I know this isn't /k/ but Veeky Forumstorically speaking:

I know this isn't /k/ but Veeky Forumstorically speaking:
Who did the longsword/great sword better?

Scottish? Spanish? Japanese?

>claymore
>Nodachi
>Espada Bastarda
>Miaodao
>Bidenhänder

Which of them had the most use? Most kills? significant names of warriors who used them? Battles where there was use of them?

Why were the Japanese so good at making really long really light and really skinny swords?

Why were the Spanish and Italians really good at making really decorative, really long, and really heavy swords?

When did long swords/great swords see their most popular day of use? When did they meet their end or decline?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=zSZfvfejK6A
youtube.com/watch?v=2ejx6DVuV50
youtube.com/watch?v=gF9hzH3D26Q
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiavonesca
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweihänder
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pier_Gerlofs_Donia
hyoho.com/Nkage1.html
myredditvideos.com/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

>so good at making really long really light and really skinny swords?

Nodachi were hardly light and skinny. They were pretty heavy, often only the tip would be sharpened and they were often used to bludgeon.

They were fairly popular with those who could afford them though, they were less prone to breaking than wooden polearms and were long enough to compete with polearms. They were often used both in duels and in battle by some of the most famous swordsmen in Japanese history

Claiming this thread

How does katana swordsmanship deal with shields? Seems to me like a pig iron discus would absolutely BTFO every two handed japanese sword.

>how does katana swordsmanship deal with shields?

it doesn't

Why didn't japanese warriors use shields, then?

The katana was akin to the pistol. It wasn't used very much in actual battle, unless you lose your spear for some reason. It was mostly a symbol/dueling weapon. So it's no surprise that it's not very good in non-duel combat and that it can't handle shields.

Because the main weapon was a two handed spear.

Ok lets step back a bit, first off there were shields they were just rare because the Japanese preferred two handed weapons.

The main weapon was not the spear but the bow, overwhelmingly. even then naginata and nagimaki were popular for a much longer time than the spear which really only came into vogue around 1460.

Swords, mostly nodachi and tachi saw pretty regular use on the battlefield as a secondary/defensive weapon, and they were certainly regarded as important, Early war swords and length, weight and leverage and were made for an environment where people wore armor and wielded pole arms. Shorter katana are more indicative of street wear and edo period unarmored swordsmanship. Shorter swords only came into vogue on the battlefield when massed formations became the norm and people wanted a sword they could draw quickly and use in closed quarters combat, this was a relatively late trend.

To clarify I was using a very broad definition of the word spear so that it would include naginata and that I was assuming we were leaving bows out of the discussion.

Was the use of very big swords similar to the European use of it where it is used to dislodge spears?

>where it is used to dislodge spears?

Questionable, the heyday of the nodachi was in the Kamakura and nambokucho era when they were not as popular, After that they were more likely used as a weapon for single combat on the battlefield and duels outside it. For obvious reasons a well made nodachi was an expensive weapon not suitable for mass production. They were also sometimes used on horseback. Matsumoto Bizen-no-kami, one of the most famous swordsmen in Japanese history was said to have died in battle wielding one in that manner

I have read that Shingen or kenshin (I forget whih) had a squad of men armed with nagimaki which might have been used to smash through pike rows but that's speculation.

Unfotuanly the Tokugawa put restrictions on long swords so only a few arts bothered to preserve them, giving us scant public information on their use martially

youtube.com/watch?v=zSZfvfejK6A

youtube.com/watch?v=2ejx6DVuV50

youtube.com/watch?v=gF9hzH3D26Q

Serbs invented the Long Sword

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiavonesca

skinny compared to European Great sword i suppose is what i meant.

But thanks for the info, hadnt the idea that they were used as such.

is it true that they were sometimes cut down to shorter sizes if too long?

>Was the use of very big swords similar to the European use of it where it is used to dislodge spears?
Europe didn't use swords for that. Pikes fought pikes, and they did so while people in the same formation shot the other pikes, or exited the block to try and flank them.

Trying to smash through well ordered pikes with a big sword would usually end very fucking badly.

Very few old Japanese swords from the koto period survive in their original size. if they were damaged their might be shortened, and during the Edo period when there was no use for them many were shorted then too.

Its a terrible idea to compare them all they where used in different periods in different areas of the world to combat different weapons.

Your right, but it is a good excuse to talk about swords.

idk about that. I mean the general idea of having a big sword is to have more momentum in a form of crushing or slashing an opponent from farther away.

the region in which it was used or when it was used has little to do with its significance.

Sure you could argue dueling purpose only, or decorative purpose only. But when it comes down to it the swords are like wheels. We use big wheels on trucks and small wheels on shopping carts. just like a short sword is used as a secondary arm and a great sword may be used as a main weapon.

why didn't Veeky Forums get a mashup with /k/
that would have been cool...

