What was the point of curved swords...

What was the point of curved swords? They were completely useless against armor and it's not like Asia and Middle East didn't have armored warriors.

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they were easier to make

>What was the point of curved swords? They were completely useless against armor

So are straight swords. Curved swords were adopted by the Middle East after the Turkics and Mongols came in. Curved swords are suited very well to cavalry, since they're so good at cutting.

>So are straight swords
wrong

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>If I turn it around and use it like a hammer it's a good sword
Just get a fucking hammer

Great swords and the idea of half-swording is a late medieval invention. For 90% of the Medieval period, straight swords were completely useless against armor. Curved blades have their merits, as can be seen by the entire East suddenly adopting them for some reason. Straight swords have their merits as well. You'll find that the more cavalry-oriented East found much greater use out of them. Indeed, what do you see 18th century and Napoleonic cavalry using as primary weapons? Curved.Swords.

you see those warriors from the Middle East? they have curved swords. curved. swords.

Retard here, what is the point of curved swords in general? The occasional scimitar is cool in games, but, why?

>completely ignoring the guy who tries to stab the other one in the visor
retard

to kill infidels

Curving the swords gives you a longer edge which is better for cutting

They cut better, think of how a guillotine blade is also curved

Swords were used in raiding, skirmishing and riding down peasants.
Lances, bows, axes, maces etc when attacking armoured opponents in battle.

Because in their climate around the middle east you wouldn't give too great of armour to your infantry, as they'd str8 up die before they got to battle.
As for the matter of armour, straight swords aren't particularly useful against the stuff. You use blunt weapons or weapons designed to pierce armour. In any case, if heavy cavalry is galloping your way, there's no sword that is going to save you.

katana can easily cut through armor

Sure, assuming it's made of leather.

Asian single edgers =/= Middle Eastern ones.

Ok maybe some Chinese blades are.

But generally they're less curvy and do have a point.

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The Peidao is more of a backsword really than a saber.

In fact the Chinese word means "Sidesaber" and was the most common infantry sword by the 18th century.

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Not everyone had armor.
Not everyone that had armor was fully armored.

not everyone had armor in Europe either yet Europeans used double edged swords

There's actually a wide variety of swords in Europe.

Flachions and backswords for one thing.

Maybe not full plate, but you couldn't very well march into battle without at least a mail curaiss covering your vital organs. And compared to most other places, iron was cheap in Europe.

The thing is that a curved sword is useful when a target can be cut, which is of course why it was so popular in the gunpowder era. Mail doesn't cut well, but a good thrust will leave a man reeling, if not outright penetrating. In that context, a straight sword makes quite a good deal of sense.

You can't cut with a hammer
Straight swords are multi-purpose

When you're riding a horse going thirty miles an hour, curved swords are much better at cutting then straight.

More force going through a smaller point makes it easier for them to slice things. Straight swords have all the force going through a larger surface area spreading it out more. Sorry if I didn't explain it so well but I'm sure some people will figure it out.

This is a good point, and it also should be pointed out that contrary to stereotype the Middle-East and Asia did not only use curved swords anymore so than Europe used straight swords.

>They were completely useless against armor
Go put on some armor and get a friend to gallop full speed on a horse towards you swinging a curved sword.

They were sidearms?

Isn’t the most important reason they’re better for cavalry because they don’t get stuck during the cut?

Swords weren't treated like they had video game stats. A curved sword is a sword, and it can cut as well as thrust. It's military culture that determined which you might use for much of history.

Asia adopted a lot of curved sword use because the pre-eminent soldier was the nomadic steppe horseman who had their own blacksmiths forging swords in their own way and handing down their techniques over the centuries.

Longer edge, slightly confusing length trick and you can stab with it as well as any other blade if not better.
Straight swords bend too easily where as force is directed toward a given arch in a curved blade.

People have been using straight swords as cavalry cutting weapons for a long time before then.

