middle age swords

[Darth Shoju]

I beg to differ with you on one point: there was no "'military chain' of training" in the medieval period. Professional soldiers simply did not exist, and there was certainly no professional officer class capable of training units of men. The economy of medieval Europe could not support standing armies -- there simply wasn't enough surplus food to sustain large numbers of non-productive adults for more than a few months during the summer fighting season. The entire idea of a professional military is anachronistic to this era. Archers were drawn from the yeomanry -- their "training" consisted of mandatory archery practice on Sunday afternoons, after church. The freedmen you describe only fought for a season, then returned to their farms. They typically wore a leather or brigantine jack, and fought with an assortment of polearms, because their primary role was to keep the cavalry off the archers. Their sidearms were an idiosyncratic collection of whatever they could lay their hands on.

I largely agree with you, but I'd like to suggest that the thane-and later the knight-were close to being professional soldiers. It was my understanding that their land was granted to provide enough wealth that they could arm themselves and train appropriately so they could fulfill their fealty and serve their liege in battle. While the nobility was hardly a standing army with ranks and so forth, they weren't far off from being professional soldiers as far as I can tell.

 

[Darklone]

I largely agree with you, but I'd like to suggest that the thane-and later the knight-were close to being professional soldiers. It was my understanding that their land was granted to provide enough wealth that they could arm themselves and train appropriately so they could fulfill their fealty and serve their liege in battle. While the nobility was hardly a standing army with ranks and so forth, they weren't far off from being professional soldiers as far as I can tell.

It's the other way round. The knight was the guy who administrated the lands for the liege. Taxes, not necessarily warfare was the important point... same for the samurai, btw.

Sure, he had to fight... now and then. But that wasn't what kept the knight busy. Nor the samurai.

They were kinda professional soldiers... but IMHO more comparable to professional policemen and judges.

 

[S'mon]

Hm, 'knights' started off in the Dark Ages as 'any guy with a horse who fights for me', later the personal guard of the nobles, and only later were they distributed around the realm in manors. Their origins are very much in war, not administration.

 

[shurai]

Hm, 'knights' started off in the Dark Ages as 'any guy with a horse who fights for me', later the personal guard of the nobles, and only later were they distributed around the realm in manors. Their origins are very much in war, not administration.

Same thing with samurai -- early on, anybody could "become" a samurai by merit, usually through good battlefield performance. Later in history as Japanese culture became more feudalistic, the caste system became entrenched and mobility impossible, while the samurai transitioned from rough country warriors to cultured warrior-bureaucrat-officials.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think you can discount martial-arts from any region in favour of another.

Sure I can. I can just look at who got trounced and why. I can discount martial arts from Achaemenian Persia in favor of say, those practiced in Macedonian Greece and I don't feel particularly racist or culturist in doing so because warfare is something concrete above my biases. If I'm dead at the end of it and Conan now owns my wife and possessions, you have fairly good evidence that my martial process isn't quite up to Conan's.

If you look at modern MMA, it is generally a synthesis of greco-roman wrestling, jiu-jitsu (particularly Brazilian style) and various types of striking (classic boxing, "dirty" boxing and muay-thai boxing).

With the exception of Muay-Thai, none of those are notably Eastern. Ju-jitsu in its modern form is less than 100 years old, and as you note it was the Brazillian style most influenced by western grappling that ended up contributing the most. Muay-Thai is interesting to me in that it represents exactly the sort of way I'd expect a successful martial art to develop, and its culture and history contrasts sharply to the sorts of martial arts that took hold in America during the first wave of eastern martial arts. Rather, it looks alot less like a peasant means of self-defense, ritual atheletics, or temple mysticism, and has a history much more like Western sport arts like boxing, wrestling, and so forth.

However, it depends largely upon the practitioner. There are examples of fighters that rely heavily on one or two martial-arts and do well (many that are pure wrestlers, a few judo fighters, sambo, etc).

It's interesting that you bring up something like Sambo and Judo, which are themselves not only modern in derivation, and Westernize, but also martial arts which are themselves deliberately created mixed-martial arts.

But, let me return to your original quote once again and hit it from another even more ironic direction.

I don't think you can discount martial-arts from any region in favour of another.

Discounting martial-arts from any other region is exactly the attitude of the practicioners, and ultimately the root problem, in the classical Chinese and Japanese martial arts that so fascinate the Katana fan-boys. If I'm somewhat exagerrating the superiority of martial arts from every other region of the world over those of Japan and China, I'm only doing so to prove the point that contrary to popular culture in the US, those classical Chinese and Japanese martial arts are neither particularly unique nor necessarily admirable as martial arts, successful, and more highly developed than comparable traditions elsewhere.

