plenty of exposed flesh to cut, and no doubt that thing could cut people, and horses, quite well.

And like I said, it's quite possible that the angular shape and points of that (ubiquitous) type of glaive head were precisely for attacking armor, it makes more sense to me than chopping through it or bludgeoning through it.

And that does not mean I'd advocate a chopper or warbrand or whatever instead of a more substantial weapon like for example a long glaive. It's just better than a sword and should work more easily in a close range compared to long staff weapon.

Yes I agree. I think they would cut them down like that for an intense / chaotic close range fight. It has a prettty "mad max" feel to me in fact. Imaging 40 armored guys equipped with those things charging into a group of people hacking away...

BD

Okay, I see. I may have been rather impatient due to that priggish idiot in the other thread, sorry.
Now, being heavily involved in reenactment for the last 8,9 years has made me rather suspicious of reenactors;-)
I'm more at home with the late medieval period, i.e. the 15th and partly the 14th century. Nevertheless I have seen and even joined a couple of events for earlier periods. Especially the "viking reenactment has a large group of overly romanticizing guys with a "born-free-germanic-warrior"-attitudes and a sort of mismatched imagination about early medieval fighting. There has been especially some heated debates about protective gear = textile armour for body and especially the hands in the earlier medieval periods.
From my experience with typical ren-faire-reenactors I have the feeling that modern safety restrictions lead to very unhistorical solutions concerning reenactment battles.

That's of course a whole different deal concerning the Mac Bible with its later imagery. There we already have the typical gambeson or aketon, which offers substantial protection.
So again, I concede that this "shortened glaive" may not be the first joice, but still maybe a better joice than a sword.

[admin]

I think the notable thing about how this is shown being used in the Maciejowski Bible is that it is being used from horseback. Of course shortening it makes a lot more sense when you consider that it may have been used by a horseman who wanted some of the punch of a polearm.
The question of cutting through mail is an interesting one. Certainly swords remained popular throughout this period and two-handed swords gained more popularity. So cutting weapons were clearly seen as useful in some way. Then we have the period art, which as shown in Maciejowski often shosws people hacking through helmets and mail. The usual explanation is that this is heroic combat being shown - exageration. But is that the whole story? Cutting weapons remained popular and two-handed cutting weapons grew in popularity - pointy swords did not become widespread until the very end of the 13thC, when plate reinforcement was also becoming widespread.
The Royal Armouries have done various tests on mail, showing that cutting weapons can in some circumstances shear through a couple of links and even more often burst open the rivets with force. Something I ponder is also the material tested - medieval iron with lots of slag is very different and more prone to flaking and cracking than modern homogenous mild steel.

[bigdummy]

Well, also remember for fully armored cavalry, the horse armor didn't become ubiquitous until fairly late, as we have discussed previously, and a lot of the infantry of course didn't have full armor protection.

But it is a curious thing, like I said I wonder if the purpose of the pointy parts on that bill are for piercing links of mail.

Wolfgang I agree with you about re-enactors, basically 100%, but I was just going by watching some of those guys wack the shit out of each other with no more protection than light padding and mail, and it didn't seem to harm them at all. They did tell me though they used riveted mail.

BD

[Arto Fama]

A few years ago I had the pleasure to handle the Chopper that has been named Warbrand sofar.

The pictures given of the reproductions in this topic are very much like the one I swung.
It did not look like a shortened glaive: the blade only was approximately 90 cm, longsword length.
Hell of a glaive, I haven't seen much staffweapons this big in either Holland, Belgium or Vienna.

Actually it did look very much look a simple messer, so the "big piece of cutlery" is actually quit an apt description. Related to what is sometimes called a falchion?

Single edged, long though very well balanced and useable in one hand, handel made out of 2 piece's of wood riveted to the tang, nog riveted pommel.

I agree about the possibility to cut through 'armour', there is a clear distinction in mail quality.
A friend of mine found a nota once containing the prices for 4 shirt of mail, 2 steel and 2 iron ones.
The steel shirts were 4 times as expensive as the iron ones.

Concluding: Possibly a long chopping device (120 cm), useable in one hand while on horseback, able to chop through cheap armour, resembles something like a messer.

Last question: if not a shortened glaive, perhaps blades like this were used to make glaives when no longer needed?

[admin]

Yes, the sources do specifically mention steel mail - I recently posted an example here. Of course logic dictates that if some people wanted steel mail then it was because they considered it superior to iron mail. ie. iron mail could fail more often than steel mail.

[bigdummy]

Yeah but against what? My guess is high-velocity missiles like longbows, recurves, and heavy crossbows. And of course, lances and armor-piercing hand weapons.

