How was real melee like?

[elvis1325]

I think medieval fighting would be completely brutal. Just swinging little blocking. In a crowd of thousands you wouldn't have much room to block apart from batting the weapon out the way. You would be tripping over dying comrades, punching people in the face while being shot at from raining arrows as one impales your best friends left eye you watch helplesdly . You then get stabbed in the side while your attention is diverted to your now shish-kebabed friend. You fall onto your knees as people trip over you. You watch as the world fades out in agonizing pain, your comrades pushing forward, punching, bashing, biting, stabbing your enemies. Your second best friend trips over you and promptly falls onto an enemies spear, with your last few breaths you wildly swing at your foes ankles, toppling him onto you where you violently stab at him. Unable to move with your final breath, you watch in the distance to see... a naked guy on a plated charger bump through the whole enemy army made up of thousands of warriors who are promptly executed by your army while they are on the ground. 1000000 xp

[Axel Raby]

Too much to write - really. Just watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkhpqAGdZPc

Maybe it's not about knights in full plate armor fighting each other on horses (probably armored ones, haha), but it's still interesting. Really nice presentation about shield and sword fighting.

If I had to use one word to describe how real melee was, I would say: chaos.

Maybe I will write more tomorrow, but I have to educate myself first, and I am lazy.

Greetings.

[Aderyn]

Well first thing i would like to say about melee fighting is that it usually consisted of dirty fighting. Ive read some books about medieval swordfighting and like 90% of the content is dirty tricks like throwing sand in the face of the other guy or similar stuff.

[Teeth]

I think there would have been more "martial arts" in those fights. I don't mean any Kung Fu shit or unrealistic fencing with three enemies simultaneously, but I am dead sure there has been a dozen or so "standard grips" and counters and whatnot, which worked rather well, were safe and quick. Especially since those who were trained in those martial arts often fought against untrained enemies, and I guess untrained people tend to do always the same mistakes. So I think it wouldn't all be only that hacking and stabbing like on that video, a few of those individuals (namely the leading lords and perhaps a few of their trained retinue soldiers) would know exactly what they are doing there, and we would see a few disarming blows, perhaps a few men being killed by their own weapon and similar stuff.

Just look at all the fencing videos on youtube. Sure, those were late middle ages and duels, but holy shit! I would never have seen most of those things coming! THere is no chance you can counter them if you don't hav the same level of training, so I guess it would have been used in battle, too. Especially since those tained fighters were not in panic and stayed calm and thus deadly.

I disagree. I don't think fencing videos carry over to the actual battlefield at all. You are not fighting one opponent, you have a dozen men close to you that could potentially hurt you at all times,you would have to watch every single one of them constantly, while trying to hurt them back. Not a place for fancy parrying. You see all those fencing moves rely a lot on footwork. But stepping into attacks like that will expose you to multiple opponents. I think people would just hang with their buddies, try to hurt the people in front of you while preventing them from hurting you. I'd say that is why spears and shields were so common at all times. With shorter or two handed weapons only coming into action when armour offered enough protection and those weapons being required to defeat that armour.

Battle is complete chaos, danger coming from everywhere. I'd imagine there'd be lots of sloppy attacks, lots of clunky fighting, lots of falling. I think the trained men surely might have been a bit better aware, more able to deal with the scary circumstances and keep it cool, and know a lot better how to protect themselves and attack at the same time. But I think simply superior equipment played a very big role as well in their superior performance, with a sloppy sword hack being stopped by mail, while still hurting someone in lighter armour.

[Osiris]

I watched the program Human warrior and although corny it did show some pretty brutal fighting techniques

nice part of pankration

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=V0Rq3th2Qjg#t=140s[/youtube]

[Axel Raby]

I think medieval fighting would be completely brutal. Just swinging little blocking. In a crowd of thousands you wouldn't have much room to block apart from batting the weapon out the way. You would be tripping over dying comrades, punching people in the face while being shot at from raining arrows as one impales your best friends left eye you watch helplesdly . You then get stabbed in the side while your attention is diverted to your now shish-kebabed friend. You fall onto your knees as people trip over you. You watch as the world fades out in agonizing pain, your comrades pushing forward, punching, bashing, biting, stabbing your enemies. Your second best friend trips over you and promptly falls onto an enemies spear, with your last few breaths you wildly swing at your foes ankles, toppling him onto you where you violently stab at him. Unable to move with your final breath, you watch in the distance to see... a naked guy on a plated charger bump through the whole enemy army made up of thousands of warriors who are promptly executed by your army while they are on the ground. 1000000 xp

This is a good description of battle, but from the point of view of an european peasant, viking, or an egyptian soldier.
In Europe, if some knigth were fighting 1 versus 1, they didn't kill each other. Now why. Because it wasn't worth it. A knight probably had fiefs and he earned a lot of money from that. That's why, if one of those knights lost the fight, he was took as a slave and had to pay money to the guy that won. But if You were a peasant, noone really cared. He killed You and what? You were useless if someone took You as a slave. Of course, some knights died. If it was a king, if someone had a chance - he would kill him, of course. By the way it was really hard. A knight had, let's say, 5 squires to carry his stuff, take care of his horse, and to help him in battle. Even without them, he probably had armor - a good armor. I heard once, that when French king fell of his horse, peasants were standing near him for 5 minutes, looking for a hole where to put a knife.

