Hank Reinhardt's The Book of the Sword (13 page)

Reproduction rapier. HRC14.

No, it wasn't the thrust that caused the indignation among the older gentlemen of the Renaissance, it was the whole idea of the rapier; useless in war, and only fit for dueling, and then using moves that looked positively effeminate! Almost like dancing!

As I have stated before: Man doesn't change, but fashion does. Within a generation the rapier was all the rage, and there were as many schools in its use as there were dances.

But I digress, as I have a tendency to do.

The cut is much like the thrust: in the right place it can be deadly, and it can instantly incapacitate your opponent. The power that a good double-edged sword can deliver is impressive, or frightening (depending on which end of the blade you happen to be).

There is the tale of Theodoric, who killed the King of the Ostrogoths by having his men hold him while he struck him at the juncture of neck and shoulder. The blow was so strong that Odovacar was split all the way down to his hip! This seemed to have shocked Theodoric, as he is reported to have exclaimed, "In truth, the wretch has no bones!"

Now, this is a pretty powerful blow and you can be easily excused if you think it is a bit of hype. After all, that is a long cut, and there are plenty of ribs in the way. But think back to the Battle of Visby, and the awful damage recorded there. And there is another factor that must be considered. Bones are very tough, but they are not as hard as many like to think. The older you get, the harder and more brittle the bones get, but live bone in a fairly young man is not much tougher than a sapling.

The other thing that must be looked at is the sharpness of the blade. Japanese swords have long been known for their sharpness, but being sharp was not something exclusively Japanese. Many European swords were just as sharp, and there are Viking era swords that
still
possess a very sharp edge. When you look at how flat and thin many blades are, you realize that in their heyday they were probably very sharp, and quite able to hew through bone.

Just as there is no way to generalize about puncture wounds, there is no way to fully comment on the effects of a cut. We have tales from the Napoleonic Wars (
Sword, Lance & Bayonet
, Charles Ffoulkes & EC Hopkinson) of soldiers receiving several head wounds from sabers who were able to continue fighting. But we also hear of one having his head cut off from the blow of a saber, so it is apparent that it depends on the blow, what is being cut, and the sharpness of the sword.

I believe that today too much attention is paid to the military sword, perhaps because many of the records that are still available detail battles and the wounds suffered. But the military saber of the 19th century was generally not a very sharp sword, and in many instances was not sharpened at all. General Nathan Bedford Forrest was highly criticized for having his men sharpen their swords, and so were the British for the 1796 Cavalry saber that was considered to be too "brutal" for war.
^[3]
I think one of the reasons behind this is the modern military theory that if you wound a man it would take two to care for him, thus eliminating three men from battle. That sounds pretty good, unless you're the guy facing the enemy. You've just whacked him in the head, cutting a very deep scalp wound, so he's bleeding, but shows no intention of running away, and is also mad as hell. No thanks, I want my weapon to be as effective as possible.

Not long ago a friend of mine sent me a clipping from
High Adventures in Tibet
and in it the authors detailed a raid by some bandits in Tibet. It showed several wounded, with all the wounds made by swords. The bandits had all been on horseback and as a result almost all of the wounds were head wounds. They really were pretty ugly, showing deep dents in the skulls, but all of the people survived. The swords used seemed to have been simple single-edged blades of the saber style, with blades in the 33-inch length range with a blade width of about 1-1/4 inches: that is, simply not heavy and sturdy enough to cut through the hard bone of the head.

Tibetan sword.

But a well made, well sharpened sword in the hands of a man who knows how to cut can do a tremendous amount of damage. We read in epics of all ages and areas of people having arms and legs cut off, and even being cut in half! The Roman Ammianus Marcellinus comments: "The heads of others were split through mid-forehead and crown with swords and hung down on both shoulders. A most horrible sight." In Caesar's
Commentaries
a Roman soldier greets him and when Caesar looks at the man blankly, he says, "It's no wonder you don't recognize me, because my helmet and face were split by a Spanish machaira."

Machaira.

In the same sea battle related in
Njal's Saga
between Hrut and Atli, is an example of another limb-lopping blow. Atli leaped onto Hrut's ship, one man turned to meet him but was knocked off his feet by a thrust from someone else. Now Hrut faced Atli. Atli hacked at him and split his shield from top to bottom, but just then he was struck on the hand by a stone and dropped his sword. Hrut kicked the sword away, cut off Atli's leg and then killed him with the next blow. Such is the fate of pirates.

