A sword instructor of mine once asked: why do we romanticize swords?
He went on to point out that swords are the only class of weapons designed, solely and with no other purpose, for killing humans. Axes are used to cut wood, guns are used to hunt, knives have all manner of purposes. Sure, we have versions of these weapons that are meant to be more martial—combat knives versus kitchen knives, for example—but there are no kitchen swords. Historically, there was no other practical use for a sword besides killing a human being.
So why do we romanticize them?
I’m no less guilty of this fascination with swords. I’ve been training in them for more than a decade and a half now—if it has a blade, I’ve probably trained with it at some point. I love the feel of them and the grace of them. Their designs can be stunning. I enjoy feeling a connection to their history, and I’m fascinated to read about long-ago sword combat.
And, of course, I grew up on fantasy books filled with Magic Swords and Swords of Significance and Swords of Power. Knights and elves who were the best fencers in the kingdom, or pirates or duelists or Chosen Ones, or young girls who snuck away to become swordmasters even when they weren’t allowed. We permit swords to have a nobility in our fiction, an air of civilized elegance. Perhaps because we associate them with systems of chivalry and honor. Or perhaps because we are far removed enough from their historical violence that we feel more comfortable assigning them a more positive character than other weapons. It’s a question I’ve mulled over and have no good answer for. In the end, I’ve come to accept the cognitive dissonance of loving swords while having more complicated feelings about their original purpose.
But as writers and readers of sword and sorcery, I think it does make stories better—if perhaps less simple—to keep that purpose never far from mind.
Writer friends not infrequently ask me to critique their sword scenes. One of the most common points I give feedback on is that they’re not treating the swords as dangerous enough. Sure, when I train, sometimes we’re lackadaisical with our sword safety, but we’re using blunted weapons. I often get asked by people with wide eyes if we’re using “real swords”, even after they’ve seen us with their own eyes… and, well, yes, they’re real! If you get hit in the head with three feet of carbon steel it’s going to hurt! But they’re not sharp. However, once one of my instructors had a beautiful, actual sharp sword custom-made for himself. When he brought it into class, the difference was marked.
We all handled it—and this was a sword class, so we all handled swords regularly—but this one sucked all the air out of the room. Its sharpness, its danger, made the whole atmosphere suddenly heightened. People walked in parabolas around it, as if it were creating its own gravity well. The razor fineness of its edges seemed enough to part flesh from several feet away.
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People seem to understand this more viscerally with knives, especially if they’ve handled extraordinarily sharp kitchen knives. Indeed, in combat knives are extremely dangerous weapons to fight with. There’s an exercise you can do to show this—put chalk on two rubber practice knives and tell people to try sparring with them. Both people inevitably get covered in chalk. It’s near impossible to walk away from a knife fight without getting cut. And I think most people can better imagine the awful, charged fear that would come with someone drawing a knife on them, the break in civility and safety.
Swords are many, many times longer than a knife.
There is some SFF that addresses all this very well. For example, though I could quibble about other sword bits in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, one scene I feel he gets viscerally right is the first time Arya kills someone. All she can remember is to “stick them with the pointy end”—and she does. And he dies. Because that’s what swords do. The flashiness or balletic technique are all, ostensibly, to drill down to that final, fatal goal.
Fiction might always have exceptions to such a rule, of course, such as in the delightful Inigo / Westley dance in The Princess Bride, which makes a point of the duelists’ fantastical expertise by the way they’re able to toy with each other. But I would argue that such a scene’s charming ridiculousness becomes weakened if we don’t keep in mind its contrast to reality. So, too, do the weapons themselves become less impressive or full of import when characters don’t react to their capabilities. For example, the duels in the original Star Wars trilogy are magnificent—the work of the late great Bob Anderson, who was also the sword master for The Princess Bride—but in the first scene we see with a lightsaber, I can’t help but be astonished by how Obi-Wan hands Luke what is essentially a loaded gun without a word of caution or warning, and Luke turns it on while pointing shockingly close to where his mentor is standing. Lightsabers are depicted as being able to cut through anything, but Obi-Wan takes nary a step back. I can only excuse that scene by imagining he must be using the Force to ensure everyone’s safety! The break in realism stymies me, but more than that, I find myself perturbed at how it dilutes the intrinsic danger of such an intimidating weapon.
Give me my swords in all their formidable, unsafe, threatening lethality. Retain their power until I am uncomfortable with their beauty.
I’m certainly not calling for raining down judgment on swords or the people who love them. After all, I am the first among us who throws myself enthusiastically into their complicated romance. But for me, part of nerding out about being a sword geek is remembering what they are—weapons. And challenging myself not to forget that, no matter how much excitement, artistry, or character I find in them in the present day.
