Everyday Systems

Some of you that use scenarios with battle imagery might enjoy this site. It is a fantastic repository of western martial heritage...in other words you can find loads of scans of real historical fighting manuals from Europe.



I've incorperated a few two handed sword moves into my routine. Just study some of the manuals and I am sure new exercises will leap out at you.

http://www.thearma.org/manuals.htm

This one is particularly pertinant to Shovelglove because it is exclusively two hand swords and includes lots of very good drawings.

http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/Goliath/Goliath.htm

This is beautiful... no two handed warhammer manuals, though, I guess?

You're right, a lot does leap out. A "goliath" sword like that probably weights as much as a sledgehammer, and the two handed grip is similar.

I suppose the warhammer was probably the weapon of choice for a less literate set

Reinhard, did you see there are some German manuals too...probably in "olde" German.

War hammers tend to be used against armor so you would see them in knightly combat, which tends to require some expensive equipment- and literacy would probably be common in that group. Historical hammers tend to be either one or two handed and spiked like a pick on one side, with a hammer face or small prongs on the other. And they were lighter than you might think. Same with the swords...Those two handed swords probably weigh in at about 7-9 pounds. The Scottish Claymore which was also two handed but shorter was only about 5-6 pounds! They are not actually very heavy but the leverage is an issue. They are a lot longer than a sledgehammer of the same weight.

This is a weapon called a bec de corbin, pretty much the pinnacle of warhammer evolution and a really good can opener. You can see it can be used in several ways. This is a two handed weapon but still probably only weighs about 6-8 pounds. Heavy weapons mean you can't strike and defend quickly or for as long.



Peasants would just fight with farm tools. So you may well have had the ancient sledgehammer itself used. But I doubt they had any sort of martial systems for it.

Not many pictures in it but this manual concerns poleaxes/hammers/picks all pretty similar in use. http://www.thearma.org/spotlight/lejeudelahache.htm

What a beautiful, civilized name: bec de corbin. It's like the anti-shovelglove: instead of a buffering sweater, it's got spikes all over it.

For those of you who haven't bothered to click the last link oldfox posted, let this title entice you:

Le Jeu de la Hache
A 15th century Treatise
on the Technique of
Chivalric Axe Combat

http://www.thearma.org/spotlight/lejeudelahache.htm

Bludgeoning weapons clearly were not just for the blunt of mind! Thank you for enlarging my understanding of this subject, oldfox.