The question then becomes, just how well can a sword cut? Seemingly a simple question, but first we have to decide what type of sword we are talking about.

The Iron Age sword, the Viking sword and the early medieval sword were pretty close to being in the same broad category. Generally about 29–33 inches in length, with a width of about 2 inches, most had only a slight taper, and some no taper at all. During the later part of the Viking Age the sword assumed a slightly more tapering configuration, but this is covered better in the section on sword design.

Reproduction medieval sword. HRC46.

These swords weighed in the general area of 2–3 pounds. Balance would, of course, be slightly different for each sword, but generally the balance was what the owner desired, and he might make changes to suit himself.

So what can this type of sword do? The answer is that it can do much more damage than many people think, but not near the damage as portrayed in many books and movies.

I know how well I can cut. I know how well I have been able to cut, and I know how well I do now at the age of 66 (at the time of writing this chapter). The best cut I ever made with a sword was with a Japanese-style blade I was testing to destruction. I sheared a 3-1/8 inch sapling in half, and the length of the cut was 6-1/2 inches along the diagonal. I have seen a better cut made by Jim Fikes, a blacksmith friend of mine in Alabama. But I have no illusions as to how this compares with a 10th century warrior who had grown up using a sword.

It is with this understanding that I have undertaken a great many experiments with swords on how well they cut, and how well they cut armor. But for more on how to cut, see chapter 13.

So to answer the question: could the sword make the huge cuts described in the sagas and other historical sources? Not only do the archeological data support that conclusion, my own attempts at cutting do, too. Will they make them every time? Many factors, including type of sword, strength and placement of the blow, and opponent's armor (or lack thereof) and age (and therefore bone density), enter into the equation.

General history:

Ffoulkes, Charles & EC Hopkinson,
Sword, Lance & Bayonet
, Cambridge University Press, 1938.

Oman, Sir Charles,
The Art of War in the Middle Ages.
Greenhill Books, London, first printed 1924.

Oakeshott
,
Ewart,
The Archeology of Weapons
. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, first printed in 1960.

Oakeshott
,
Ewart,
The Sword in the Age of Chivalry
. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, first published 1964, reprinted 1994.

On dueling:

Hutton,
Alfred,
The Sword and The Centuries
. Charles E. Tuttle, Company, Rutland. First printed 1901, Tuttle edition 1973.

Truman, Ben C.,
The Field of Honor
. Fords, Howard & Hulbert, New York, 1884.

Millingen, J.G,
History of Duelling, Vols. I & II
. Richard Bentley, London, 1841.

Powell, George H.,
Dueling Stories of the Sixteenth Century.
A.H. Bullen, London, 1904.

Silver, George,
Paradoxes of Defense.
First published 1599.

Archeology:

Thordeman, Bengt,
Armour from the Battle of Visby 1361, Volumes I & II
. Almquist & Wiksells, Uppsala, 1939.

Fiorato, Veronica, Anthea Boylston & Christopher Knusel,
Blood Red Roses:The Archeology of a Mass Grave from the Battle of Towton AD 1461
, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2000.

Contemporary Literary Sources:

Caesar, Julius (102–44 BC),
Commentaries on the Gallic War.

Caesar, Julius (102–44 BC),
Commentaries on the Civil War.

Marcellinus, Ammianus,
Res Gestae
, AD 353–378.

Norse sagas including
Njal's Saga
and
Egil's Saga
.

de Joinville, Jean,
Memoirs.
His memoirs can be found in
The Chronicles of the Crusades
, translated by Margaret Shaw. Penguin, London, 1963.

The Song of Roland,
translated by Dorothy Sayers. Penguin Books, New York, 1957.

Froissart, translated by Geoffrey Brereton,
Chronicles.
Penguin Books, Baltimore, 1968.

Plymire, David V.,
High Adventure in Tibet,
revised edition. Trinity Print'n Press, Ellendale, North Dakota, 1983.

[1]
New York Times
, August 11, 1891.

[2] E.g. In 1415 at the battle of Agincourt the Duke of York died of exhaustion and heatstroke in his armor, as cited by Ewart Oakeshott,
A Knight and his Armour,
page 26. 1961 Lutterworth Press, London.

—Whit Williams

[3] The French actually petitioned the British government asking them to discontinue its use. —Peter Fuller