S. L. Huang has a math degree from MIT and is a professional stuntwoman & armorer who has worked in Hollywood on Battlestar Galactica and a number of other productions. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Nature, and The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016. She is the author of the Cas Russell series, which includes Zero Sum Game and Null Set.
Search YouTube for George Carlin and missiles, then swap “sword” for “missile”.
Consider this moment in Hogfather.
http://www.geekxgirls.com/article.php?ID=6164
Beautiful article!
I would not say that swords were designed just to kill, though. Swords are, before all, a weapon of honor, designed for one-on-one combat between equals. High-stakes combat to the death, sure, but I don’t think it is a coincidence that swordmen (and swordwomen) in most societies were sworn to uphold a code of honor.
Swords are considered the “coolest” weapon, and that perception I think goes all the way back to the times when people were actually using swords, in the King Arthur legends and the Roland song for example. Outside the Western world sword mysticism was at least as strong in shogunate Japan, though I have no idea about China, India, the Middle East or other places. On the actual battlefield, swords were uncommon as a main weapon (Roman legions are one exception), most armies in the Classical and Medieval ages relied mainly on some variant of spears or polearms (and archers). They were more frequently used for personal defense I think, such as a traveller carrying one to defend against highwaymen.
I know what you mean about the dangers and ugliness inherent in swords, or indeed in any weapon. No matter how pretty they look or elegantly they are made, they have a nasty purpose.
A wee personal anecdote: I was at the Coast Guard Academy, and shortly after I got issued my officer’s sword, was reading Glory Road by Robert Heinlein. When I got to the evocative description of the sword Oscar used, I checked my new sword and realized what Heinlein was describing–his own naval officer’s sword.
Don’t forget McCaffery’s “Belt Knives” that seem to be the Pernese word for sword. We can fix it with branding!
Swords are romanticised as the weapons of nobility for one reason only: they were expensive.
All other medieval weapons have their masterwork examples, but cheap knockoffs could be hammered out by a random village smith. Swords are a special skill. It’s easier to produce one with contemporary technology: the metal alloys are more uniform and of better quality. The longer the blade, the harder it is to keep it straight as you temper and quench it.
So a man that could forge a poor-quality blade was still well-paid, and the one that could forge a blade fit for a noble? Well, there’s a reason smiths are regarded as close to gods.
So you have a tool that was created for a single purpose, where even the poorest example could only be afforded by minor lords, and the finest examples in the hands of at least one person who needed to believe they’ve ended up on top wasn’t due solely to the way they or their ancestor knew how to use a sword better than anyone else. Hence the romanticism.
Oh, and that scene with Obi-wan always bugged me until now. You’re right, the only way that makes sense is if Obi-wan was subtly controlling it with the force!
@7,
Oh, and that scene with Obi-wan always bugged me until now. You’re right, the only way that makes sense is if Obi-wan was subtly controlling it with the force!
Its almost like they were making it up as they went along. Nah, Lucas would never do that.
“So you have a tool that was created for a single purpose, where even the poorest example could only be afforded by minor lords”
This was never true. Only afforded by minor lords? Come on. A sword is just a big knife that takes less metal than a plough share. They’ve been carried by ordinary soldiers since before Troy.
But the ‘single purpose’ point is good; axes and spears and pole arms and bows all have uses other than war.
I think that it’s no coincidence that the weapon we think of most highly is one which has no practical purpose beyond that of killing. There is a certain tendency in Western culture (and perhaps other cultures as well; I am no expert on cultures beyond my own, the one in which I have most deeply read and studied) to place greater value on things which are disconnected from day-to-day labor. An axe which can chop wood as well as bone, a knife for carving meat, or a hunting rifle, is by its very practicality devalued in comparison to a sword without a practical use.
“Only by minor lords” is surely an exageration, but a sword IS more difficult and time-consuming to produce than a spear or an axe, because it is made entirely in metal.
Far more costly than even a fine sword though I think was plate armour, particularily the full suite of plate armour that we asociate with knights today.
@3,
I think that “code of honor” bit about swordsmen was only applicable to single combat between equals; it was not uncommon for warrior classes to be able to murder “lessers” with impunity. The most egregious example is probably the Spartans, who could kill helots whenever they felt like it with absolutely no repercussion.
Of course, before development of the percussion cap, swords were the self-defense weapon of choice: muzzle-loading flintlocks couldn’t be kept loaded as a) the priming charge would fall off and b) black powder is hygroscopic and dissolved saltpeter is corrosive.
I suspect part of the romance of swords throughout history was based on who was paying the bards and troubadors and skalds and such. The lord of the hall that is feeding you has a sword, so talking about a magnificent sword, even a magical sword, was one way to flatter your host and keep his interest.
