Doing Unto Others Before They Do Unto You: the Sharp and Stabby

Tankards & Broadswords has a great post up with a lot of fun links to articles on actual scholarship on European medieval fighting techniques. Historians can (and do) argue about how things really were done, but there's no substitute for trying it out yourself, which is what those folks do.

And if you're the sort who prefers videos to text, how about:

exactly how much faster is a longbow than a crossbow?

could the longbow really punch an arrow through armour?

what about stronger armours?

and just how cumbersome was all this armour, anyway?

was a helm useful for stopping sword blows?

All of these are from a great series out of England called "Weapons that Made Britain". If you can find the episodes at a video store or have a friend who recorded them off the History Channel, they're definitely worth the time to watch.

As for me, I'm really looking forward to Badelaire's post about tankards! ;)