The Sword And The Spear – Tools Of Another Age
Though today we live in an age where such weapons are considered by many to simply be the pathetic tools of a technologically inferior age, there is something noble about swords and other melee weapons of days gone by.
It is the weapon of duelists, the sword, that has maintained the greatest popularity in the public eye. Every fantasy hero, every cartoon warrior, has a sword. Using a sword against gun-wielding opponents is particularly popular.
The role of the sword as a duelists weapon has been cemented in the public perception…and it is for this reason that even in modern movies, it is not at all a surprise when the hero and the villain end everything with a sword fight, forgoing pistols and revolvers and opting instead for rapiers and katana.
Still, lets not focus solely on the sword; there are other equally important weapons, albeit less popular. The spear is a great example. Almost universally regarded as superior to a sword, a spearman is said to be three times as dangerous as a swordsman of equal talent.
For this reason, polearms have served as the primary weapons of the vast majority of armies since the dawn of human history. The relative ease of making simple spears, combined with their high efficiency, makes it hard to find a weapon more suitable for the armies of ages past.
The last class of weapons, bludgeons, is overlooked even more often than polearms. But maces, warhammers, and flails all have their own uses, even if they aren’t as graceful or pretty as the other weapons; their brutal efficiency simply cannot be ignored.
One key use of bludgeons is as a tool to defeat heavily armored foes. An enemy that a sword can barely scratch can be destroyed completely by a mace or warhammer. There were even several time periods where, because of how common heavy armor was, maces and flails overshadowed swords as knights preferred sidearms.
Though not really a weapon, I feel this article would be incomplete without a mention of shields. Despite being even less popular in popular culture than other melee fighting weapons, the fact remains that the man with a shield is often the last man standing.
A top class shield wielded by a skilled fighter can serve to defeat almost any attack, and can even be used as an effective bludgeoning weapon. Though using two swords may be more popular in movies and games, I’ll take a shield in real life any day.
I hope you’ve learned a little about melee weapons. While they are hardly practical in a world where gunpowder and more rule an ever more technological battlefield, we can’t forget the weapons that defined the world for centuries.
If you still want to learn more about ancient weapons, be sure to read my article about Roman Swords and other weapons of the Roman Legions.
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