If anyone knows any books analyzing swords in ancient tales, please share.
I would argue that a machete is a “yard sword.”
@7 “So you have a tool that was created for a single purpose, where even the poorest example could only be afforded by minor lords, and the finest examples in the hands of at least one person who needed to believe they’ve ended up on top wasn’t due solely to the way they or their ancestor knew how to use a sword better than anyone else. Hence the romanticism.”
This itself is romanticized bs. Like Ajay said, it’s a big knife, and in many eras in many parts of the world they were a primary or backup weapon for entire armies, so inexpensive versions were available along with the top of the line lordly models, same as any other weapon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy1fcRG0A3g
I have seen more academic references on this but I’m too lazy to go hunt them down atm. He points out that by the late middle ages european metallurgy had advanced enough to produce large quantities of wrought iron and steel more easily and records show swords were not a rare or always expensive thing at all. Consider that China and India developed those same technologies more than 500 years earlier… So yeah, just because the village blacksmith wasn’t experienced at making them doesn’t mean they were out of reach for the common soldier.
Ideals of chivalry often have little to do with reality (and were invented after swords lost their importance in real battles). Japanese bushido was invented in the 200-year peace of the Edo/Tokugawa era when samurai were bureaucrats who needed a justification for needing to train with their swords. In Europe troubadours sang about chivalry for Occitan ladies, but the real knights were often behaving like brigands.
I know what you mean about the change when you hold a “proper” sword. Most of my collection is replicas and blunts, but my grandfather picked up a sword from a house clearance he gave me. It’s a sabre, with a makers date stamp of 1916 and is positively caked in grease. Damn thing might be the most distressingly lethal item I’ve ever held (and that includes the few times I’ve held & fired guns). It’s shockingly light, but the blade is like a razor. Purely functional though, there’s no flourishes to either the sword or the scabbard. It’s on my to do list to try and investigate it’s history and get it cleaned up…
I don’t think it is a coincidence that swordmen (and swordwomen) in most societies were sworn to uphold a code of honor.
I would be fascinated to hear more about these societies where women carried swords as a matter of course but only if they had sworn to uphold a code of honour.
Damn thing might be the most distressingly lethal item I’ve ever held (and that includes the few times I’ve held & fired guns).
Peter Wimsey on duelling and swords: “I’ve been challenged three times and fought twice; the third time the police butted in. I’m afraid that was because my opponent didn’t fancy my choice of weapons… a bullet, you see, may go anywhere, but steel’s almost bound to go somewhere.”
(To which Harriet: “Peter, I believe you’re showing off.”)
I don’t recall Chinese culture fetishising swords particularly, except perhaps in wuxia novels. And those were mostly carried by outlaws and wandering swordsmen or women i.e. socially marginal people. Perhaps because they must have been mass- manufactured if they were used by soldiers. A sword from the hand of legendary master smith XYX has a lot more glamour than one from Imperial Military Supplies Workshop (Swords, Officers, for the use of) 162-A.
It reminds me of the Aiel in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. They descended (spoiler!) from a group of pacifists and, by necessity, picked up violence as the world broke, but drew the line at using a sword. Because a sword only has one purpose, whereas their spears and knives can be used for hunting and other activities.
I think the fascination with swords is because there’s a degree of civil behavior there. You could survive if you were good enough. But not so with guns and arrows. The sword is much fairer.
Ajay, I’d like to hear about those societies of sworn swordswomen myself. I can’t think of a single example.
Lord Peter is definitely showing off but who can blame him?
You could survive if you were good enough. But not so with guns and arrows. The sword is much fairer.
Or, in another sense, the sword is much less fair. The bigger, better-fed, stronger, wealthier man who has spent his life training to fight with a sword vs the smaller, weaker, untrained peasant – not much of a contest. But, as Thomas Carlyle said, gunpowder makes all men tall – he could have said the same of the bow. (“God made men, and Sam Colt made them equal.”)
“We are all men,” as the Yanomami used to say when a discussion turned close to violence. “We are none of us tall and others small. I am going to get my arrows.”
ajay @@@@@ 23:
But, as Thomas Carlyle said, gunpowder makes all men tall – he could have said the same of the bow.
Mmm… not so sure about the latter bit. Being good with a bow requires a lot of regular practice (and associated muscle building); the kings of late medieval England famously instituted laws mandating weekly archery practice in order to ensure enough competent archers in their armies.
And note that in 15th and early 16th Century Japan, the bow was the weapon of the aristocracy, associated with mounted, higher-class warriors (with swords as their hand weapons); peasant recruits were generally armed with spears.
swords are the only class of weapons designed, solely and with no other purpose, for killing humans.
