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reminds of the time pope innocent II banned crossbows cause they were too good at killing knights.
perfidious peasant tool only suited for heretics and italians!
You can kill a fully armored knight with less than a month of training. Crossbowmen were paid almost double wages because they were seen as morally bankrupt. and no one else wanted to do it.
Crossbows aren't any stronger than a longbow and I'm fairly certain longbows already can't penetrate knight armor of that time, you may be thinking of the later archebusiers?
Projectile energy is comparable, but you need to train for 10 years to be an effective longbowman, but a couple months with a crossbow will let you achieve the same results.
You will achieve the same killing ability maybe but crossbowmen were deployed differently due to the size of their weapons and the difficulty of utilizing it in the same way. I dont know much about crossbowmen were used tactically though.
What kind of fucked up shit was catholic church up to, when they named pope innocent?
Church mafia pretty much. Assassination, stuff with banks, illicit sex, extortion.
The first innocent condemned a teaching that humans were fundamentally good as heresy so take from that what you will
Really? I kinda doubt that cause plate armor will just straight up deflect most anything like that.
I googled and yeah he banned them for use against christians so it might have been like "No intra-faith violence you assholes" thing.
I think mail probably still would relatively effectively defend against stuff like that? But more in a "Bullet proof vest against higher caliber rounds" way than "Arrows literally plinking off harmlessly" where the deceleration helps prevent it from fully penetrating and instead getting stuck doing flesh wounds.
A sufficiently high poundage crossbow (and they had very high poundages because they used mechanical tension) could blast a hole through even a plate chest plate and the guy wearing it. Though it would have to shot from somewhere close by and hit straight on or else yes it would just deflect. Though some of the most advanced plate armor may even resist that.
The thing about high poundage crossbows reminds of an account I read of a roman ballista passing through three men in a row with shields. Absolutely crazy to think of that kind of firepower, must have been terrifying.
Probably yeah, haven't heard of any practical testing but reading up on heavy arbalests and other crossbows like it, it seems possible. Those are a little further than the conventional idea of a crossbow which most people imagine though, like how an anti-materiel rifle and an infantry rifle are both rifles, but if you say the word rifle the infantry rifle is the image conjured.
If you somehow start losing with a scythe (impossible but bear with me) you can just helicopter your way to safety anyway
Gundam Deathscythe's secret move they don't want you to know about.
In a pinch, you could surely make a scythe into an effective weapon, but there are some issues. Mainly the blade is in a brilliant position for cutting wheat, but a deeply awkward position for fighting. Additionally, the way it is designed is suboptimal for defense, due to it's weighting and shape. That's my opinion on the matter, though you could learn to use a scythe as a weapon is you really wanted to
Also, this post is incredible and I appreciate it
I explicitly remember from school in Poland on the subject of polish uprisings in XVIII century, that peasants used modified scythes with blades turn upward. I remember it specifically because i grow up on farm, and used scythe myself to cut grass. It was always funny to me when in games scythe is presented as weapon and its blade is not turned upwards, as if someone heard about war scythes and imagine it was being used to mow people like grass lol.
Here is image from Raclwickie panorama about Kosciuszko uprising, which saw use of scythemen (kosynierzy):
http://fotoforum.gazeta.pl/photo/4/le/ja/2v70/PLf1GCgJInNLb3Q8aB.jpg
And some other pictures featuring kosynierzy (most from polish uprisings):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Che%C5%82mo%C5%84ski_Modlitwa_przed_bitwa.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Bitwa_pod_Raclawicami.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Emila_Plater_conducting_Polish_scythemen_in_1831.jpg/1024px-Emila_Plater_conducting_Polish_scythemen_in_1831.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Kosy_i_piki.jpg/220px-Kosy_i_piki.jpg
edit: There is info about scythemen in english wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythemen
Weapons effectiveness is entirely relative and situational. It's one of the biggest criticisms of that stupid "deadliest warrior" show. What's better, a grenade or a shotgun? Answer: in what scenario???
Its probably not that hard to come up with scenarios where a scythe is a perfectly effective weapon. Better then a lot of others also.
The problem is that there are much more versatile options if you have them.
Deadliest Warrior was fucking awesome and Time for My Stories should do an episode on it. Comparing two totally different weapons or having totally different tests to compare similar weapons and then dudes who clearly rock just make shit up from watching high speed footage of a pig being sliced with a schimitar vs. how many wooden targets a dude can take out with a flail in 40 seconds. Then they make actors pretend to fight and act like its science. It was the ultimate dudes rock show
My favorite was the one where they compared brass knuckles to a pistol whip. Like no shit the pistol whip is going to have more force, you've got more leverage and a heavy gun to hit someone with, but the point of brass knuckles is that they're concealable in a way that a .357 revolver isn't. But then to make things even worse they had two different guys do the tests, so they weren't even pretending to be scientific about it.
dudes rock
Oh my fucking god...I didn't realize how much I needed to hear Matt reacting to the Napoleon vs. George Washington episode until now.
Fuckin joke's on you but the Chinese used a scythe as one of their primary polearm weapons for literal centuries
It's called a Gē /Ji, or Dagger-axe
Western scythes fucking drool Eastern scythes fucking rule
This post has been brought to you by the Gē gang
That's just a polearm that has some passing resemblance to an agricultural scythe tho.
points to a Fauchard
This is a scythe!
points to a Voulge
This is also a scythe!
points to a Corseque
Clearly, another scythe
it is a settled matter that the most effective melee weapons ever developed are the various pole-arms, almost all of which grew out of agricultural tools repurposed for warfare. the only problem with the original agricultural tools is they're not as suited to hitting other hard things as a purpose built weapon.
Every culture essentially reached the same conclusion that really long sticks were the best way to kill a bunch of dudes, and the more you could afford to practice the longer your could make your sticks.
the virgin european lancer vs the chad asiatic mobile archer/killing machine
I acknowledge halberd supremacy though.
a glaive is straight up a modified scythe, thats just how u make one
there is not a difference between a 'war scythe' and a glaive. same thing. polearm discourse is riddled with murky definitions and lots of names for the same things
You will take back that opinion the moment you ever hold a scythe and realize that hitting someone with it is alsmost impossible. It is not a weapon, and it doesn't wotk as one.
Ok, but what if the person stands perfectly upright and still, cheek by jowl with a dozen of his closest friends.
Not only to you kill, like, six people at once, but you drop them into neat piles that will be easy to cart, thresh, and mill later.
There's better polearms out there tho, but in a pinch, sure you can use it as a weapon as peasants did do in ye old medieval times. Hell, a pitchfork got adopted into a weapon, the military fork.
War schythes are also a thing. They're a bit more complicated to adapt than a pitchfork though as you need to turn the head first.
Looking at it now, reminds me of some sort of like glaive. Makes sense, a traditional scythe I'd find harder to use given the blade curves down along with the point, turning it upwards makes it more practical.
You need to be really strong and really fast to effectively utilize a scythe as a weapon.
Imagine a gun scyth. Like, just a big gun that points in any direction but where you want to fire
