Matt Easton very kindly invited me to Fight Camp. Thank you for inviting me Matt.
Very welcome.
Yes and whilst I was there
we thought it would be a jolly good wheeze to mount an experiment with spears. Now you see the spear is a bizarrely
neglected weapon in the world of Historical European Martial Arts, or HEMA. ...
It was the most common weapon in the past, the whole of the past, from Stone Age hunter gatherers
right the way up to the 20th century
everyone used the spear.
So it must have been pretty good. Far and away the most common
soldier in the ancient and medieval worlds was a guy with a spear in one hand a big shield in the other.
So this combination must have been really good to have proven so popular with so many people for so flipping long, and yet it is neglected.
Now in HEMA, people they know their swords. Oh yes, they know their swords.
They've all tried back sword and ... small sword and long sword and great sword and Messer and all those.
But most of them have never used a spear before. So
it is worth trying the experiment. Are spears better than swords?
How can they possibly be because everyone knows a sword is great, right?
But no, spears are really good as these experiments I think clearly show. Although they also show that the spear has certain vulnerabilities.
Now, importantly, the people you're about to see are not experts in spears.
They've all used loads of swords loads of times, but most of these people have never picked up a spear in their life, and
those that had, had used it very seldom, and not in combination with [a] shield.
So, let's get on with the experiment.
But before we do, if you find this very interesting and you want to know more, I've uploaded a longer version of this video
which has all of all
65 bouts in it, as well as quite a bit of pre and post match analysis from Matt Easton and me.
Right, let's get on with it. Eight-foot spear without shield against one-handed sword. Go.
Here you see the essential problem for the swordsman. He cannot reach his opponent.
He can weave about and parry with his sword to keep himself safe.
But the only way he can win the fight is to close with his foe. Once up close
he should beat the spearmen, but look how fast the head of the spear is.
A sudden charge can work. Once in close, the spearmen is doomed.
But most charges fail.
Closing with a spearman, it turns out, is really difficult. Really difficult.
Really
difficult
(good solid chest hit) but it's not impossible.
The shorter weapon once up close has lots of options, the spears length becomes a drawback.
In these bouts between a spear and a variety of one-handed weapons the results were: spears 9, others 3.
Right, but surely it'll be easier for the swordsmen to close with the spearmen if he had a shield.
So let's start him off with a buckler. Right, well, we might expect a bit more success from the swordsman.
Possibly they didn't open with their most skilled user of the buckler though.
Watch how his buckler swings off to the left as he attacks. And he's dead.
A more effective technique is to hold your shield in front of you. This guy gets in and then the end is pretty quick.
Alas though, this technique is not a guarantee of victory.
Sometimes the swordsmen got in...
but more often not. This doesn't count though, if they hit each other that's a 'double' and no one scores.
This is a good fight, good defensive work there.
Feints high, goes low, got him. Adding a buckler helped a bit. Sword and buckler men won 2 bouts to the spearman's 4.
Well, it seems that we might need a bigger sword, so let's try some longswords.
Now everyone here had been to loads of longsword lessons. This man adopts the textbook 'ochs' stance, and
closes and finishes with what they called zwerchhau.
This wasn't the universal result of long sword versus spear, however. This chap did get in once again...
But in the main it was a tale of dying swordsmen.
In the bouts of long swords against spears, it was: spears 4, longswords 2.
All right, then what if the sword is a lot bigger?
Let's try a socking great big two-handed zweihander.
These men had learned great sword patterns and tried some out. They are big and scary, but they are predictable.
And this was the pattern for what followed: massive zweihanders losing out to the much more nimble and precise spears.
Spears 4, greatswords 0.
This was a surprise to me, a mild surprise, but I was expecting some success with the greatsword against the spear.
I would say that one of the reasons that the greatsworders failed was that the longer a weapon is, if it's made out of
nylon, then the floppier it is and so a real greatsword
which had been made out of much stiffer metal would have fared a bit better
against the stiff wooden spears that we were using. But I think that's a minor point.
I think more importantly it was the technique that the greatsworders had chosen. They ... used these big swings which might work
against a long ponderous pike, for instance, which is a much slower weapon than a quick nimble spear.
Also greatsworders tend to be taught how to fight using a greatsword against somebody else who's also, rather bizarrely,
armed with a greatsword.
In HEMA most people are taught a weapon against itself
even if, in real battles, that would almost never happen.
And if someone in a battle is using a greatsword
you don't send a greatsworder to take him on, you take him on with something else.
It was a really rather bizarre combination.
But anyway, had the greatsworders instead used those second quillons a little way up the blade and put their hand up
next to that and then the other hand right down by the pommel, they would have turned their greatswords into
shortish spears, and then I would think they would have done a lot better.
Now, we didn't run that particular experiment,
but we did use some half swording with a different weapon.
A change in technique now, sports fans, as we pit spear against longsword used half sworded.
This technique stiffens the slightly floppy nylon blades, and seems to encourage the swordsman to get stuck in.