I’ll admit I’m struggling to think of a use for clubs — and especially maces — that isn’t about doing violence to other humans. (Granted we certainly don’t romanticize and fetishize clubs… but it’s interesting that maces are — like swords — traditional symbols of authority.)
@@@@@ 12 swampyankee: That’s irrefutable fact, of course.
But, alas, some people are always more equal than others, and any weapon can (and will) be used for purposes different than the one they were designed for. I find my point still stands. :)
@25 Could be that it was too easy for peasants to make clubs. Or that clubs are slightly more survivable than swords.
PeterErwin@25
struggling to think of a use for clubs
You can use them to invent baseball…
:-)
I think I’m getting confused. For me, most troops aren’t professional soldiers. In European medieval times, there would mostly be peasant levees, equipped with farming implements. Soldiers, trained warriors, were few, and would carry swords, but they either had to pay for them themselves or have a rich benefactor. Ergo minor nobility.
I have two points I think are beneficial here:
1) I think the romanticizing of swords has a lot to do with the fact that they’re a sidearm. No other battlefield weapon was routinely carried as an implement of self-defense in a civilian setting. Sure, axes, flails, scythes, etc., were all used in extremis for self-defense, but those were tools pressed into service as weapons. Also there were many laws in Europe that forbade the lower classes from going armed in the cities, but travel was dangerous and it was both legal and quite common for regular people to be armed while on the road. This places swords in a very similar way to revolvers in the “Wild West.” Most cities actually banned the wearing of guns in town, but there was a subset of the population that was professionally trained with them to whom the rules didn’t really apply. If “Shane” was set 400 years earlier, he would have been a knight errant and the story wouldn’t have had to change much to be relatable to people of that period.
2) There were a bunch of swords made for hunting, but like guns for hunting, these came after the military use of swords was well established.
great post
I’ll admit I’m struggling to think of a use for clubs — and especially maces — that isn’t about doing violence to other humans.
Oh, there are lots of non-killing-people uses for clubs. You can use small ones for killing fish (the ones anglers use are called ‘priests’ in the UK). You can use the bigger ones for stunning animals before you slaughter them, if your religion permits. You can use them as walking sticks, or as carrying poles, for example carried on one shoulder with a burden on each end (Chinese coolies were legendarily prone to getting into fights with their bamboo poles). You can chuck them at animals while hunting, which is what southern Africans did with their knobkerries. You can use them as a tool for pounding things – grain to eat, say, or ochre to use as a paint.
And a mace is just a specialised sort of club that’s only used for war, just as a halberd is a specialised sort of spear that’s only used for war.
And note that in 15th and early 16th Century Japan, the bow was the weapon of the aristocracy, associated with mounted, higher-class warriors (with swords as their hand weapons); peasant recruits were generally armed with spears.
Is that, perhaps, because if you let the peasants have bows then they would be able to shoot down their rightful overlords in a wholly inappropriate manner? (This being the same society that banned firearms for pretty much that exact reason.)
For me, most troops aren’t professional soldiers. In European medieval times, there would mostly be peasant levees, equipped with farming implements.
Mediaeval European peasant levies did not generally go to war equipped with farming implements. (The exception being peasant revolts and that sort of thing.) They carried pikes, spears, halberds, longbows and so on – weapons purpose-made for war.
The first thing that came to my mind when this article (and so many comments) said a sword is “only for killing people” was this: A sword is also for DEFENDING people. Like any visible sidearm, a sword is a deterrent. It says, “Don’t even think about attacking me, or those I am with.” A sword says, “I’m too great a risk to attack. You might get hurt if you try me.”
Any weapon is a tool. And a tool will be used for the goals and purposes of the one wielding it. Good men and women use tools for good. A sword in the hands of a good person is a powerful tool for guarding, protecting, and defending.
I just keep wondering, when did we lose this basic truth? Who popularized the lie that a disarmed populace is a safer society? When did self-defense and protecting others become an unpopular, suspicious activity?
Nobody said that there was any society where women – or men for that matter! – carried swords as a matter of course. Carrying of swords was generally restricted to a minority of men, yet it is fine to speak of the customs of swordsmen in those societies. And there have been a few societies where women participated in warfare – never at close to equal rates, but as a noticeably large minority, as contrasted to many other societies in which it was limited to the very few who had special dispensation or disguised themselves as men.
Men and Women at arms all love their swords. But they tend to die on spears.
@34 jackcooley
“The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.”- Homer
“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it was a nail.” -Abraham Maslow
In peaceful societies, people don’t have a strong need to carry deadly weapons everywhere they go. In violent societies, people might have to fear their neighbors enough to go armed at all times, but that’s not generally considered a good thing.
