ok, what PODs would be required during ancient, Dark Ages & medieval times for there to be a routine practice amongst soldiers of fighting with a sword in each hand ? The Samurai of course did so wileding his KATANA & WAKIZASHI, but how could there've been a similar equivalent in his western medieval counterpart ?
Fighting with 2 swords
- Thread starter Melvin Loh
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Jomazi
Banned
That is a myth. The samurai fough one-handed. Really there is no benefit of using the harder-to-control left hand, especially when compared to using a "buckler" type shield.
Perhaps make a (lethal) sport out of it.
Several PODs, every generation or so, century after century, preventing some soldier from coming up with the bright idea of holding a shield in his other hand. The desire to protect oneself from blows strikes me as pretty universal.
THe practice was not unknown - variously referred to as Florentine style or the 'case of rapiers' - and was practised as early as the thirtenth century in Etgypt. But it always was the exception, presumably because a sword in the off hand is not much good for offensive uses and inferior to the shield for defense. Not to mention that a shield is much more useful for formation combat than another pointy bit that requires you to have maneuvering room.
Jomazi
Banned
Better then to have a grip-guard (wd?) sword in the left hand to lock the other guy's sword and do sneaky attacks, and a rapier/daikatana in the right. Broadswords require two-hand grips for more than one reason, whatever you could be strong enough to do with them, you could do with a lighter sword way faster.
There was a fencing school in the 16th and 17th century which teached the use of rapier (or sword) plus dagger or main gauche. IIRC, it was the Italian school. During the 16th centuries, armies also employed groups of "swordmen" for close combats and melees. Normally they fought either with a two-hand (or hand-and-a-half) swords, but some groups had a small buckler.
In combat it's bloody impractical-yes it looks impressive and you might be able to get 2 blows in but you lack a shield and so you're pretty much defenceless. It might work in one-on-one duel situations but in a large battle, with two lines of men engaging it will fail as a tactic if one side uses the shieldwall tactic.
I'd say that attacking a shield wall was not exactly dandy for these swordmen. However, and believing the theoricians of centuries ago, a dirk or a dagger in your left was a better defence than a buckler: much more flexible
Problem is, if you face a 11th century round shield (4 feet diameter) or kite shield (4-5 feet long, max 2 feet wide) a knife is bugger all use. I'd rather have the shield over a second bladed weapon.
If i understand right, Florentine style fighting was not used in war.
Musashi seems to be the first Japanese to use two swords when fighting, and he was primarily a duelist, though an extraordinarily good one.
I think, by the time Florentine styles were developed in Europe, swords had been supplanted by firearms and pole arms as the primary weapons of war.
Anyway, one way for a weird style like Florentine to be adopted widely is for that to be viewed as THE way to do it. If it's honorable to use two swords, then every honorable warrior is going to use two swords.
Musashi seems to be the first Japanese to use two swords when fighting, and he was primarily a duelist, though an extraordinarily good one.
I think, by the time Florentine styles were developed in Europe, swords had been supplanted by firearms and pole arms as the primary weapons of war.
Anyway, one way for a weird style like Florentine to be adopted widely is for that to be viewed as THE way to do it. If it's honorable to use two swords, then every honorable warrior is going to use two swords.
I think you would need a biological POD way, way back in pre-history (no left-handed-ness, righ-handed-ness) for this one - D&D and World of Warcraft aside (and even these fantasy games impose a hefty "miss" penalty in their rule sets), fighting with two weapons just demands too much coordination, IMO.
Even though we pretty much all agree that this would not work in military combat, we all should agree on this much: the double-weapon, no-shield fighting style in Kill Bill is freakin' sweet.
Heh. Well, I can certainly see individuals who might want to do this, if they don't regularly fight in armies. I can even see two-weapon fighting becoming the preferred version as a social sport, replacing knightly jousting. It's just that it makes no sense of people who fight in units, that's all.
wasn't there an Irish prince at Clontarf who was famous for fighting with two swords? IIRC, it got blown up into mythical proportions, with talk about how the blows struck were so mighty that the brass guards melted, or something like that....
Riain
Banned
The fact that double sword fighting styles didn't dominate suggests volumes about its utility in the very practial game of war. From what I gather a second, small sword was carried when main swords and sheilds were big and unwieldly, the short sword being used in the shield-wall and the main sword being used when a shield wasn't needed. When swords such as rapeirs and shields such as targes and bucklers became both powerful and hand the auxiliary sword was dispensed with. I do wonder how much the rise of firepower weapons, English longbows/crossbows/arquebus had to do with the rise of handier weapons and protection at the expense big swords and shields.