Weapons for a girl

Discussion in 'Research' started by BFGuru, Aug 16, 2014.

  1. T.Trian

    T.Trian Overly Pompous Bastard Supporter Contributor

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    I get that you're joking, but I'll just briefly comment on the trope of the gruff, uncivilized knight: there were knights and then there were knights. While their duties often revolved around warfare, their studies did include reading, writing, and, of course, religion, so they weren't usually unlearned.

    This isn't directly related to the topic, but it's close to what's been discussed, i.e. female knighthood. I found this bit in the How Stuff Works -website (I won't vouch for absolute historical accuracy, but this does correspond to what I've read about the subject elsewhere and sums things up rather nicely):
    Just thought I'd share that since I've encountered quite a few people (not necessarily here, though) who've been pretty adamant that there were no female equivalents of knights in medieval times. Sure, those women were rare, but they existed in addition to commoner females who dressed up as men to join the army or just otherwise fought for whatever cause in whatever group (or on their own). They, too, were rare, but like the above-mentioned women, did exist.
     
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  2. Burlbird

    Burlbird Contributor Contributor

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    @T.Trian well, one expects to find a deviation or two in ~15 centuries (give or take) of chivalry in Europe :)

    Just joking, of course - my favorite fictional knight being von Sydow's Block from Bergman's Seventh Seal, who is far from being gruffy and uncivilized. But I still say most of us would be more suited for the traveling actors/jugglers/poets troop from the same film, than fighting in the Crusades :)
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2014
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  3. BFGuru

    BFGuru Active Member

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    I have never read Mists of Avalon believe it or not. This is more a development that has run away with itself. Initially I wanted to write a story focused on a wet nurse...an anthropological study of the trade, the relationship between mother child and mother by proxy. I wanted to deal with a study of religion from a non religious view point. Paganism was entrenched with superstitions, but what if my main didn't buy into it? Could I do this from a neutral standpoint? This was more part of my character development. Enter Christianity and suddenly my story arc completed with conflicts, resolutions, establishment of ideals, and I realized not only was this a story about a wet nurse, but her interactions with her culture in an ever changing society.
     
  4. Count Otto Black

    Count Otto Black New Member

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    Historically, there was a civilization in Southern Turkey which seems to have given rise to the Greek myth of the Amazons, but that was well over 2,000 years ago, and extremely unusual. Archaeological evidence does, however, prove pretty conclusively that, although mostly the sexes fulfilled the traditional roles, some women were warriors, who were buried with bronze weapons scaled down in size to allow a woman to use them effectively, and with healed battle wounds on their skeletons to prove that those weapons weren't just ceremonial. Many of them had male skeletons - presumably their husbands - buried in subordinate "wife" positions at their feet.

    However, it never really caught on, because women simply weren't effective warriors in a culture where combat depended to a great extent on physical strength. Joan of Arc didn't fight - she simply stood on the battlefield inspiring the troops by her holy example. She was in full armor, of course, but she was still very badly wounded by an arrow, and nearly died. All the same, the mere sight of a woman wearing armor on a battlefield was so bizarre that it inspired her entire army to fight better!

    In practical terms, a woman from that era had exactly zero chance against a man in single combat, especially a knight who had trained for years with blunt weapons twice as heavy as real ones, under conditions so brutal that he had probably lost half his teeth and suffered numerous fractures. Those guys would have given modern special forces pause for thought! I'm pretty sure most of them could easily have taken a Navy SEAL if he didn't have a gun.

    If you're looking for a practical weapon for a really determined woman from that era, I'd suggest a Mongol horse-bow. The Mongols were the people who came the closest ever to actual world domination, and were staggeringly hard men. Their only weakness was that they were rather short. Almost every member of their army possessed two bows - a foot-bow and a shorter horse-bow. Both of these used state-of-the-art technology. They were composite recurved bows which, using the various special arrows they developed, made their entire male population from age 14 up frighteningly close to being as effective as a 6-foot Welshman who had trained with a longbow for 10 years. And that included the ability to pierce full plate-mail at ranges of up to 60 meters.

    Oh, and by the way, one of the competitive sports these people indulged in was riding a horse at full gallop, controlling it only with their feet, while firing arrows into the sky. Whoever killed the most birds won. Can you imagine how insanely difficult it must have been to kill any birds at all? Given the strength and height requirements, a very determined woman could have been absolutely deadly with this weapon. Though, since it wasn't the full foot-bow, she probably couldn't have taken down a knight in full plate, even if she was using proper armor-piercing arrows, unless she was within about... ooh, maybe 60 feet? Hey, you know what? I'm still scared of her!
     