If you look at societies where everyone who can afford a weapon goes around with it all the time, you see that people are quick to take offense and shed blood. Look at France in the 1600s; gentlemen are expected to defend their honor with swords, and they quickly go from harsh words to murder. The veneration of the sword turned into a veneration of violence for its own sake, as gentlemen fought duels over even minor insults to display their courage.
There is no magical test to determine which people are “good people”, and even generally decent people can become unreasonably angry. When everyone carries a deadly weapon, losing your temper can be fatal for you and your neighbor. Spirited debate becomes much more difficult in an armed society, as the person you are arguing with can resort to force instead of reason at any time. You can see examples of this in the American South before the Civil War and in 1800s France, where personal and political disagreements quickly moved from words to gunfire.
A disarmed populace is a safer society, as fewer people have access to lethal weapons, making it harder for them to kill their neighbors. Carrying a sword to protect others is inherently suspicious because your neighbors have no way of knowing whether you are actually the person they need to be protected from. Bandits and murderers don’t wear black hats so that we can conveniently tell them apart from “good guys” wearing white hats.
I don’t think most people go through life wanting to carry a dangerous weapon to the supermarket. Do you feel that your fellow shoppers are so dangerous that you could not possibly visit without some means of self-defense?
ajay @@@@@ 33:
Is that, perhaps, because if you let the peasants have bows then they would be able to shoot down their rightful overlords in a wholly inappropriate manner? (This being the same society that banned firearms for pretty much that exact reason.)
It’s not the case that only the samurai had bows. The non-samurai footsoldiers (ashigaru) of the 15th and 16th Century used bows as well as spears, before matchlock muskets became the weapon of choice after the 1540s. I’ve seen claims that there was some snobbish dismay among some samurai about the increasing use of bows by ashigaru, not because it was some kind of actual threat to the samurai but because military archery had lost its social exclusivity.
This AskHistorians post, while primarily attempting to address the question “Why no crossbows in Japan?”, includes this useful note:
So, again, I’m skeptical of the idea that bows were ever some kind of social leveler. It’s not like yeoman archers brought the aristocracy low in medieval England, after all.
As for the famous Japanese “ban” on firearms:
The Tokugawa restricted firearms primarily not because they were worried about being shot at by random peasants, but because they knew that gunpowder weapons allowed ambitious nobles to build large, capable armies quickly (because you can train people to use guns effectively in a relatively short time) — since that was the pattern of the latter part of the 16th Century, during which the Tokugawa themselves had risen to power. (And apparently the ban was never total, and quite a few peasants retained the odd firearm for hunting; the point of the ban was more to restrict the manufacture of new firearms by limiting the number of people who knew how, thus making it more difficult for rebellious nobles to arm a lot of followers.)
@6:
I don’t think so; try carving and eating meat with a sword, as F’lar does in the very first story. (Bradley plays off your idea in IIRC Thendara House, when someone asks Free Companions candidate the difference between the “knife” she’s carrying and a sword and is told “a few inches” — but note that the Companions guard travelers as well as doing logistics.)
@9: I suppose you could tie a crosspiece on a pike and call it a hunting spear, but what non-violent use does a polearm have?
@34 (adding to @37, whose comments on relative safety of armed societies are good): The opening scene of Romeo and Juliet gives the lie to the canard that an armed society is a polite society, let alone one in which arms are used for defense. See also previous comments about use by thugs and by upper classes against the lower; ISTM the whole defense-of-others idea was never as general as you believe.
I find the bit about being around a “sharp” interesting, in that it represents a complete deviation from the viewpoint of the world in which these weapons were used. I mean no offense to the author, but people of the eras where swords were common, would not have had that reaction. It is one born entirely of a culture unused to violence in their daily lives, and also much more concerned with safety. I don’t even mean in a dangerous capacity, I just mean in daily life, we use less dangerous tools. Those sharp kitchen knives you mention, most people wore one on their belt. And many had used it that morning to kill something for their supper, or would use it throughout their day to work with. They had been doing this since they were children.
To put it pointedly, a class of students in the middle ages would have wondered at your classes reaction. They would have thought, “Yes it is sharp, that’s rather the point. It is after all for killing people.” This is the other thing, we learn the sword for recreation, for exercise, it is a hobby. They were learning it with the intent of the lesson being how to kill, and then not get killed. It’s a completely different atmosphere. You get whacked in the head because you misstep, you feel like a fool and then laugh it off, then try again. That bad habit is annoying and your instructor tells you to work on it, maybe its a joke that you always use the same motion when someone attacks from a high guard. They might do the same, but with the knowledge that they better shape up or if they end up in a fight, that bad habit will get them killed. The intensity of their instructors likely reflected this, and the jokes take on a slightly more grim tone when you consider that the person who habitually makes that mistake, could very well end up dead because of it. Though given some of the humor of the times, the jokes may be made all the same.
