A Essay -- The Knight vs. the Samurai

[Luthiel]

The reason why I voted for the Samurai was

1. The Samurai had access to ranged weapons and the bow was ever the bane of the Knight.

2. The Samurai is armed with a blade with an armor piercing tip good for finding the seams in joints or cracks in armored plates.

3. The Samurai's lighter armor afforts better mobility. Lighter fighters with thin blades beat out the knights in Europe. Why not the Samurai?

My conclusion is the Samurai would probably win on foot but not in head to head mounted combat. At range, the Samurai could pick the Knight off. The Samurai has more options, therefore he would win.

-L

 

[S'mon]

I chose the knight, assuming that the knight and samurai are both well-equipped representatives from a late-medieval setting circa 1450, the katana, naginata, and samurai bow are not very effective weapons versus full plate armour, whereas the knight's lucern hammer, mace, greatsword etc would be reasonably effective vs the samurai's armour, so even though the samurai might have the edge in fighting skill he would be defeated by a reasonably skilled opponent in single combat.

In a group vs group battle however, knights are much more vulnerable to being ganged up on by multipple opponents, they can be knocked prone and attacked in vulnerable areas like seat-of-pants and eye-slits, so 20 knights vs 20 samurai who knew how to fight them could go either way.

edit: I don't believe that bit about European plate armour being for 6'-6'6" men; the examples I've seen (a lot, at eg Windsor castle, Tower of London, Royal Armouries Leeds) are more in the 5'-5'6" range, not much bigger than samurai armour of the same period. I doubt there'd be much height advantage to the knight.

 

[Dark Jezter]

The reason why I voted for the Samurai was

1. The Samurai had access to ranged weapons and the bow was ever the bane of the Knight.

You are right about the Samurai having ranged weapons. Most knights believed bows to be "dishonorable" weapons and refused to use them

As for bows being the bane of knights, that depends mostly on which period of knight and what type of armor he had. Earlier knights wore mail, and were vulnerable to archer fire. Later knights had plate mail that was thick and designed to deflect arrows, spear tips, and swords.

2. The Samurai is armed with a blade with an armor piercing tip good for finding the seams in joints or cracks in armored plates.

Armor-piercing tip?

Early katanas had problems with their tips getting snapped off by the studded leather armor used by the mongols and chinese. Later katanas were no longer used against armor, so they tended to be long, thin, and light for classroom demonstration.

Even a suit of Samurai armor was capable of protecting its wearer against katana slices, and European knights had much better armor than the Japanese did.

3. The Samurai's lighter armor afforts better mobility. Lighter fighters with thin blades beat out the knights in Europe. Why not the Samurai?

Where did you get your information that lighter fighters with thin blades beat armored knights in Europe? Smallswords (rapiers, foil, epees, etc) became popular after the proliferation of firearms made armor obsolete. Smallswords were very seldom used as battlefield weapons. Rather, they were used as dueling or personal defense weapons by civilians.

If an unarmored fencer with a smallsword went up against a knight in full-plate with a two-handed sword (which weren't nearly as heavy as they are commonly made out to be), I would definately put my money on the knight. While it's always possible that the fencer could skewer the knight through an unarmored spot, it's far more likely that the fight would happen like this: The knight closes the distance between himself and the fencer (full plate dosen't restrict speed and mobility nearly as much as you'd think), making the fencer's smallsword useless. The knight then grapples with the fencer (knights included grappling and wrestling techniques among their training), and smacks him on the head a few times with his armored fist. Then, while the fencer is still reeling from the blows, the knight steps back and finishes him off easily.

Swords are not real great weapons against full plate (with the exception of a good two-handed sword), which is why swords declined in use after full plate became common. Weapons like maces, hammers, axes, and military picks were much better for taking on opponents with plate.

My conclusion is the Samurai would probably win on foot but not in head to head mounted combat. At range, the Samurai could pick the Knight off. The Samurai has more options, therefore he would win.

-L

The Samurai's emphasis on ranged combat would be his greatest asset in the knight vs. samurai scenario. But in hand-to-hand or mounted combat, I would definately go for the knight.