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  5. T.Trian

    T.Trian Overly Pompous Bastard Supporter Contributor

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    Sorry, but I don't buy that (if I understood you correctly). According to what I've read about medieval European knights, their average height was around 5'7 (170cm), whereas SEALs average a few inches taller and, well, there IS a reason why they don't use medieval training methods. If they yielded superior strength and conditioning, the SEALs and other such people would train like them.

    Then again, if you forget about strength and conditioning training (which is where modern methods differ somewhat from medieval ones) and focus on combat training methods, you'll see there's only so much you can do with two hands and two legs, so if you compare e.g. HEMAs, WWII combatives, krav maga, MMA etc, they really aren't all that different. I've trained krav, muay thai, boxing, senshido, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and done some MMA-type self-defense sparring with hard contact (head shots, eye gouges etc. were done with semi-contact though hard enough to draw blood, everything else we did full-contact), and last autumn I trained historical European (medieval) stuff (grosse messer and wrestling with strikes), and to be honest, the training was pretty similar. That's because some things work better than others and that's what people have been using for centuries; our physiology remains the same, so what worked then, works today except for the involvement of firearms, explosives etc, but the H2H and knife stuff is almost identical (barring techniques and tactics specifically designed to fight someone in mail etc).

    That means the only real difference is emphasis in what they train as well as their size and strength levels. It's just a fact that, on average, modern soldiers, especially the "experts," i.e. SEALs, SAS operatives, FBI's HRT guys etc. are bigger, often well over 6' with strong, muscular builds and low body fat. Fighting those guys empty-handed or with knives is a nightmare (I've trained with a few pro soldiers and other guys with similar physiques and skill sets). I remember vividly going toe to toe with a 6'5/270lbs LEO at the gym and it was like tussling with a fucking brick wall (back then I was 6'1/200lbs) who could throw me around the room like a ragdoll and could've decimated me if he didn't go easy.

    I know many (usually amateur) martial artists glorify the heroes of old, but most professionals I've met who truly know their shit (including my country's leading HEMA instructor) know it's pretty much bs; we still fight much the same way as back then, we just tend to be a bit bigger, stronger, better nourished, and, of course, better equipped. Oh, and we're also healthier; as you said, back then injuries happened a bit more than nowadays (although the historical texts I've read and the pros I've spoken with have led me to understand that the notion of medieval training that often permanently injured, crippled, or killed the students is mostly Hollywoodian fantasy; they weren't stupid back then, so the trainers, military leaders etc. needed their men capable and as injury-free as possible, hence they used as safe effective training methods as possible, protective gear, slow sparring for beginners etc), but medicine has improved A LOT since those days, i.e. modern soldiers and combat athletes get much better tratment (especially considering several medieval treatments were downright hazardous to the patient's health), have better safety gear and safer training equipment etc.so they generally have less problems with chronic ailments, aches, pains, and other injuries that affect their performance.

    That being said, in your hypothetical scenario of e.g. a SEAL vs. a medieval knight, I'd bet on the SEAL as long as they fought with weapons they both knew, e.g. empty-handed or with knives. Likewise, killing a man with a bladed weapon doesn't take great strength. Sure, strength helps a lot in the grand scheme of things, but the smaller and weaker a person is, male or female, the sneakier and more cunning they have to be, and cunning always beats brawn (that's why elephants don't rule the Earth, men do).
    Sure, if a small individual had to fight an equally skilled, bigger person in an "honorable" bout where both are equally equipped, like a competition setting, the bigger guy has a clear advantage, but when it's a real fight, like a self-defense scenario where anything goes (any kinds of weapons, distractions, having friends come to give a hand or two etc), things are different; then it has almost nothing to do with things like which style the fighter has trained, where he is from (era and location), age, size, sex etc. and all to do with tactics, cunning, and the ability to take advantage of deception, your strengths, the other guy's weaknesses.

    I guess what I'm trying to say in a long, meandering way is that there are no secret training methods, magic systems, inhuman strength, absolute truths, or even much difference between fighting styles when we strip away the fancy stuff and only look at the simpler elements (i.e. what works in a real fight). Size matters quite a bit, but a smaller person CAN beat a bigger person if they are smart about it, meaning a woman could kill a bigger, stronger man (and women really have done such things, several times throughout history). It's just a matter of individual vs. individual and who manages to outsmart the other (even using raw strength to beat your opponent is smart if you can tell they don't have a way to defend against it).

    Just my 0,02€.

    ETA: if you meant an untrained, unarmed, unarmored, small woman vs. a trained, big, armed, and armored knight, then yes, her chances would be very slim indeed. If you meant a strong, muscular, athletic woman in full armor, toting matching weapons and had equal training under her belt... well, women have won contemporary HEMA competitions against men (Samantha Swords, who's 5'8, comes to mind), so saying such a woman had zero chance just isn't true.
     