Their world was much less safe, and that’s actually not even taking into consideration the violence that could appear in their lives, they just were not as concerned with daily safety. Or rather they were so used to things we would consider unsafe, that to us it would seem like they were unconcerned. But really they were just less self conscious about their safety in the day to day activities of their lives, while also being very aware of violence and death. Which makes sense when almost everyone wears a knife on their belt or in their pocket. It doesn’t take much for a fist fight to turn into a stabbing, which everyone knows so takes into account, or doesn’t to obvious results.
When it comes to swords, many people wore them, by the end of the 1500’s they were a common side arm for most classes of society that wanted them (apart from some restrictions) and they were all sharp, they were all intended for use in self defense. Most people had only themselves to take care of them, and many likely had little real training. But then again they were used to dealing with dangerous metal items in their daily life, and they weren’t trying to be master swordsmen, they just didn’t want to get jumped in an ally or on the road from one place to another. Most of them probably went unused for their owners lives.
Go to a market in Morocco, or India, or Vietnam, or half a hundred other places, and you will see tool usage and safety concern that was the norm until very recently. There was a video of a guy making chips not long ago on Reddit and he just sets an extremely sharp knife between his feet, held a peeled potato between his hands, and ran his hands back and forth like 6 times without even looking, perfect fries, easily could have cut his hands. You see that here with chefs, or cooks too. People who handle knives regularly. When my brother was in Morocco he talked about people doing stuff like that all the time, a lot of the guys wore knives as part of their daily wear too, some had swords nearby for security, like a barmen and a bat. To them it was just another part of life. They held little fear of sharpness, but were also very precise with how they handled their blades. In the markets there was blood everywhere, nobody cared. All of that is to say the sword was another tool, and to the people of the past (and many today) it was one considered far less novel than to many of us might think. While being a symbol of the warrior, it was also the sidearm of the masses.
Think about that, the masses wore a side arm. To the point where status was determined not by whether you had one or not, but by how nice, what style, your training, it’s scabbard, is it jeweled, where was it made, etc. They were fashion accessories, but y’know also weapons. That alone is a very different world than many of us live in.
CHip @@@@@ 39:
@@@@@34 (adding to @@@@@37, whose comments on relative safety of armed societies are good): The opening scene of Romeo and Juliet gives the lie to the canard that an armed society is a polite society, let alone one in which arms are used for defense.
There is a study which looked at murder rates in the Old West. While they weren’t quite as extreme as movies and TV shows would suggest, they were pretty damn high. Dodge City had, in the 1870s and 1880s, a homicide rate of about 130 per 100,000 persons per year. That’s compared with a rate of about 4 per 100,000 in New York City at the same time (almost the same as the national rate today).
The problem in Romeo and Juliet isn’t that everybody has swords it’s the vendetta between Montague and Capulet. Without swords the young bravos of both families would be having fisticuffs in the street and probably beating each other’s brains out on the cobbles.
What about a mace? Is that designed for injury instead?
Clerics weren’t supposed to shed blood, that is why they used maces instead of cutting weapons.
Clerics weren’t supposed to shed blood, that is why they used maces instead of cutting weapons.
Virtually zero evidence for this. Bishop Odo is represented in the Bayeux Tapestry wielding a mace and supposedly that’s the reason – though this may well be a mediaeval joke.
But there’s no other evidence of a ban on shedding blood specifically (rather than, you know, fighting and killing) by clergy. Bishop Turpin in the Chanson de Roland uses a spear and a sword. Bernard of Clairvaux, much later, is definite that the role of the clergy in warfare is to support and advise, not to participate in combat. Odo and others, like Thurstan of York, commanded troops in the field but may not have actually participated in combat (Thurstan was too old, for one thing.)
This thesis https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=hist_etds has much more detail – and notes that, at least in high mediaeval France, clergy did go armed with swords for self defence.
One of the reasons it took so long to train archers is simply that they need a lot of specialized upper-body strength, as military longbows had pulls of 100 lbf (450 Newtons) and even more. A gun didn’t require that kind of strength.
Archers, at least those in an English army, would also have swords. They weren’t the poor farm laborers, as the kind of strength needed required consistently good nutrition
There were hunting swords, historically used to finish off a boar after all the dogs and the spears. Arguably though, there the point is to use something so fancy and impractical to accomplish something unnecessarily dangerous is the point. You don’t use a hunting sword because it’s the most efficient way to kill a wild boar, you do it to show off.
Another point to debunk “the clergy couldn’t shed blood” is the existence of religious orders such as the Knights Templar, whose knights were monks, that is ordained priests, not lay brothers.