So, in my perspective, it was of course a big mess, but there weren't that many knights dying. There were many dead bodies and I can't even imagine the smell. After the battle, noone really went to the battlefield, just because noone could stay there, because of the smell that was coming from it.

Greetings.

[Roran Hawkins]

I've seen a battlefield reenactment of a 15th century battle.

They charegd at eachother with a clash worse than the most horriod rugby accident, trying to geta  hit in before shit turned real. It was hard to find friend or foe, and it quickly became one big chaoticx mess. Blocking was out of the picture since many blows were too weak to harm the plate armoured reenactors (mind that less armoured people would drop like flies) People'd stay in é unorganised lines trying to carefully pick off enemies, and single them out. Often 2 or 3 guys'd surround someone that lost his line and beat him from all sides. One of them facehugging so he was stuck in place, the others going batshit crazy on his back. Even the duels were not about blocking and hitting since most hits didn't have enough force behind them to really cause damage. In the rare cases that there was a real duel that you could consider like in the game, it ended as soon as one of them attempted a grapple or a single decent hit was delivered upon which the victor would grapple or keep spamming as much as possible on his stunned opponent unable to block.


It was terrifying in a way. One reenactor lost his sallet right before he was grappled upon which another reenactor fell chest-plate first on his face. Concussion, bleeding head-injury, lots of chaos and fear amongst the public as he was screaming and holding his face (we couldn't see his face)

Second injury, a bevor that didn't work properly and kept dropping, and the guy took a blunted sword on his nose bridge. Didn't break, but it bwas a cut to the bone. He let it be cleaned and fought on. Damnit man, hard-ass motherfuckers.

I also heard a story from one of them of a female reenactor taking an arrow to the eye (rubber blunted heads). She lost the eye.


Daaaammmmnnn.

[CrazyCracka420]

Yeah that's the whole point of this discussion, is that some of us are saying that real melee fighting in wars didn't happen like the re-enactments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniple_%28military_unit%29

I'm sure it would sometimes end up with one side getting squished closer and closer together as the enemy is slaughtering them.  But I highly doubt that it happened very often where both armies would both get squished together tighter and tighter until there was really no room to actually swing and fight.

Look at the link I provided up above, I believe most fighting formations involved giving people a little bit of space so they could swing and fight.  I think 6 feet away on all sides may be a bit hard to maintain throughout a battle, but I'm sure people tried to leave at least a couple feet from the guy in front of them.  The 2nd and 3rd row of guys isn't going to pushing their front line forward unless they just want their front line to get slaughtered immediately.  The reason you see 2nd and 3rd (and more) guys pushing forward in melee re-enactments, is because nobody is dying.  Their friendly guys they are pushing forward aren't being pushed into pikes and daggers and hammers to be killed immediately (as they would in war), they are getting hit with blunted weapons (which yes, can still do a lot of damage, but it's not the same as killing/disabling blows being struck every half second.

I'm sure it did happen still where armies got pressed up against each other and into some sort of shoving matches.  But I think it's more likely that one side tried to push through the enemies front lines creating a gap in their lines they could pour through.  But it didn't end up with both sides having a static pushing match that went along the whole front line, that just didn't happen (or if it did, it was very rare and unintended). 

[Glyph]

One thnig I do know is that from the 14th century onward 2 handed swords were not very effective anymore in large scale battles, only in duels. A better weapon to use back then was a polearm. I know because I fight with a longsword in my sport and I can see why.

[Yazid]

Go find a good Kendo dojo to learn the real heart of swordsmanship, here's a bit of what i've learned so far.

real melee involves communication between both opponents (footwork, eyes, and swords), no communication and the non-communicator is dead.. because he has lost his center (the closest point from my sword to his vital parts) the easiest way to explain is that simple game of trying to snatch a coin out of someones hands, if your intent is clear that you will snatch it, the opponent closes his hands (youre dead) but if you communicate stillness and disinterest and really look into your opponents eyes and not his hands chances are you may take it without him noticing (your strike succeeds). This is one of the many ways that real melee develops and real swordsmanship develops, the rest is mere fencing and smacking swords together better left for boys..