There are two parts to any cut m8

The Draw Cut, which is the overall length of the blade that touches flesh and cuts it as it drags along. Curved swords have a greater draw cut because the curve means that more of the edge touches you on any part of the slash and pull

The Percussion Cut is the downwards force of the swing, and determines the actual bodily penetration. Heavier swords are good at this, which is why two handed swords can hack limbs off in a few strokes.

How is that picture supposed to disprove the efficacy of curved swords?
You can do the same thing with a curved sword.

Much better for cutting especially on horseback.

Yeah but don’t they get stuck easier. Like they’re not unusable or anything but the force of the initial hit with a straight sword should be greater than a curved sword right?

No one seems to ever mentioning this as a problem for Latins, Arabs, and Chinese when they were predominantly using straight swords on horseback.

The argument that curved swords were just 'better' for cavalry sounds like an armchair theory.

the thing is that you don't chop like it is an axe, you use the curvature of the sword to slice the flesh, imagine it like cutting meat for eating, but you now carry all the force and energy of the horse and the Saber is really sharp.

and they eventually changed to curved swords because they are more comfortable to use

Anyone else see OP's picture and immediately want to play Mount & Blade?

That pic is literally my loadout.

Armor is heavy as fuck. Soldiers in the middle of nowhere usually couldnt bring it with them. Also cavalry sabers started to gain popularity the same time as guns (albeit single shot guns). When guns were invented people said fuck it to armor.

>what is an estoc

>I didn't even look at the picture

curved swords are better for chopping shit in half when youre on a horse going 30 mph. you literally barely even have to swing. straight swords are much harder to use like this. theyre not as aerodynamic when it comes to "slicing". wind resistance and shit bro.

Because cav is best used to break up enemy units and kill routed units
And in the Middle East you had far more people in cloth than in Europe

Not everyone wears armour. Not to mention that you can see that the guy is carrying an axe to deal with armoured opponents.

People need to get this video game idea out of their head that you can only specialise in one weapon.
A horseman can easily carry a sword by his side while using a lance as his primary weapon and having a mace or axe attached to the saddle.

Single edged and curved swords were fairly common self-defence weapons in Europe.

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all of them look fucking hideous except for third from the left because it looks like shamshir

Many reasons to do with cutting but one of the things you can do with a curved sword is a push cut where if you point the blade at someone directly you arent presenting them a point but the curved edge so you can strike directly forward but cut instead of stabbing, which is useful on horseback where you definately dont want your sword stuck in someones body while you are moving.

They changed to curved swords because of the rise of nomad mercenaries popularizing their weapons and dress.

Who fucking cares about swords? Most people throughout history used polearms. Swords are a meme.

who used them because they were more comfortable to use

>he thinks polearms are effective in the middle of a melee

just like armor is not designed to fight other armor the cavarly using curved swords aka sabres are not designed to charge into hard targets

cutting up unarmored or less armored infantry is best done with a sabre from horseback

If you use an estoc you will be parried

Get a hammer with a beak. Swords are a fucking meme.

Such shit taste.

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On the contrary.

Swords were weapons people could carry around with them on a daily basis. They were weapons of personal self-defence. Even if your primary weapon in battle was a pole-arm, a sword would always be by your side.

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messers aren't even curved and neither are falchions, european ''curved swords'' are as much curved swords as spears are daggers also
>german weapon
woah after all germans won so many wars and don't at all have a history of being pulverized by major powers of their time once they piss them off

You can swing a sword much faster and you can use it like a hammer

Napoleonic cavalry sabres were pretty curved.

and sabres are not european weapons

European Napoleonic era cavalry sabres were pretty curved.

>messers aren't even curved
The sword in the very picture you've replied to is curved.

>german weapon
Messers and messer-like weapons have not just been used in Germany but in the entire vicinity. Most definitely Bohemia and Poland-Lithuania as well.

>woah after all germans won so many wars
They did, you just don't hear about it because you're most likely uneducated in medieval history. "Germany" didn't exist back then. The various German principalities, dioceses and free cities participated in the various wars in Europe or fought some of their own and naturally they also were on winning side now and then.