@47: the armament of archers varied; Wikipedia confirms my recollection from other sources that the bowmen at Agincourt used the hatchets and mallets with which they’d made the pointed stakes for their defenses, in addition to swords. You may also overestimate how understrength the average peasant was; there was enough hand labor involved in farming that weaklings would have been at a disadvantage.
wrt clerics and weapons that draw blood: I wonder how much documentation against this there is before the rules for Dungeons and Dragons? Another counter-example is the statue of Bishop Absalon (traditional founder of København (Copenhagen)), which shows him wielding an axe and probably carrying a sword as well (bottom of a ?scabbard? below the horse’s belly).
@49, monks were/are not necessarily ordained priests in Catholicism.
From the article: a sword is not automatically “many many” times as long as a knife. I own a chef’s knife that’s as long as a Roman gladius. It all depends on which sword and which knife you mean. I also agree with Pam Adams that a machete is a garden sword.
With respect to priests drawing blood: one would note that being hit by a mace is likely to cause quite a bit of bleeding.
If I recall to the Templar rule correctly the knights, squires and men at armes are vowwd religious but never priests. The was a separate category of chaplains to tend to the brethren’s spiritual needs.
S.L., excellent essay! I do some Iaido, and I’m definitely familiar with the phenomenon you describe. I’d be curious to hear your take on Swordspoint, et. seq.
@Jack Kardic, I would totally read that version of Shane! :)
@50: Swords actually saw less use at Agincourt than you might think, mostly because the French knights would all be wearing full plate to help protect them from arrows, so swords wouldn’t be able to cut through. Instead, they’d mostly have things like poleaxes, maces and hammers, often lead-weighted to increase their crushing force. If you haven’t read the great Bernard Cornwell novel Azincourt, I’d really recommend it; he goes into a lot of detail about the tactics used on both sides there.
Great article, I appreciate the depth of analysis and the personal experience you brought to it.
That’d end your trip real quick, wouldn’t it?
@@@@@ 48, Tom Kilian:
There were hunting swords, historically used to finish off a boar after all the dogs and the spears. Arguably though, there the point is to use something so fancy and impractical to accomplish something unnecessarily dangerous is the point. You don’t use a hunting sword because it’s the most efficient way to kill a wild boar, you do it to show off.
It’s still fashionable to hunt boar with dogs and a knife. Once the dogs have the tusker immobilized, you jump in and stab. I wouldn’t try it with a blade shorter than ten inches. Even with a clumsy thrust, that’s long enough to reach the heart. A short hanger—hunting sword—would do the job just as well.
@@@@@ 50, CHip:
@@@@@47: the armament of archers varied; Wikipedia confirms my recollection from other sources that the bowmen at Agincourt used the hatchets and mallets with which they’d made the pointed stakes for their defenses, in addition to swords.
Those stakes were called swine feathers. (There is no evidence they were stripped from flying pigs.) They weren’t used at Crécy or Poitiers. Archers used pit-traps instead. They did use swine feathers at Agincourt in 1415. Henry V may have swiped the idea from the Ottoman Turks. They used such stakes—probably with some other name—at the 1398 Battle of Necopolis.
When they excavated the Mary Rose, the military gear included 200 swine feathers.
Speaking of swords and SFF, E. Hoffman Price issued a free challenge with each book:
“I contend that China invented beautiful women. If anyone disagrees, I will meet him with sword or with pistol, on foot or on horseback.”
Don’t forget that there is a literary aspect to this as well. Swords in literature are tools of conflict (important in most literature, especially those that focus on swords), have a great duality (used to protect as well as to harm), and are wielded by individuals in ways that express intent. And as the author points out, they have one function. This leads to a bit of literary shorthand in many cases.
wrt clerics and weapons that draw blood: I wonder how much documentation against this there is before the rules for Dungeons and Dragons? Another counter-example is the statue of Bishop Absalon (traditional founder of København (Copenhagen)), which shows him wielding an axe and probably carrying a sword as well (bottom of a ?scabbard? below the horse’s belly).
To be fair, that statue is from 1902, so I’m not sure it carries much weight as evidence of what clerics did or didn’t do a millennium earlier.
But your documentation point is a good one: if the ban on drawing blood were part of canon law, shouldn’t it be included in some of the actual surviving compendia of canon law from the period? We aren’t short of documentation on mediaeval religious administration – the clergy were literate and they kept records.
Related: when you’re challenged to a duel with sword or pistol, it is important to be clear on the details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDsn-RRmDXU
Frog went a courtin’ and he did ride, uh-huh
Frog went a courtin’ and he did ride, uh-huh
Frog went a courtin’ and he did ride
With a sword and a pistol by his side, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
And there have been a few societies where women participated in warfare – never at close to equal rates, but as a noticeably large minority
Did they carry swords and were they sworn to uphold a code of honour as a condition of carrying them?