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2014
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  6. Count Otto Black

    Count Otto Black New Member

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    May I point out that, although medieval knights and other early fighting-men have an exaggeratedly heroic reputation, mainly because that kind of thing made better fiction than the horrible truth, a lot of the evidence suggests that they were incredibly vicious fighters who were extremely strong for their size (and being upper-class, they'd tend to be much better-fed than anybody else, and consequently not stunted by the endemic childhood malnutrition), could take a lot of pain because they were used to it, and fought ferociously, cunningly, and very dirty, with no inhibitions whatsoever. If you're wearing full plate armor, there obviously has to be a gap between your legs, otherwise you'll have great difficulty walking. Knights carried short double-edged stabbing daggers known as "bollock-knives" - they weren't called that for nothing! Basically, fighting one of these guys would have been like being attacked by a fairly large animal. You'd have to be one of the toughest people on the planet to have much of a chance against somebody who fights like that.

    Which is one reason why a woman would have very little chance in medieval melee combat, and why, even though 50% of the population were female, therefore conscripting women could theoretically double the size of your army, even in the direst of emergencies, I can't think of a single instance in which it actually happened. In Japan, the wives of the samurai did get combat training to allow them to defend their homes at times when their husbands were away fighting in yet another of those interminable wars, but they were taught to use a pole-arm, the name of which escapes me, the basic idea being that if they got in the first strike, they might be able to skewer a male opponent before he got close enough to use his sword. So they had one all-or-nothing chance, and if they screwed up, they were toast.

    That's why I suggested the Mongol bow - it was designed to allow men of below-average height to fire arrows with the kind of power behind them that you'd normally need to be a very tall and strong man to achieve. Realistically, a woman would have to take down her male opponents before they got close enough to use their superior strength. A crossbow wouldn't really cut it because, although it doesn't require any strength at all to use (or even much skill compared to other types of bow), all medieval crossbowmen were male. Why? Because reloading took so long that, if you were in a combat situation, you had to be able to do a bit of hand-to-hand fighting in case the enemy were charging straight at you and you couldn't reload fast enough to cut them down before they got to you.

    A woman with a Mongol composite recurved bow in a culture where powerful bows were assumed to be usable only by exceptionally tall and strong men would be able to look after herself pretty well. These weapons were designed so that a 14-year-old boy who might be under 5 feet tall could take down a knight in full plate. The larger of the two bows all Mongol warriors carried - including teenagers who weren't far off being midgets - had about two-thirds the power of an English longbow. It seems a feasible way of making a woman truly deadly in medieval combat.
     
  7. EllBeEss

    EllBeEss Senior Member

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    Not all people in battle in medieval times were knights, I don't understand how "medieval combat training" automatically equates to "fighting knights in full plate armor". Since the OP clarified to say her story is set in the Charlemagne era and full plate armor wasn't developed until the late middle ages full plate armor probably won't play a part in the story. I find it hard to believe "you'd have to be one of the toughest people on the planet to have much chance" against a knight. They're still people. Someone with armor and similar level of training would stand a chance. That they all fought dirty and cunningly seems like a generalization to me.
     
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  8. T.Trian

    T.Trian Overly Pompous Bastard Supporter Contributor

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    This is slightly off-topic, and pardon me for asking, but I was wondering how much first-hand martial arts/combat sports/self-defense/military experience do you have? I'm asking because it seems you're not very familiar with at least modern training systems and training/fighting methods.

    You needn't look further than any realistic self-defense system/school to see stuff like e.g. eye-gouging (really ramming those thumbs as deep into the sockets as they go, forcing out the eye balls), fish-hooking, biting off the nose, ear, lip, part of a cheek, or going for a single leg and, if the guy manages to stay up or drags you down with him, sinking a knife held in reverse grip, tip up between your opponent's nuts and asshole, and cutting him open up to the guts etc. Then there's the art of bs and deception in the pre-fight confrontation with the goal of catching the other guy(s) with a pre-emptive attack, hopefully resulting in a KO, and we're getting somewhere although that's just the tip of the ice berg. Any of that vicious enough? :p

    My point is that pretty much all realistic systems and schools advocate pre-emption, tactics, deceit, and being as gruesome and vicious as it takes to survive. That's just the civilian side of things whereas militaries have a whole other thing going, but believe me, no SEAL, marine, SAS operative, or any such soldier is going to be squeamish in a fight or have any ridiculous (and often downright deadly) notions of chivalry/honor/fair play when it comes to survival in a fight. If they had, they wouldn't survive very long.