Still, MMA competitions aren't necessarily a perfect litmus test as established rules often hinder many of the more brutal martial-arts while favouring others (such as wrestling or boxing).

Yeah, I've heard the excuses. Early MMA competitions had far fewer constraints, and incidently were even better and more conclusive proofs of my point. People who practiced what fanboys in the US (or Japan for that matter) thought of a 'martial arts' before the MMA competitions got there butts kicked, proving many of the things I'd always heard all along.

If hooking and gouging and chokeholds and so forth were allowed and MMA was a death sport, the result still wouldn't look like a martial arts film or a Shaolin demonstration of fighting technique.

Bruce Lee (considered by some to be the father of MMA) started out studying Wing Chun kung-fu, but incorporated western fencing and wrestling techniques. (ed. note: And boxing) Jeet kune do is about defying convention and pre-set forms and adapting to the situation; it is inclusive rather than exclusive.

In other words, it is far more Westernized in its philosophy than the martial arts Bruce Lee was raised on. Jeet Kune Do is one of the few serious 'Do's out there that might actually teach you something about self-defence, but it is also a deliberately created modern MMA whose striking techniques and training methods for the most part look alot like Western boxing.

IMO, eastern martial-arts became watered-down when they became an alternative to soccer for the children of suburban North America.

That is certainly part of it, but the problem goes back long before the arts got to the US - as Bruce Lee recognized.

 

[Darklone]

Hm, 'knights' started off in the Dark Ages as 'any guy with a horse who fights for me', later the personal guard of the nobles, and only later were they distributed around the realm in manors. Their origins are very much in war, not administration.

Yeah. Guy with a horse. And the relevant weaponry. Which in nearly all cases meant: Nobleman with money. Money came from administrating villages/cities/other stuff. Clan leaders for example. Heavy cavalry (e.g. knights) was very expensive.

 

[Darth Shoju]

Discounting martial-arts from any other region is exactly the attitude of the practicioners, and ultimately the root problem, in the classical Chinese and Japanese martial arts that so fascinate the Katana fan-boys. If I'm somewhat exagerrating the superiority of martial arts from every other region of the world over those of Japan and China, I'm only doing so to prove the point that contrary to popular culture in the US, those classical Chinese and Japanese martial arts are neither particularly unique nor necessarily admirable as martial arts, successful, and more highly developed than comparable traditions elsewhere.

Yeah, I've heard the excuses. Early MMA competitions had far fewer constraints, and incidently were even better and more conclusive proofs of my point. People who practiced what fanboys in the US (or Japan for that matter) thought of a 'martial arts' before the MMA competitions got there butts kicked, proving many of the things I'd always heard all along.

If hooking and gouging and chokeholds and so forth were allowed and MMA was a death sport, the result still wouldn't look like a martial arts film or a Shaolin demonstration of fighting technique.

In other words, it is far more Westernized in its philosophy than the martial arts Bruce Lee was raised on. Jeet Kune Do is one of the few serious 'Do's out there that might actually teach you something about self-defence, but it is also a deliberately created modern MMA whose striking techniques and training methods for the most part look alot like Western boxing.

That is certainly part of it, but the problem goes back long before the arts got to the US - as Bruce Lee recognized.

Well let me clarify that I am not a "katana-fanboy" and I'm not promoting eastern martial-arts as superior. I certainly don't expect real-world martial-arts to work like they do in the movies and from my understanding, Shaolin demonstrations are more for entertainment value than displaying real fighting techniques. Further, I hope I'm not coming across as portraying myself as an expert on martial-arts, I'm speaking mainly from observation. That being said, it has long been my own opinion that a lot of the truly traditional martial-arts work far better when used on someone who doesn't really know what they are doing in a fight, or has only rudimentary knowledge (a typical street-brawler perhaps). In addition, kung-fu's origins were likely quite humble and I suspect the concept of teaching techniques based off military combat training to peasants and monks was meant to simply be a "it's better than no training" concept. I would certainly agree that its reputation has been elevated to an unrealistic level.

Ultimately, what I'm trying to say is that I find it illogical to *completely* discount the practicality of traditional eastern martial arts. While Shaolin kung-fu may have been built up to an unrealistic level due to its mythical place in Chinese culture, I still believe there is merit to be found in its teachings on some level. From my understanding, Shaolin-trained bodyguards are highly sought in China so there must be some level of merit there (though I suppose you could say that this is as much due to a desire to simply *say* one has a Shaolin bodyguard). As far as Bruce Lee is concerned, while his personal style incorporated elements of western martial-arts, it was still firmly rooted in a lot of the basic concepts of Wing-chun kung-fu. Other styles of kung-fu such as Hung-gar are considered to be fairly practical, as are types of karate (particularly more modern styles like Kyokushin).