I would very much like the names of the societies in which women served as a notably large minority of warriors. All the archaeological and anthropological evidence I’m aware of shows that when women as warriors existed they were very much the exception to the rule.
@princessroxana, that’s certainly my impression. I can only think of one African king who had a corps of female bodyguards as a partial exception. The Haudenosaunee of eastern North America had women as the ultimate political authority, but not as warriors.
I would very much like the names of the societies in which women served as a notably large minority of warriors.
“Modern Europe” – if 10-20% counts as a ‘notably large minority’, because that’s the percentage in most European armed forces. (And Canada and the US, for that matter.) Some of them even carry swords, and all of them have sworn to uphold a code of conduct.
princessroxana @@@@@ 64
I would very much like the names of the societies in which women served as a notably large minority of warriors.
I think the best case (in an ancient-or-medieval, swords-are-still-useful-weapons sense) might be the Scythians, since in a non-negligible fraction of upper-class female burials (say, 20-30% in some places) the women have military accoutrements, such as bows and arrows, spears, and occasionally axes or swords (as found in most male burials).
In addition, in some of the “female warrior” burials the women have wounds plausibly acquired in combat, such as arrowheads inside ribcages or embedded in bone, or wounds to the skull consistent with a right-handed person attacking from the front, or wounds to the left arm consistent with trying to block someone attacking from the front. (Such wounds are also found in male burials.)
(The Scythians are likely to be the original source of the Greek “Amazons”, though the more lurid bits of Greek storytelling about the Amazons — all-women societies that kill or trade away their male infants, cutting off one breast to be better archers — are clearly fantasy.)
The best “pre-modern but kind of post-sword” case might be the Mino (or “Dahomey Amazons”), who supposedly started in the early 18th Century as bodyguards to a queen in the Kingdom of Dahomey, and evolved into a regular, uniformed part (possibly as much as 1/3) of the army by the mid-19th Century, lasting until the French conquest of Dahomey in the 1890s. Some of them apparently used guns, but some also used swords; the eyewitness account of Cudjo Lewis, interviewed by Zora Neale Hurston in 1931, mentions female Dahomey warriors using “big knives” and “machetes” in the Dahomey raid on his home village in Benin, which led to his enslavement and transport across the Atlantic in 1860.
I know about the scythians of course and I thought of the Dahomey Amazon’s who in IMO were more a show group than an expression of culture. They were also famously nasty.
It is very much controversial to assert that “warrior burials” mean the person was a warrior. Swords, etc. were valuable possessions and burying high-status people with them did not necessarily mean the person had actually used them. By that logic one could argue that men buried with kraters worked in the kitchen, after all ….
I’m not an authority, but at least some of the professionals in archaeology do dispute the logic.
@69, Exactly. Weapons can be signs of rank or simply tribute to beloved dead. Absent skeletal signs of actual combat conclusions should not be drawn. As Peter Erwin points out there are at least two cases of Scythian women who show signs of actually fighting. Other graves include weapons along with traditional women’s grave goods and sometimes ritual objects believed to indicate shamanism.
The Kurgan burials are those of the ruling class meaning that maybe 20% of elite women were buried with weapons which in turn leads to why. Did daughters inherit their fathers’ status as chieftains of warriors in the absence of brothers? Or was maiden warrior a lfe stage some girls passed through? Comanche girls used to ride on raids for fun and a share of the booty, did Scythian girls?
67: I’m sorry to say that “killed by a military weapon in combat” is not, and has never been, the same as “was a soldier”. I hope there is better evidence than that…
Carl @@@@@ 69:
Swords, etc. were valuable possessions and burying high-status people with them did not necessarily mean the person had actually used them. By that logic one could argue that men buried with kraters worked in the kitchen, after all
I believe that one of the things kraters were used for was to hold watered-down wine for symposia, so they were hardly kitchen-only items.
Swords were relatively rare in these burials (though not unknown); the most common weapons found in female graves are knives, spears, axes, and especially bows and arrows. And it’s not clear that these were particularly valuable, either. Christoph Baumer’s The History of Central Asia: The Age of the Steppe Warriors has this observation (p.265):
princessroxana @@@@@ 70:
Or was maiden warrior a lfe stage some girls passed through?
That’s pretty much what Hippocrates claimed about Sarmatian women, for whatever that might be worth. And apparently a large fraction (though not all) of the female “warrior” burials are of women in their late teens or twenties, which might suggest they died while still in the “warrior” life stage, if that’s what was actually going on.