    That was one of my points when I said fighting (e.g. unarmed and knife stuff) hasn't really changed much (except nowadays fighters are generally much better trained since honestly great instructors, excellent study materials freely available over YouTube etc.are more abundant than ever), so the people who know how to fight and understand the realities of violence are no less brutal than their medieval counterparts.
    Add to that the fact that the guys today tend to be quite a bit bigger and stronger, and you should be able to have a pretty solid idea of how things would turn out. If medieval training methods truly produced such superior results, why aren't they used today? After all, quite a few training manuscripts have survived to this day, so it's not like we have no idea how people trained back then.


    Again I have to wonder which modern training methods or systems are you thinking about?
    To the quoted comment I'd say you'd have to be about as strong and skilled as your opponent and more determined to come out on top than he is, meaning you'd be willing to use any and all means necessary to ensure your survival, no matter how bloody.

    Combine that with the aforementioned, vastly superior availability of knowledge of experienced and skilled fighters and teachers, and your average combatant is generally not only bigger and stronger, but better taught, i.e. more skilled than a medieval knight who might've had only one or a handful of sources of learning in his lifetime in addition to his own experiences and observations; they couldn't just log on and search for the best schools in their area (and read reviews of the instructors to find the best match for their own style), watch teaching videos, download a translated pdf of, say, Fior di Battaglia with all the techniques neatly explained in the margins etc.


    I don't know of any official wide-scale conscription of women into armies in medieval Europe, but in this thread alone there have been several examples posted about women in medieval Europe who did participate in combat, trained, wore armor, carried weapons, led armies, dressed up as an fought like (and beside) men in armies, and even a few orders with female equivalents of knights. Sure, they were rare, but they existed.

    That alone should give some indication that women weren't nearly as helpless against male fighters as you seem to think. I know from experience how effective some women can be as long as they've trained and prepared properly; I've trained with quite a few and I also place some trust in the words of experts with vastly superior knowhow than mine, and if they say a woman can learn to become deadly with e.g. a longsword, I listen.

    It even makes sense if you think about it; most fights last seconds, usually less than 10. That means the guy doesn't have much time to establish his dominance in extreme close quarters before either he or she is dead or badly wounded. Since swords don't require much strength at all to be wielded effectively, women do have decent odds of survival as long as their skill level, conditioning, gear etc. are up to par with those of their opponents. Not to mention if the woman is more skilled, which, I freely admit, wasn't common back then (since societies in general didn't take kindly to women wanting to learn to take care of themselves), and the man's victory isn't nearly as certain as you claim.

    Likewise, like men, women weren't and aren't stupid: why would any woman go toe-to-toe with some guy twice her size, pitting her inferior raw strength and shorter reach against his? Then again, the same applies to smaller men: they would be in just as much shit as the ladies if they tried to beat a much bigger and stronger opponent with strength alone. That's where cunning steps in; they'd attack from behind, pretend surrender, attack pre-emptively, have friends close by to lend a hand, try to talk the other guy down before shoving a dagger through their face without warning etc. etc. Sure, that's no guarantee of success, but it does give a woman a fighting chance... if the guy is clearly bigger and stronger; if they were of roughly the same size, the more skilled, determined, and cunning fighter would prevail regardless of sex.

    Out of interest, on which sources and facts do you base your absolute opinions? I mean women having zero chance against trained men and that medieval knights were superior to modern-day combatants? I'm interested because it goes against so much of what I've read and learned about the subject, from what actual HEMA instructors and free play (armored, with longswords) champions have told me etc.
     
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  9. Nothingness

    Nothingness Active Member

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    At title: Guilt.
     
  10. Devlin Blake

    Devlin Blake New Member

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    I don't know how realistic your story is going to be or if your character is a world traveler, but in Japan, there's a type of steel fan that used to be carried by women warriors. It was called a Japanese war fan or tessen. They had razor sharp edges. It would make a perfect weapon for a 'proper woman' because it looks just like a fan.

    Of course, this introduction of this type of weapon only works if she's been to Japan or someone who has, gave it to her.
     
  11. inDissonance

    inDissonance New Member

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    Hey!

    I saw you wrote:
    "Archery yes. But this isn't Katnis.
    Maces seem so...well...brutal and almost needing more strength as well. "

    What if she was to be trained in pole arms such as lances, spears and halbeards? These have the length to keep distance between her and her enemies, can be used like a Bo - swinging around like Donatello's weapon from TMNT - or like a piercing weapon.

    It can be (or seem to be) less brutal than weapons such as the mace but more civilized and require more skill than other weapons.
     

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