 

[RangerWickett]

edit: I don't believe that bit about European plate armour being for 6'-6'6" men; the examples I've seen (a lot, at eg Windsor castle, Tower of London, Royal Armouries Leeds) are more in the 5'-5'6" range, not much bigger than samurai armour of the same period. I doubt there'd be much height advantage to the knight.

I've heard (so take this with a grain of salt) that many display pieces of armor were purposefully made smaller than usual, so that the craftsman could show his great skill, creating very intricate pieces and detailwork that would never had been needed with actual combat armor.

 

[Darklone]

Hah, this wonderful old discussion again...

Some points to consider for movie fans:
- Forget that part about knights being immobile in their armours and slow. I've seen guys in full plate making flick ups.
- Same about speed of twohanders. Have you ever fought with a rapier against someone with a twohanded greatsword or worse, a bastard sword? It's not nice.
- Some European castles here have old armours, I recall one in Burg Hochosterwitz where they had a giant who became a hero during a siege cause he hold a gate nearly alone for more than a day... he was barely 1.80 cm tall. By the records, he was more than a head taller than anyone else.

Someone asked what would happen if the samurai takes the longsword and the knight takes the katana: Not much. Both weapons are handled pretty similarly if you do it right.

 

[Thresher]

The reason why I voted for the Samurai was
1. The Samurai had access to ranged weapons and the bow was ever the bane of the Knight.

You'd be surprised at how ineffective for the most part archers where, I did a little research for a character awhile ago that was going to be an archer.
Its a mixed result.
Sometimes they would get astounding results like at Agincourt where they turned an entire battle almost by themselves and all too often, they just got bent over and bored out by heavy infantry or cavalry who inflicted catastrophic losses on them.
Mostly the effectiveness of the archer was determined by the general who deployed them, as a fighting force and as a rule they do tend to be quite ineffective against anyone with heavy armour or a large shield and utterly murderous against light infantry.

 

[Vigilance]

As many have noted, knights were not immobile in their armor. Part of this was to due to the ingenious construction of the armor.

However a lot of it was due to sheer training. From the time a page graduated to squire, he performed excercises such as crossing muddy ditches, climbing fences, mounting and dismounting horses... essentially a physical regimen that sounds a lot like basic training in today's army... in full battle dress.

From the time he woke up until the time he went to bed, for about 8 years, the squire wore heavy armor in the worst conditions, on foot and horseback.

So by the time that squire became a knight, the armor was second nature to him. As the piece also justly points out, one candidate looked for in a good knight was size. This also allowed the knight to move more freely in his armor.

Football coaches in the modern day call this type of build "pad speed". A lot of smaller players are slowed down by the weight of their "armor" (in this case football pads) more than larger players, who have the strength to carry it. So in "battle" (on game day) the big player doesnt look that slow.

On grass, especially muddy grass, this problem gets even worse, which is why dedicated outdoors teams like the packers look slow inside. They recruit big powerful men who look graceful running through snow and mud covered grass.

Chuck

 

[RangerWickett]

According to a recent documentary on the History Channel, the battle at Agincourt was won by archers, but not by archery. The thing was, the battlefield was soaked with rain, and the soil was very clingy and muddy, so cavalry was ineffective and armored knights were bogged down and could barely walk. The area of flat terrain suitable for a cavalry charge was narrow, so there was some trampling to death of the French's own soldiers. Ultimately, arrows wouldn't have killed many armored knights or armored horses, but the archers were unarmored, so they could cross the mud easily and kill the mostly helpless knights.

Plus, knights on the French side were mostly nobles who wanted to capture other nobles and ransom them. The English archers were not nobles, and had no compunctions about killing anyone they came across.

 

[Vigilance]

Henry also used his pikemen to herd the French knights into a smaller and smaller area. In the end they were packed like sardines in a killing gallery, which is why the battle was so devastating psychologically. Thousands were killed in a couple of hours.

Chuck

 

[WizarDru]

So the essay takes a pair of horse-mounted warriors, and takes them off horses. He takes a samurai, who traditionally is more famous for his archery than his swordwork (chambara movies aside) and limits him only to the katana. Then he places him in against weapons his armor was meant to face.

It just seems rather silly to me.