How was real melee like?

[CrazyCracka420]

Smoothrich and his intelligent posting style strikes again

It's called sarcasm, and exaggeration for effect.  I know, it's generally something that is lost in Euros, don't beat yourself up about it.  I was going to + his post, but I realized that most of the Europeans in here would think that I was agreeing with Smooth that they're using plastic weapons (rather than +'ing for his witty sarcasm that I agree with).

I know they are using real weapons (not sharpened) and real armor, and most of them are swinging as hard as they can.  But at the end of the day they're not fighting to the death, so I don't think these re-enactments are going to show the real brutality and fighting that happened in melee scrums.  I still don't think that both sides collided (or intended to collide) with the other enemies shield walls.  Once you got within 5-10 feet, people are going to start dying (unlike these LARPer re-enactments)

[Butan]

But at the end of the day they're not fighting to the death, so I don't think these re-enactments are going to show the real brutality and fighting that happened in melee scrums.

Still shows what would happen if 2 full infantry group fought against each other, at least for the few first minutes where no clear "victor" emerges.

[CrazyCracka420]

Still shows what would happen if 2 full infantry group fought against each other, at least for the few first minutes where no clear "victor" emerges.

That's what I'm disagreeing with.  Blunt and pierce weapons would be dropping people left and right before they got into their shoving match.  And if they fucked up and got into a shoving match, daggers would come out and people would be dropping left and right.

People didn't stand there swinging their weapons trying to give the guy in front of them a headache (as they are in these "reenactments") they were trying to kill the person in front of them.  And they didn't try to "shove" the enemy to death.

Look at the video I linked up thread from LindyBeige and get his take on how shield walls engaged, and his disagreement that it happened like you see in these re-enactments (which always end up in the shield walls colliding and people wildly swinging away). 

[Tibe]

I once read that most infantry was how crpgers call hoplite. I cant recall which source it was, I just have that stuck in my brain. But it kinda makes sense if I think about it. You are some barely even leather wearing peasant in a huge bunch of other bearly even leather wearing peasants. Spear is cheap and effective, shield is cheap too and provides longer survivability. I highly doubt majority of armies consisted out of giant steel sword using chainmail wearing infantrytroops. Those guys where mybe only a small part of the army where most were peasants.

[Joker86]

Actually, I think that was only sometimes the case. Peasants were only levied in cases of emergency, and when you needed sheer numbers. Usually army leaders preferred smaller, professional armies. They might be of the same strength like a giant peasant army, but they have vast advantages over peasants. The smaller number means you need less supplies, and that you can command them better. The fact that you expect less losses and their professionality makes those small armies much more reliable.

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(The less losses thing is something I learned by reading about WWII tactics. The leaders of the allies, specially Russians and Americans, focused on masses to fight the Germans, that's why often their gear and training was inferior to that of the Germans - but they forgot about morale, because you don't like to fight, even if you know that you're gonna win, when your chances for survival are like 40%.)

And finally peasants are meant to grow crops and stuff, so you don't want them to die in battles, you want them to keep you up.

Concerning the equipment: first of all there is a long discussion about leather armour. Many people believe leather armour was never used in Europe, since not a single armour had been found.

And then there is the question about the average gear. I think those poor guys who only had their linen shirt as armour were rather the exception. Aketons were rather cheap but effective, and the later the middle ages, the more common chainmail brigandines were. Yes, of course an armour is expensive, but so are cars, computers, touch phones, touch pads and so on, and yet people tend to own them, and I see every bum having a touch phone. Of course a whole fighting equipment is far more expensive than a cell phone, it's probably more around the value of a car, but still. People buy used and old cars. And an army needs to win only a single battle, and the survivors can most likely equip themselves with rather good stuff. Those English longbowmen regularly came back from France with Milanese helmets and decorated swords.

Generally I think a good part of most armies was rather professional and reasonably equipped. Especially between the high and late middle ages, for example during the Hundred Years Wars, War of Roses, etc., you barely saw poorly equipped peasants on the depictions of those battles. You had infantry which was equipped with chainmail and partial plate and you had a lot of professional men at arms and fighters who made a living from war.

