The Warrior's Kit in Medieval Europe: Technological Revolution

Noticing a theme here?

It's not misplaced. Lots of folks will tell you that, during the Middle Ages, weapons were basically bashing tools and little more, with no real innovation or advancement, which is utter hogwash. There was quite a bit, and it's easy to see.

In Europe, anyway. Japan is a great contrast. You're certainly familiar with the kit of the samurai, the layered armour, the katana, the tall bow, etc. This equipment was pretty much standardized in the late 14th century, and wasn't changed. The Japanese felt they'd perfected the arts of arming and armouring the samurai, and felt little need for innovation.

In Europe, this sense of perfection was never achieved. Some have described what happened in Europe as a continuous battle of innovation between the spear-makers and the shield makers. As each side improved their goods, the other was forced to compensate through new designs and techniques.


The armour we'd all recognize as “knightly” was actually a fairly late invention in the middle ages, and probably didn't appear until the 15th century. (I suspect this is one of the reasons Gygax preferred to set his games in worlds with early Renaissance tech.) Before this, knights generally wore full suits of mail, or chain mail for those of you who learned about armour from D&D. ;) Significant plates were not added to the armour until the 14th century, and a breastplate and helm with visor didn't appear until maybe the end of that century.

As these armour plates began to appear, the sword underwent a radical transformation. The broad, hacking blade was replaced with longer, narrower blades, more focused on thrusting and finding weak chinks in armour rather than trying to chop through it. By the end of the 15th century, the shield had been pretty much discarded by the knight, and the sword was now a long, thin weapon, wielded with both hands in a style more reminiscent of a staff, for stabbing and clubbing. The slash had all but vanished from the knight's repertoire.



The key idea I'm trying to get across here is that every weapon and piece of armour had a purpose, a reason for existing, and that the forms these weapons took derived naturally from their function. The heater shield replaced the round shield of the Viking and Anglo-Saxon shieldwall because that triangular shape proved easier to use and more effective on horseback. The axe gave warriors a more powerful blow that might sneak around the shield, and the bearded axe could be used to hook the shield and pull it aside so that another warrior could step in and land a killing blow. (Both Richard the Lionhearted and Robert the Bruce were renowned axe fighters.) The ball-and-chain, flail, or morning star, while wild and unpredictable, were even better for getting around the shield and smacking the foe in the back of the head or shoulders. The Dark Age seax, a single-edge, chisel-tipped cutting tool that doubled as a weapon, morphed over time into the rondel dagger, a long spike on a handle usually wielded like an icepick for jabbing through the gaps in heavy armour.

Our games rarely take this sort of thing into account. They assign fairly arbitrary numbers to weapons, and then we wonder why anyone would bother to carry a dagger into combat, since they're next-to-useless in our games. The truth is, the seax was a great little tool to have around and quite good at gutting a lightly armed foe, while the rondel was perfect when two knights grappled into each other, rolling about in the mud and blood, bashing into each other while attempting to jab through the joints or eye slits. The premier weapon of AD&D, the longsword (a one-handed weapon which isn't the same as the "longswords" the guys in the video were fighting with because terminology is another thing historians like to argue about), was quite popular at the dawn of the Middle Ages, but as armour grew heavier, its utility waned, until knightly duels were more likely to be conducted with poleaxes than swords. Every weapon had its time and its place.

Photo credits: rinpoche, Gidzy.

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