/hisk/ - Historical Weapons

Ze Germans.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweihänder
Yes they did.

The Spaniards produced the best steel so I would go with them. Btw the Japanese barely knew how to work steel until the Portuguese taught them so it is not really fair to compare their swords with their European counter part

>Btw the Japanese barely knew how to work steel until the Portuguese taught them
No, they worked their steel well, they just had shit steel

Steel is just iron with some coal. If you have shit steel is because you just don't know well the proportions of each one

Ichigo from Bleach

Runescape is a video game, not real life. Smelting doesn't work that way. You need a crucible to make a sword.

Montante is best great sword.
Bidenhänder is largely misunderstood by 19th century memes.
Claymore is hugely overestimated by Anglos desperate for a bit of history.

There steel was fine, They had shitty iron which they refined into good steel. The idea that the Portuguese radically changed how they worked iron and steel is absurd.

>The Spaniards produced the best steel
Nice meme there Pancho.

Chaos Zweihander

Metallurgically speaking the Japanese followed the bloomery process for their ferro materials. Some of this they refined into steel for tools and weapons, using the small batch forgeweld and fold technique. This is what everyone used during the iron age. Japans mediocre mines (the ore is ok, just not that plentiful) plus their natural autism may led to this, anyways, they made some of the finest refined steel weapons ever.

Europe did outpace them by using different more industrial metallurgical production methods, such as the use of water power for bellows and hammer works. Also they had access to some of the worlds richest Iron ore deposits.

>Claymore is hugely overestimated by Anglos desperate for a bit of history.
>Claymore
>Anglos
...do you know where Claymores come from?

Do you know what language "Claymore" means "great sword" in?

Triggered much?
>obscure origin
>very few surviving examples
>almost no historical documentation
>extremely hyped by victorian Britons and every 1/68 part true Scotsman form the US

Many of them were actually shortened because of edicts passed that outlawed swords passed a specific length.

>Nice meme there Pancho.
Who produced better steel then?

Various places in Europe made excellent steel, Steyr and surroundings in Austria, Brescia in Italy, Passau, Solingen and Suhl in Germany, and various places in Sweden.
Toledo has high quality ore and a long tradition for iron and steel making, but by no means it was the the best. Just really good steel products and likely the best in the Iberian peninsula.

>but by no means it was the the best
How do you know this? Any source? As far as I know Toledo steel and Damascus steel were considered the best in the world.I can't find anything on Soligen's steel that even comes close.

Ok, look, Damascus steel is generic term and means either Indo-Persian Crucible steel or then forge-welded ferro materials of various construction from all over the world. While Crucible steel often is metallurgically superior, this technology was unknown to Europeans until the late 17th century when the English figured it out.

For your Toledo thing, yes, there are dozens of ferro metallurgic studies of historic weapons, armor and metal artifacts all over Europe and guess what, everybody was just cooking with water. There is no best steel and no magical ones. The quality of arms boils down to good access to high quality ores, running water and the development of skilled craftsmanship.
This was given in the aforementioned Towns and regions. Toledo had excellent craftsmanship and good ore sources, which made high end weapons, but then so had other places in Europe.
As a source and good read I recommend "The Sword and the Cricible" by Allan Williams.

The people who sperg about weapons on this board provide some of the worst discussion while providing some of the most informed commentary. This is somehow possible.

Go visit a historic weapons auction/show, fascinating brew of weird people.

>zizek_prefer_not_to.gif

What are you talking about? All I said was that it's dumb to say the Claymore has anything to do with England

>CLAYMORES ARE ANGLO
>actually they're from Scotland
>HAHA LOOKS LIKE SOMEBODY'S TRIGGERED
What did you mean by this?

P.S. Toldeo ore contains some tungsten and manganese, both help to make a good steel alloy and with proper heat treatment will make for a good and hard edge. Please note, natural ores in the other weapon centers of Europe often contain the same traces of beneficial alloys, thats why those manufacturing centers popped up there in the first place.

No, but a lot with English speaking people. The Claymore is the historically most insignificant great sword type, yet today the most well know amongst plebs.

>but a lot with English speaking people
Nobody in Scotland spoke English when the Claymore was in use, and it's not a particularly popularly written about sword in England or any other English speaking country that isn't Scotland apart from maybe certain parts of America.
>The Claymore is the historically most insignificant great sword type,
How do you even quantify something like that? What a silly thing to say.

>How do you even quantify something like that?
Only a handful of surviving examples
Very few archaeological finds
Next to none mention in historical sources
Used in only a small geographical region, isolated by the rest of Europe
All in all this makes it for a very obscure weapon that was neither common nor widely used. Compared to more popular examples of European great swords thats next to nothing,
Yet, everybody that speaks English will know about the mighty Claymore. Hence we have this shit discussion here.