I've seen no evidence that anyone can cut through iron mail (or 'mild steel' mail) any more than tempered steel.

BD

[admin]

Firstly, modern mild steel is quite a bit tougher and harder than pig iron. Especially medieval iron with all its inclusions of rubbish.
I am not very convinced that any kind of mail offers good protection from higher velocity missiles. Every test I have seen of bodkins (longbow or crossbow) against mail has ended very badly for the mail, even when worn over padding (and regardless of what the mail was made of). It comes down to the fact that the bodkin only needs to burst one rivet to get through (unless it is very fine Asian mail). The only projectiles I have seen stopped consistently by mail are broadheads for hunting. In my mind this is the clearest reason why coats of plates became so prolific by the middle of the 13th century.

[Ty N.]

Is there an approximate point in European military history where plate armor became the standard, and chainmail was considered outdated?

[bigdummy]

Firstly, modern mild steel is quite a bit tougher and harder than pig iron. Especially medieval iron with all its inclusions of rubbish.

I think you mean wroguht iron. Pig iron is an intermediate industrial product of blast furnaces, which is then made into wrought iron.

I am not very convinced that any kind of mail offers good protection from higher velocity missiles. Every test I have seen of bodkins (longbow or crossbow) against mail has ended very badly for the mail, even when worn over padding (and regardless of what the mail was made of). It comes down to the fact that the bodkin only needs to burst one rivet to get through (unless it is very fine Asian mail). The only projectiles I have seen stopped consistently by mail are broadheads for hunting. In my mind this is the clearest reason why coats of plates became so prolific by the middle of the 13th century.

It seems to work better with textile over mail.

BD

[Stevie T]

You'd be suprised how much pig iron isn't completely processed when wrought into actual artifacts. I think there are even some relatively high end swords which still have slag inclusions in the blade.

[admin]

Indeed - what Stevie said. Medieval armour, even the late high quality stuff, is full of slag and other rubbish. It doesn't even remotely really compare to modern irons and steels and it seems that it can behave in really quite different ways.

Ty, in short your question doesn't make sense.
The reason your question doesn't make sense is that mail remained in use for as long as plate. Coats of plates were common by the middle of the 1200's, partial-plate arms and legs were common by c.1310 and entire plate harness with a solid breastplate and plate fauld was common by c.1370. But throughout all that time people were still wearing mail underneath the plate.
It wasn't until about 1390-1410 that 'knights' seem to have started only wearing mail where the plate didn't cover (ie. not a mail shirt, but pieces of mail secured to the arming doublet) and some 'knights' continued wearing a full mail shirts under mail. Aside from 'knights' the lower class soldiers still wore mail shirts throughout the entire period of plate armour. You can still find both plate and mail armour being used occasionally in the 19th century and up until WW2!

If by your question you meant to ask when plate armour became fairly complete and covered nearly all of the body then you're looking at about 1320-1330 (with a coat of plates) and 1360-1370 (with a solid breastplate and articulated backplate).

[Joeli]

You can still find both plate and mail armour being used occasionally in the 19th century and up until WW2!

Woah! The breast plates I knew about, but the maille was completely news to me. Good thing that there's Internet for easy oogling at these oddities.

[bigdummy]

they used to put mail 'curtains' inside some tanks, I think that was in WW I though.

Per what Matt said, mail remained surprisingly common through the 15th and 16th century from records I've seen, at least in Central Europe, even though plate armor had become affordable if not cheap, certainly within the finanial means of the average mercenary.

The use of a gambeson OVER mail seems to be the standard practice to make it effective against high velocity missiles. How effective it was I can't say. I've seen some modern tests but nothing systematic or scientific.

As for the overall value of metalurgy of Medieval armor, are y'all arguing against the position that Alan Williams takes or am I reading him wrong? He seemed to indicate pretty good steel armor coming out of Milan and Brescia by the late 14th century and out of the Swabian towns by the early 15th. Or am I mising something?

BD

[admin]

He says that *some* was good quality steel, but a lot of armour - even a lot of high status stuff - was made of iron or very low carbon steel. What he told me was that they were surprised to find very little correlation between high status pieces and good quality steel - apparently there was an even spread of material across the board and across a wide period. Also, heat treated armour seems to have been in the minority (because of course not much armour was of high enough carbon content to be heat treated anyway).
Yes we know that a couple of the most famous makers were regularly producing heat-treated carbon steel armour by the mid-15thC, but that armour was very much in the tiny minority in the grand scheme of things. And by the 16thC the amount of heat-treated armour seems to have reduced, for whatever reason.