Forgot my pic.

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How do you know that? Is there a source somewhere by some Turk or Mongol swordmaster that says that? What if they only used them because their fathers used them, and their fathers before that, all the way back until some ancient confederation chief who happened to be a cool guy who had a curved sword?

>sabres are not European weapons

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Polish - Lithuanian Commonwealth didn't exist in the middle ages either

that's fucking retarded it's not like Turks never adapted and always used the same shit because ''muh heritage''

The name does not necessarily refer to just the political entity but it may also refer to a geographic region.

Not to mention: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish–Lithuanian_union

messers still aren't fucking curved, compare them to picrel and see the difference

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How's that retarded? Lots of human culture boiled down to that very dynamic. Why do you think Europe adopted sabres? Because they did rigorous scientific tests that proved they had 16% more efficiency? No, because hussar officers were all the rage at European courts because of their flamboyant uniforms and swagger, and they happened to use curved swords because the Hungarians adopted the fighting styles of the Ottomans they were always fighting against.

Messers come in all varieties and some of them are curved, as you can easily see in the pics , , .

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Hungarians had sabres before the Ottomans.

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why some of them hold those things the wrong way?

The Muslim world got curved swords from eastern Europe though. Sabres are European swords.

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No, curved swords might have been sold to Arabs by Indian merchants even before the coming of islam, but it was Turks who made such swords so popular in the muslim world.

>The Muslim world got curved swords from eastern Europe though
that's fucking retarded, which eastern european country had curved swords before muslims did?

look at Kievan Rus, they knew curved swords since 9th century but they only became the predominant type of sword in the 14th

Wrong way?

You want the edge facing away from the body and the point forward. I don't see anyone there that isn't doing that.

they look fucking goofy because they are french faggots, instead of swords they would much rather hold dicks

As far as I know the arrival of the Magyars brought sabres to Europe, centuries before the introduction of curved swords in the middle east.

Actually, all Europeans were using curved swords before middle easterners, as curved falchion types predate the adoption of curved middle eastern swords. Prior to the "scimitar" design, people in the middle east were using a sort of Spatha-derived one not too unlike a European sword.

You know that cartoony stereotypical scimitar shape, with the very broad blade, that wasn't actually used by Arabs in real life? That has its origins in medieval art - Europeans heard about the curved blades used in the middle east without actually seeing one, so they drew them like falchions.

They don't get stuck in the bodies when you slice them at high speed I guess

>The Muslim world got curved swords from eastern Europe though.
No.

They got it from the cavalcade of Turkic & Central Asian warriors who began flooding the Middle East first as military slaves then as steppenigger invaders.

The Magyar Saber wasn't curved, it was just single edged. And it too was typical of the Chinese Dao-style swords that Central Asian nignogs were using in the 500s-900s.

Ignore the other retards who replied to you, the real reason is that they are easy to wield in close combat, like really close. You can put the flat edge against your body and move your body with the sword to cut.

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You can also stab filthy peasants near your horse without risking injuring your horse, especially if the peasant is in front.

the real reason behind using curved swords is that they scale with DEX better

falchions are not curved

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If straight sword are so superior to curved sword, then why did Europeans eventually adopt curved swords?

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>that manlet
LMAO

For light cavalry you retard. A curved sword discourages stabbing and staying to fight so they equipped light cavalry with them so they would run by an infantry unit, slash on the run and move away before they could get caught in a mele with infantry.

you know sabres were also used in duels right?

Didn’t guillotines have straight blades as well, just at an angle?
Very basic question but what is the purpose of the gu? To reduce weight?

Actually the last European cavalry swords were predominantly straight bladed. It's got nothing to do with superiority though it was just dogma.

To strengthen it. Chinese sabers are pretty hefty actually.

>*Plays JRPG once*

They've always used both. But on horseback curved swords have always reigned supreme. Whether you want to accept it or not, curved swords are better at cutting and straight swords are better at stabbing.

t.Anglo