First blood to the swordsman.
The general pattern was that either the fight was a quick victory for a fast stabbing spearmean,
or a longer and much messier tussle with the half sworder coming out on top.
A tie: spears 3, half sworded longswords 3.
So far, it seems that the spears are carrying the day.
But, surely, it would be much easier for the swordsmen to close with the spearmen if he has a big shield to help him. Science!
Now with a large shield, closing with a lone spearman becomes easy.
However, most of our test subjects had not used a shield like this before and were still unhelpfully wary.
But, as long as the man with the shield holds it flat-on in front of him
he's fairly safe. But the longer he hangs back, the more chances the spearman has to score a hit.
He tries holding it sideways on, which doesn't work as well...
Hold your shield in front of you.
Another thing that went wrong was people ducking their heads and blinding themselves as they advanced. Don't do this.
Head up, shield forward and charge in, works every time.
This one takes a bit longer, but whoa keep your shield in front of you.
Oh come on, get in, get in there man. This is painful to watch.
Stylish finish though.
Here we have how to use a spear versus how not to use a shield.
Pinklegs is keeping his foe back with lots of quick thrusts high and low.
He goes low and scores a hit to the knee there. The shield man drops his shield
(no, keep it in front of you) opening him up to a good thrust to the throat.
You can see in the close-up that that would have been fatal to an unarmoured man.
Enraged
red trews swings wildly with the sword arm and at the same time swings his shield out to the left opening him up to another deft
thrust to the throat, which this time ends the battle.
One chap tried using a cross grip medium shield. These don't work so well.
Oh, straight to the throat, that looks painful.
Another thing that was tried was tripping over the opponent's spear and crashing into him.
Well, it wasn't exactly elegant, but it did the job.
Scores on the doors: spears 7, swords 6. The odds are definitely improving for the swordsmen now.
Now to pit sword and shield against spear and shield.
This makes a huge difference because now the spearman has to use his spear
one-handed, which is much slower and weaker than when using two hands, and I don't think anyone here had ever tried it before.
I expect victories for the swordsman.
Some spearmen tried holding their spears overarm like this and quickly learned that it doesn't work.
No one tried using overarm technique twice, it's hopeless.
Another failed experiment was spear and buckler. You swap all the vigour of two-handed spear for the protection of a tea cup.
The left-handed spearmen was at a lesser disadvantage, but still died.
We learned that spear and shield is very vulnerable to sword and shield. Oh, and that violence, as here, can sometimes triumph.
So now the situation has reversed: swords 6, spears 0.
On to the group round.
The spear, of course, is a battlefield weapon used by large formations of many men. For the first four bouts therefore,
the swordsmen were required to attack from the front at first.
It was messy, and the spearmen were all new to helping each other out.
A spearmen can parry blows aimed at his neighbours as well as those aimed at himself.
The easiest targets to hit are not the man opposite, but the men either side of him.
Come on, help him out.
Nevertheless, all four bouts were won by the spearmen.
Even if they themselves didn't quite know how they pulled off a victory against experienced swordsmen.
I think my shouted encouragement possibly helped.
Quick! Spearman!
Come on spearman, ... help your mate!
Oh ... yeah ... that ... Swordsman, you're dead!
Go. Next the swordsmen were told that they were free to launch their attack from any angle they pleased.
Again things got messy, but the odds swung in favour of the swordsmen who won some costly victories.
I suggested that the spearman counter-charged. When they heeded me a bit this led to a flawless victory.
Now, sit back and marvel at the pinnacle of spearmanship that came out of all we had learned so far.
- Are you going to be putting Benny Hill over that one?
In the group bouts when attacking from the front: spears 4, swords 0. When attacking from any direction:
spears 1
swords 3
So what do we learned?
Well, I haven't learned all that much because all these experiments confirmed what I had discovered many years ago
back in my university days when I was doing loads of re-enactment
fighting in dark age style battles with, almost all the time, spear and shield.
Those were our primary weapons and we tried them against loads of combinations and so we
found out that the spear will beat a sword. That a sword and shield will usually beat a spear, but the spearman stands a reasonable
chance if he's good. That sword and shield will beat spear and shield pretty much every single time. But that in group fights
it's a different story. In group fights the spearmen are able to help out their neighbours
very very well in ways that swordsman simply can't, and
spearmen will beat swordsmen pretty much every time unless the swordsmen are able to surround,
penetrate, break up the
formation of the spearmen so the spearmen can't act as a cohesive team, in which case it becomes a free-for-all which could go either way.
But do remember that spearmen in historical reality didn't just have spears, they had other weapons dangling from their belts.
They had daggers, hatchets, maces, swords or some some backup weapons so that, you know, when the
the spears did get broken up
they could then just ditch their spears, perhaps throwing them first, and then draw some shorter weapon and
then ... they've evened up the odds again.
So there you go. In summary: spears are good. And keep your shield in front of you.
The man
You