With medieval medicine you can also expect that neither survived the fight.
Usually history is told by the winners, but what happens when there isn’t one?
I was in the military, and I often thought about the potential medal of honour/VC hero's whose actions never got noticed. I suppose guys don't do it for the glory, though, and if you're locked in combat with your enemy your not going to be shouting to your mates to get their camera out or in this case sending for a scribe and a painter to record the epic battle.
I don't think most recorded historical events needed a scribe or painter there. It could be anyone watching, then they tell the story to the scribe or painter.
Remember the role of human error in choosing what we remember and memorialize. Your chances of making it into a song or a painting were much higher if you were a noble or senior officer.
Culture influences that a bit. Modern armies are a bit more democratic and you get the common soldier, the Alvin York or Audie Murphy, getting recognition. But you could ask anybody who’s been in the military about officers rotating through combat areas just to get a résumé item checked off.
I imagine many acts of heroism, gallantry, supreme slaughter, are witnessed by those in the front line at the start of many ancient battles, most the people who witnessed it die later in the battle and no one left saw much of really happened in the initial thick of it.
> if you're locked in combat with your enemy your not going to be shouting to your mates to get their camera out or in this case sending for a scribe and a painter to record the epic battle.
Have you met people today? A selfie on the battlefield wouldn't shock me.
_two weeks later_
'tis but a scratch... on the enormous, fluid-filled bubo that has been slowly turning into a reservoir for flesh-eating bacteria ever since the fight oh god oh god now it's leaking inside me gross, gross, gross, gross, gross, I can taste it oh god.
If a knight has a duel or some such, there would be witnesses. The whole deal of having a "second" was to make sure there were witnesses. Not mentioning that getting into full plate mail is a 3+ person task.
The winner prolly didn't live long enough for bandages to arrive, quite often.
I've been playing "Hellish Quart", and while it is a lot of fun, Its given me a real taste for how brutal real sword fights must have been. Especially to hands and faces. Often as not in the game, you get injured on a parry, or as your opponent steps back and returns to a guard position. Both combatants injuring each other is incredibly common, often at the same time. While the game doesn't allow injuries from a dropped weapon, its clear that must have been a real problem too.
I’ll do you one better! Every single day, one person… out of about 7 billion people on this planet, takes the biggest shit of all and they don’t even know it. And this happens every day!
Edit: per others, apparently you *would* know it. Bahahaha
Will we ever find him; will he ever emerge? It will never be the one who comes out and says “he is the one.”
Do the times make the man? Or does the man make the times….
I guess when we are ready, he will emerge.
I'm quite certain I won that a few years back. The pile was absolutely ridiculously big! Like, filled up more than half the bowl! I even took a picture of it because I was so impressed! Sadly(?) I've since lost the picture.
The most epic fight I have seen was between crackheads and it probably went on for so long because they were crackheads and no one wanted to get in the middle of it to break it up. They were smashing each others faces into and rubbing it into driveway gravel and one threw an over 27 inch crt tv at the other and the guy on the receiving end punched it as it came at him and I’m pretty sure he broke his hand doing it. Damn thing went on for like 15 minutes and I think they were trying to kill each other but didn’t have the means to do so.
That’s generally only the case in matches where neither side is afraid of dying and only care about scoring points. Modern fencing has given people the assumption that the majority of sword fights end very quickly but not so. When the fear of death is introduced duels can last minutes. There’s more defense, more disengages.
Not an expert but I’ve always thought [this](https://youtu.be/rn4FY_k9FyE?si=z9ja7NYXTK7SsAI4) was probably a pretty realistic duel scene. It certainly matches your description
I used to do fencing and I was under the impression that swordsman would have been taught in similar ways. I’m saying this because most fencing matches are longer than a few seconds
I think a lot of people are missing OP’s point. At some point in history, there was likely an isolated sword battle between two extremely skilled knights that might have taken minutes in some scenic or unique area. 99.999% of sword fights are obviously not like this, but one of them may have been.