fencing can be developed like in the example shown in alistaire, simply by training in lightly padded armor with wooden swords, lightly padded because you need it to hurt when you're struck so you learn from your mistakes, and not naked because you need to not break a bone recover from your hits to keep practicing (lol) im sure europeans did this in one form or another, this is similar to what we do in kendo, and my fencing skills have increased immensely since starting out, for example, my first day in armor both my hands were badly bruised from wrist strikes (the proper wrist strike should sting 1-2 second afterward) and i quickly learned to turn my wrists inward (think wringing a towel), so both my palms were facing the sword instead of facing left and right (a common mistake people make when grabbing a sword) this in turn diminished cuts to my arms immensely, currently I can spar with an opponent and land killing blows repeatedly without being struck once, then i get on crpg and get 1 shot to some heskey longaxe spammer lol but thats besides the point (there is hardly any communication in warbands fighting, there is only 'going in' and silly feints or holds, (holds are closest to actual swordsmanship, and chambers are very close to some kendo techniques) one i can think of is 'debana kote' or 'kote nuki do' and my personal favorite 'kote nuki men' these are techniques used to evade a hit at the right time and strike back when your opponent is off balance but without any communication from the characters it is harder to do these in game than in real life imho but i digress.

there is no such thing as picking up a sword and fighting a trained man and thinking your natural ability will succeed, this just doesnt happen. mere fencing is hardly a martial art, its purely martial what makes it an art is difficult for me to explain to you all without sounding silly. its hard to talk about these things but if youre interested in them my suggestion is that you seek kendo, because its the last remnant of anything resembling real sparring or fighting with swords left.

i have a tournament comming up soon in UCF i may post a video afterward

[Sniger]

One things for sure, it wasnt pretty. It wasnt awesome sword-fights where people were doing epic moves and blocking crazy attacks from several people. It was one big mess, if you think cRPG players spam....

I think it was more like this. Of course people back then used more tactics and strategy and were more skilled in the melee... But overall i think it was just as messy, dont forget all the projectiles we dont see flying through the air on the youtube. Back then they were fighting like this ALL WHILE they were completely nuked by zillionz and zillionz of arrows and other projectiles.

[Butan]

I think too Sniger, however on the projectiles comment, I have to disagree: except if you wanted your men to hate your guts, you used arrows and other projectiles on enemy units which were not entangled with your own.

It would be akin to, today, sending your infantry to fix a machine gun nest, then asking an airstrike where they are fighting.
Usually, ranged fighters were used in the skirmish phase only, and then in special manoeuvers where none of your comrades were about to be wounded.

Friendly fire must have happened, but except wicked commanders, I highly doubt armies used controlled volleys of arrows/bolts in the midst of a melee fight where those who are your friends have their unshielded back in your direction. It could have happened on an individual sniper basis, mostly in sieges.

[Herezy92]

I think too Sniger, however on the projectiles comment, I have to disagree: except if you wanted your men to hate your guts, you used arrows and other projectiles on enemy units which were not entangled with your own.

It would be akin to, today, sending your infantry to fix a machine gun nest, then asking an airstrike where they are fighting.
Usually, ranged fighters were used in the skirmish phase only, and then in special manoeuvers where none of your comrades were about to be wounded.

Friendly fire must have happened, but except wicked commanders, I highly doubt armies used controlled volleys of arrows/bolts in the midst of a melee fight where those who are your friends have their unshielded back in your direction. It could have happened on an individual sniper basis, mostly in sieges.

Not really, sadly ^^
Friendly-fire is much more common than what we think in wars / battles.
Because wars/battles are much less "clean" than what we are suposing.

[Smoothrich]

Not really, sadly ^^
Friendly-fire is much more common than what we think in wars / battles.
Because wars/battles are much less "clean" than what we are suposing.

In WW1, there was shit for communications since all the phone lines would always get shredded by artillery fire, so it was difficult to sync support HQ with front lines. Of course this didn't stop the French and British from implementing "walking battery fire" near the end of the war, of massing artillery strikes right in front of advancing infantry to cover them. I can only imagine the nightmares of how many thousands of people were killed by their own fire while they developed that kind of tactic.

[Butan]

In WW1, there was shit for communications since all the phone lines would always get shredded by artillery fire, so it was difficult to sync support HQ with front lines. Of course this didn't stop the French and British from implementing "walking battery fire" near the end of the war, of massing artillery strikes right in front of advancing infantry to cover them. I can only imagine the nightmares of how many thousands of people were killed by their own fire while they developed that kind of tactic.

Would say the comparison between artillery and arrow fire doesnt stand.

Artillery always fire above friendly units, trying not to rip them apart, their job is to hit where the enemy is, but as you said, many parameters can make that problematic.
While asking a archer unit to fire above and on enemy units who are in melee contact with your own men, meant 100% that friendly fire would occur.

In one case, shit happens with coordinates, but its never intended; in the other, you just cant miss your own men, its pure murder, even though it can also be tactically explained.
I think that archers did volley fire only when placed at the first rank of the flank they are positioned in.


Also as HESKEY implied, even using artillery a bit audaciously must have had a toll on the soldiers morale and obedience (WW1 mutinies anyone); so I dont imagine that in the medieval age you were often asked to pepper your guys backs with arrows as part of classic tactical moves. Maybe some crazy guys bade such orders but I dont believe it to be a reality of the melee. Hence I believe that there was a skirmish phase before the melee, and during the melee there was 0 projectiles used en masse (at least not on the ones IN the melee).