[Christo]

It's called sarcasm, and exaggeration for effect.

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I commented on that posting style, not that I don't know what it is.

[Overdriven]

Actually, I think that was only sometimes the case. Peasants were only levied in cases of emergency, and when you needed sheer numbers. Usually army leaders preferred smaller, professional armies. They might be of the same strength like a giant peasant army, but they have vast advantages over peasants. The smaller number means you need less supplies, and that you can command them better. The fact that you expect less losses and their professionality makes those small armies much more reliable.

Generally I think a good part of most armies was rather professional and reasonably equipped. Especially between the high and late middle ages, for example during the Hundred Years Wars, War of Roses, etc., you barely saw poorly equipped peasants on the depictions of those battles. You had infantry which was equipped with chainmail and partial plate and you had a lot of professional men at arms and fighters who made a living from war.

Well I know how the English worked. Generally a King would apply to his nobles to join his army. Usually they were also expected to fund it for a certain period (if a war went on to long then the nobles would just up and leave because of costs). Each noble had a pre-arranged number of men he was supposed to bring separated into their categories of knights, men at arms, archers and your basic infantry when the King called upon them. I don't remember examples of exactly how these numbers worked out but generally there were more basic soldiers than knights and men at arms. In everything I've read the basic infantry really was basic. Essentially just cannon fodder with a spear like weapon and at best a shield. Their other weapons would most likely be tools of their trade. It seems to me the idea was to pretty much bring the maximum number of men at a reasonable cost possible. And mixed armies made the most sense in that regards and even a medium amount of professional soldiers costs a heck of a lot.

Reading about how insanely well organised armies were even in the 1200's/1300's/1400's is pretty interesting. Even then they had lists of every single individual who joined with a noble, how much they were paid and what they were expected to bring as weapons. This set up was for general wars such as with Edward 1 and his war on the Welsh, not just emergencies.

[Joker86]

All I know is that people were expected to supply one or more fighters according to the land they were owning/working on. This means that a few poor peasants with less land had to supply only one fighter together, while other peasants had to supply one or more men, and better equipped/mounted.

And yes, a lord can very well also have summoned his peasants to fight in a battle (as far as I know the service was 40 days a year, every day more had to be paid!), but usually most of them would have been able to afford basic gear like a helmet, a shield, a spear and an aketon.

I also heard that if lords/peasants didn't provide enough men, they were allowed (read: had) to provide a certain sum of money, so that the loss in manpower could have been compensated by mercenaries.

Another thing I remembered having read once was that many peasants, naturally the stronger and more aggressive ones, were happy to be summoned to war, because they made good money from looting and plundering, even if it was forbidden. So it's not like the peasants were always unwilling to fight. 

[okiN]

Vyborg castle

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[Casimir]

People who were in the armies at those times rarely wrote books. They actually rarely wrote at all, because usually they were not capable of.

And those people who wrote about battles, tended to glorify them, and they surely did not put any emphasis into the point of view of the ordinary infantryman and how he experienced the battle. It's about the cruel, disgusting details, and I bet nobody was interested in how precisely people hacked and stabbed each other. But this is what interests me, so I am asking. I don't really expect to find some historic ressources about that matter, at least not before the late middle ages/renaissance. But perhaps there were some researches and so on, or archeologic findings, which I don't know of.

And finally, it could help to simply imagine how it could have been, and trying to figure it out. Like "What would YOU do, if you were in the first line of a battle"?

Although true there are few texts written by participants on warfare they are not unknown. If you want a first hand account of a the First Crusade with good details on all major sieges and engagements check out the Gesta Francorum, written by an anonymous Italian Norman knight.

As most texts were created by clerics who's education was in Latin classical terms are often used incorrectly to suggest formations (e.g. 'Wedge') when other first hand accounts give no record of these.

With regards to Hastings the Normans did not form a shield wall but charged repeatedly uphill at the Saxons and feigned retreats in order to illicit an unplanned charge from the Saxons. This resulted in weakening of the wall.