[leonardo daneluz]

Wrought iron and ancient steel is way softer than modern iron or steel. I think the difference is on the impurities. Modern steel (pure iron isn´t common, what we know as iron is usually iron +0,1% carbon or some more) has a lot of beautiful alloying elements which aren´t present before, say, 1880. Most of those elements make the steel harder. I don´t believe slag is a factor since forging puts slags lenghtwise and particularly in the case of drawn wire no slag should be present in a critical position so often to make the mail more vulnerable. Possibly it is all a matter of the material per se.
Even in the case of heat treated high carbon steel the behavior of the material is different. I have rocwell tested the edge of a japanese blade and some europeans blades and those which showed high hardness were consistently much easier to grind and polish than modern steel hardened to the same level.
Punching, cutting, filing, etc are actions much more difficult in modern steel. I see no point in making experiments in mail made with modern wire.

[bigdummy]

I agree with Leonardo, drawing wire should 'weed out' slag in the iron if there is any.

Well, more than one person around today does smelt their own iron, paul champagne used to do it, you can see dozens of youtube videos on doing it it's not that hard to make a simple bloomery forge.

Bloomery forges by the 15th Century though were not simple, they were in fact pretty sophisticated, typically run on water power, and capable of making large pieces of good quality homogenius iron.

I'm going to have to re-read Knight and the Blast furnace, I'm going to download it to my Ipod today so I can review it. Some of what I'm reading here doesn't jibe with my memory but it was a while since I read it and it's a long book, so maybe my memory is skewed.

I'm hip to the fact that modern steel is much different than steel or iron used in Medieval times, and better for making rebar, washing machines, or jet turbines. I'm not convinced that modern steel is better for making swords or armor though. For example, harder is not necessarily better for either swords or armor... what you really want is a certain springiness and a toughness. But I'm going to review my Alan Williams and other sources and come back to this interesting topic.

BD

[leonardo daneluz]

I agree with Leonardo, drawing mail out on a wire should not

Well, more than one person around today does smelt their own iron, paul champagne used to do it, you can see dozens of youtube videos on doing it it's not that hard to make a simple bloomery forge.

Bloomery forges by the 15th Century though were not simple, they were in fact pretty sophisticated, typically run on water power, and capable of making large pieces of good quality homogenius iron.

I'm going to have to re-read Knight and the Blast furnace, I'm going to download it to my Ipod today so I can review it. Some of what I'm reading here doesn't jibe with my memory but it was a while since I read it and it's a long book, so maybe my memory is skewed.

I'm hip to the fact that modern steel is much different than steel or iron used in Medieval times, and better for making rebar, washing machines, or jet turbines. I'm not convinced that modern steel is better for making swords or armor though. For example, harder is not necessarily better for either swords or armor... what you really want is a certain springiness and a toughness. But I'm going to review my Alan Williams and other sources and come back to this interesting topic.

BD

Smelting your own steel is difficult, but it is made. I have done that myself. But I doubt that many people would be interested in smelting steel, making bars, drawing them into wire and the make riveted mail justo to probe what they already think: that wrought iron can be cut in certain cirscunstances but nobody really know if those cirscunstances are related with those which were actually faced in battle.
Much work to probe very little. There is better ways to spend your home made steel.
Yes, modern steel is also better to make swords and armour. But it is more difficult to work with, also it´s more difficult to weld. But we have gas furnaces, hydraulic presses, better fluxes, etc.
Hardness, and particularly hardness meassured by the Rockwell tester, is not a single parameter and not a too relevant one. "Toughness" is an even more subjective parameter, composed of several thigns combined.
But, in general, modern steels are far superior. You may notice some extra ductility (which is not exactly "toughness") in ancient steels for the same rc hardness (it´s my impression, from limited experience though).
I sometimes have the impression that making historical replicas out of modern steels is as artifical and unhistorical as to make them from epoxi resin. If you put heat treatment into the equation modern replicas aren´t really more than objects which look similar but do not represent nothing near to the reality.*

*Thanks to god, I don´t want to live in a world without tempered full martensitic sword blades. Well, I may be could live with bainitic.

[bigdummy]

Well Paul Champagne used to smelt his own iron I know, and several Eastern European swordmakers I've talked to do as well. This would have seemed unthinkable in the US just 15 years ago. So who knows maybe someone wil be making mail this way, in fact I think Eric Schmidt may in fact have been doing just that. not to proove that iron can be cut, but precisely because they think period techniques will make for better quality armor.

BD

[Stevie T]

Bradford Uni has been running experiments into bloom smelting for well over a decade and have always had very mixed results and they're using all sorts of scietific stuff to help them get what they're after.

I've tried it myself. I've managed a not so bad bloom but no slag run off, no bloom but slag run off and a completely failed attempt to produce anything.

I'd be really interested to know how people are getting consistant results with bloom chimney smelting.