Again, while I'm not defending the mindset that kung-fu or ninjitsu or karate are the "ultimate martial-arts", nor the idea that a katana can cut clean through a car or somesuch nonsense, I *am* saying that traditional eastern martial-arts are far from utterly ineffective and have their place among the combat systems of the world. I do support the notion of the evolution of combat arts towards being inclusive and practical by incorporating the functional aspects of any and all martial-arts, regardless of what part of the world they come from.

 

[Darth Shoju]

I was waiting for someone to post something like this.

OK, I think I've been able to sort out some swords from the late middle ages (1300-1500)

Arming Sword: one-handed, equally good at slashing as it is at piercing
Cut and Thrust: one-handed, better at piercing than slashing
Estoc: can be used one- or two-handed, piercing only (although I guess it could be used as a club), low damage but has armour penetration
Falchion - one-handed, slashing/chopping sword
Longsword - can be used one- or two- handed, equally good at slashing as it is at piercing
War Sword - two-handed, better at slashing than piercing

I like it.

 

[Celebrim]

I certainly don't expect real-world martial-arts to work like they do in the movies and from my understanding, Shaolin demonstrations are more for entertainment value than displaying real fighting techniques.

That's certainly true.

That being said, it has long been my own opinion that a lot of the truly traditional martial-arts work far better when used on someone who doesn't really know what they are doing in a fight, or has only rudimentary knowledge (a typical street-brawler perhaps).

Actually, speaking as a street brawler, the reverse is in fact true. Martial arts like Kung Fu and Karate work far better when used on someone who has practiced Kung Fu and Karate than some who hasn't, and in fact I can't enummerate all the 'black belts' I've met or heard about that tried to pull that on a brawler with no training but a small amount of practical experience and ended up getting thier butts kicked because their preconceptions of the pacing, distance, and technique were so badly skewed by thier training methods. One of the reasons I respect Bruce Lee as a teacher is that he recognized this at some point and set about to correct the problem.

What happened to Eastern melee combat martial arts is something like what happened to Eastern martial arts in general. You start someone like SunTZhou who seems to understand basic precepts of strategy and if you read his Eastern commentators they take his insights and run entirely in the wrong direction with them, so that the theory ends up becoming an hinderance to the practice. So much of Kung Fu is about the philosophy of the combat and nature and everything else, that it loses sight of what actual combat is and becomes a physical treatis on the natural world that sadly and frequently departs from actual physics. Which is why you can walk into Karate classes and see very sincere teachers teaching thier pupils to do things which are entirely counter to the actual physics - for example teaching them to reduce the momment of inertia in their punches (which is fine for sparring if you don't want to hurt someone) while actually believing that in doing so they are making the punches more damaging.

I *am* saying that traditional eastern martial-arts are far from utterly ineffective and have their place among the combat systems of the world. I do support the notion of the evolution of combat arts towards being inclusive and practical by incorporating the functional aspects of any and all martial-arts, regardless of what part of the world they come from.

I think that the big contribution of Eastern martial arts at least to melee combat was that they actually were total combat systems, and that most Western melee combat had atrophied as unnecessary (firearms, right to bear arms, professional displined armies operating in units rather than individual combat prowess) and were totally relegated to sport arts. You don't see actual Glaive fensing taught in the West anymore, even though as battle art, Glaive fensing is far more practical than fensing with smallswords. Now I don't think that there were many Eastern martial arts that were very good and practical total combat systems, as I've been saying, but it did reawaken some interest in combat systems and work towards recovering and maybe even improving a lot of lost technology.

 

[S'mon]

Yeah. Guy with a horse. And the relevant weaponry. Which in nearly all cases meant: Nobleman with money. Money came from administrating villages/cities/other stuff. Clan leaders for example. Heavy cavalry (e.g. knights) was very expensive.

Yes, if by nobleman you mean the general upper class, clan leader + clan leader's extended family, in-laws, loyal retainers & best fighters. "Administration" is a funny word though for what the warrior aristocracy of say Scotland in 1150 AD actually did, and implies a much more civil emphasis than the actuality, IMO. The earliest Frankish knights don't seem to have been very heavily armoured, but certainly chain mail and a horse capable of carrying a big man in armour was always expensive.