Formations and positioning was incredibly important in the middle ages. The battle of Arsurf in the third crusade is a well covered battle that shows how important the positioning of units was of great importance and armies were organised intentionally to achieve their objectives.

Then as now there were good leaders and bad ones, some understood the art of war and others did not.

[Nightmare798]

Hi!

My question is rather simple: how was real melee like?

Of course it heavily depends on the time period and so on, but I don't think this should stop us from trying to get a picture.

What I am interested in mainly is the cohesion while fighting. You surely all know the Bravehart battle scenes, where both armies rush full speed into each other, and then there is a huge clusterfuck and enemies coming from all sides.

Or is it more like the battle in the movie Troy, where they wait in front of their citiy walls, first repell them and then drive the Greek back? In that scene you can clearly see how they are holding some sort of line.

Of course certain tactics like Phalanx or shield wall automatically imply a certain level of cohesion. But still I'd like to know how it was percisely. Did the Normans beat on the Saxon shield wall constantly like mad men, or were they like in some distance with their own shield wall, and rather cautiously attacking with spears and so on, waiting for one of the Saxons to make a mistake and stab him behind his shield? I bet keeping distance could have been problematic with all the other guys in the back pushing forward. But did they push forward? Have people been so eager on fighting that they knowingly caused trouble for their fellows at the front by pushing them into the enemy?

I know from several reports that tactics in medieval times were basically about placing your troops at the right spot and then hoping they would wait with their charge for your command. But once the attack was released you could only wait for the outcome, without further possibilities of infulencing it.

But since many fighters tended to join medieval battles in some kind of "lances", where a knight had his squires around him (I know often parts of the lances were assigned to different units, e.g. pages joining the light cavalry and so on), I suppose at least those small groups of about 3 to 10 men kept some kind of cohesion. Once the enemy was repelled a bit they for sure regrouped, listening to the leader or his commanding "officer". Did those people at least look for after the course of the battle, and deciding where to engage next, or did they just charge headlong the nearest enemies?

You see, those are a lot of different questions with even more answers. Now does somebody of you know some reports or researches about melee, which can clarify the matter for a certain period? E.g. did the Normans support the man next to them, or was everybody just beating the part of the Saxon shield wall in front of him?

I am also interested in other details e.g. how much did your fellows care when you got hit and went down? Have people made special efforts to support their buddies, like on those illustrations when a Landsknecht was jumping into the pikes, grabbing as many of them as he could and lifting them, so his fellows could charge under them? Or similar to the battle of Rocroi scene at the end of Alatriste, where fighters "dive" under the pikes of the enemies, cutting and stabbing the defenseless pikemen, have there been Normans going down and trying to cut the feet of the Saxons, relying on their Norman fellows to protect them from blows to the back of their head?

suicide charges as seen in movies were rare thing. usually, infantry charges were done either by shield charge, or spear charges. real life melees also depended much more on flanking and tactics as whole, thanks to abundance of spear. when you got down, there wasnt unfortunatelly much of a reaction as there wasnt time for that, your brothers in arms had their own oponents to focus their attention on.

there is however some truth to movies like swordsmen bashing away pikes with their shields. there also wasnt as much formations, because it takes time and training to organize, hold and fight in formation.

[Christo]

Also here's LindyBeige's take on shield walls, he doesn't think the shield walls of both sides would go up against each other and have a "shoving" match as other people and historians have suggested.  AKA he is disputing the tactic that shieldwalls would go "shield to shield" head on into the enemy's shield wall

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Came out just yesterday, thought I'll add it to the discussion.

[CrazyCracka420]

Came out just yesterday, thought I'll add it to the discussion.

Nice thanks for posting the update, always find his views very interesting.

[Yaro]

Here is an example of men pushing against each other in a fight... and guess what? no one suffocated... this is by far the silliest thing I've ever heard. This is not to illustrate how middle ages battles were fought  but to demonstrate mob mentality that would certainly play some role when you have armed people going at each other.

[Berserkadin]

I don't see any shields either.