>All in all this makes it for a very obscure weapon that was neither common nor widely used
It was extraordinarily common in Ireland, both the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, and Northern England. They're tripping over the things in Irish archaeology at the minute, you can't go for a walk near a river without finding one.

...

I forgot to include this. Its often said that retricting sword size was a way to pacify samurai but that doesnt make alot of sense to me: by that period nodachi were tertiary weapons, shorter swords had already come into vogue, and they passed no restrictions on training with spears, a far more popular war weapon at that point. Even guns continued to be trained with

Is the Claymore significantly different than continental longswords?

Zis.

You be the judge senpai

>you can't go for a walk near a river without finding one.
This. There are even historical accounts of peasants trying to give swords to knights just to get rid of them, they'd often end up in rivers and waterways and they'd rust over time, tainting the water supply. There's even an account of a peasant woman literally emerging from a lake and trying to give her sword to a passing knight. I think one English king was even written to have found a longsword stuck in a rock one day, they're fucking everywhere over there.

>it's an user tries to be funny but gets the country wrong episode

>Most kills?
Probably the Chinese Dao. Though Dao is a bit of a generic term for a Chinese sword, some Dao are two-handed swords and could be called "greatswords". The reasons I say they probably have the most kills:

>Dao have been used in China since antiquity, so they've seen tons of combat
>China modernized very late, so Dao were being used, even by official Imperial Troops, as recently as the Taiping Rebellion and the Opium Wars
>China is very, very populous and has experienced numerous bloody civil wars and invasions with unparalleled casualty rates (though like in most wars, most of the casualties are due to secondary effects like famine and disease of course)

Sorry, dont know enough to be a judge. That's why I asked

China desu. Dadao, miaodao, zhanmadao and the double handed Jian were all great weapons of mass destruction.

I mean who comes up with the brilliant design aim for cutting horse and rider in twain with one blow?

>Bidenhänder
>zhanmadao
>zanbato

It must have taken a pretty big guy to swing swords of that length with any speed

so youre saying that based on the Popularity of the Miaodao, and the large amount of conflict that has persisted through the year in China?

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweihänder
Nothing in the link you gave mentions using the sword in that way. What a shock.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pier_Gerlofs_Donia

I personally prefer claymores for aesthetic reasons. Ordered a custom made one few days ago. One with an actual forged blade.

>I personally prefer claymores for aesthetic reasons.
What a pleb you are.

I am an uneducated construction worker so yes, I am in fact a plebeian. Now go shove that katana up your ass.

>Why were the Spanish and Italians really good at making really decorative, really long, and really heavy swords?
because A E S T H E T I C S and sense of fashion

>They were also sometimes used on horseback.

found a picture

>I can't find anything on Soligen's steel that even comes close.
Solingen and Passau have been known for quality blades since the early middle ages. Passau in particular had one of the earliest official brands in the form of a running wolf that was used to mark the blades, by decree of the Prince-Bishop.

To which extent the steel was made there I'm not certain but Southern Germany and Northern Italy had excellent steel production, which was one of the major reasons why they were major centres of armour productions.

...

a sword as tall as you are... that's something

hyoho.com/Nkage1.html


Article on one of the last living nodachi lineages written by the current headmaster

looks somehow fragile af desu senpai

They were not, though many old swords have been polished so many times they are shadows of what they once were.

>blocks your path

...

For a spear to be better than a sword it has to be significantly longer

A katana is like a rapier, I guess. It was a status symbol first and a weapon second, and wasn't extremely useful outside of duels.

>Solingen and Passau have been known for quality blades since the early middle ages.

You can easily add an extra milennium to that date.

Passau was previously known as Noricum, or Castra Batavorum: the source of "noric steel", which was greatly valued in the Roman age.

Thats not only wrong about katana, its wrong about rapiers

I don't know much about either, no.

Still, are you telling me a rapier would be useful in any sort of battle formation, or against somebody remotely armored?

Tell me how well poking a shield with an elongated piece of elastic steel works

Rapiers come in several types. Many rapier were arming swords with complex hilts and were used in battle. While normal rapiers were very much dueling weapons, they were hardly status first and weapons second, they were very effective.

As for the katana, it rose to prominence during the late sengoku early edo period. A shorter, lighter version of the longer swords that had previously dominated the scene in Japan, it could be quickly drawn and was worn of the hip which made it an excellent side arm in the closed formations of the time.

of course it was also used in duels. it was also used in street frights, self defense, assassinations and battlefield single combat.
it was a practical weapon as well as a symbol of power.

It stands right there under "Application". And if you click onto "Doppelsöldner" there, you'll find it explained even more explicit.

Bidenhander by far
BIG

OP here guys.

Where did Cutlasses come from, or what style did the derive from for what purpose.

Were Rapiers cousins to the Cutlass or did they derive from the Cutlass.

If not what are the ancestors of these two forms of swords and where do they owe their craftsmanship to?

cavalry sabers

go on...

ARYAN