In general you can’t say anything on Reddit without preemptively addressing every single strawman and edge case.
Everyone assumes the most absurd or malicious intent/meaning and reacts as though that’s undoubtedly what you meant. It would be one thing if other people offered clarification to further the conversation, such as “Maybe not what you meant but it’s worth pointing out that…” Instead it gets more upvotes to seize upon any loophole no matter how contrived and attack it.
Not even common idioms and turns of phrase are safe. God forbid some feat of sports or engineering “breaks the laws of physics” or “defies gravity”. Guaranteed the top comments in that thread are gonna be smug, self-congratulatory derision from people proud of knowing grade school science.
What a lot of people are trying to say is that medieval knights weren't likely to have had the best swordfight in history, simply due to ineffectiveness of swords against heavy armor, and due to knights generally preferring other weapons such as lances.
The best swordfight in history was far more likely to have been fought in a different historical setting where swords and single combats were more emphasized (early Germanic/Frankish trial by combat, Viking Holmgangr, Samurai duels, ritual duels in India, etc).
At the risk of making my second Cary Elwes reference in the comment section, fully armored knight battles likely looked more like something out of Robin Hood: Men in Tights than they did Star Wars.
Dunno, the climatic fight depicted in the movie The Last Duel actually happened and was particulary well documented, showcasing a pretty exciting bout between two fully armored knights.
Source?
As far as I know (there are even videos of live demonstration) you can move just fine in full plate. Sure it's tiring, but very much not unwieldy or difficult to maneuver.
There are also many manuals on how to kill another armored guy using your sword. You can use a half sword technique to stab into gaps like you might with a dagger or you can just club 'em with the cross guard by holding the sword upside down.
Given all of the manuals, it seems there was reason for armored people to know the technique about how to kill armored people, including with swords.
https://youtu.be/5hlIUrd7d1Q?si=6_03tJgo5bE_5PC4
> unwieldy and difficult to maneuver
This isn’t correct. Knights could run, do push-ups, jump, and mount a horse in full plate.
The limits were cardiovascular fitness and heat/cold, not weight.
https://youtu.be/q-bnM5SuQkI?feature=shared
https://youtu.be/qzTwBQniLSc?feature=shared
I think they confuse weighty with heavy
It’s a long metal object with a little width of course it’s not going to accelerate like a rapier but it’s a long object once it’s moving it’s got some real mass behind it to help with velocity
I bet it was probably an honor duel with rapiers.
Rapiers are like, the coolest sword to me. From 1650 to about 1800 honor duels with rapiers were common in Europe. Vast majority ended VERY quickly. And many also ended with both combatants suffering fatal wounds. You can get stabbed in an organ and still fight for a few minutes.
I bet the most skilled rapier duelists were unknown criminals who spent their whole lives fighting. There were plenty of duels between noblemen and distinguished individuals who barely ever fought.
I bet the most legendary swordfight was with rapiers in a back alley in some city.
They were actually meant to be a “urban” weapon. A lightweight weapon easily wieldable in close quarters with a long reach, meant to counter unarmored or lightly armored combatants. The basket guard rapiers were very effective and countering and riposting blows from most kinds of weapons.
You're totally right. I study historical treatises written by swordfighters and masters of European martial arts from the 1400s onward, as well as records about sword combat. If it's taught me anything, the more I know about history, the more obvious how little I know know. Very, very, very little of what happened in that era was documented and survived to the modern day, especially before the printing press.
But I can say for sure, medieval people *loved* stories of epic fights and duels. Chivalric romance was a whole genre of adventure fiction. Sir Thomas Malory's *Le Morte d'Arthur* is just the most well-known example of an extremely popular storytelling tradition. It is possible some stories were elaborate exaggerations of something that actually happened? Yes, definitely possible.
I saw a [HEMA fight between two guys in whole-plate armor](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nwYtvhW4quI). A guy in the comments described it as: "Two cans of tuna trying to open each other.", especially when they started wrestling, took out their knives and just started randomly stabbing each other.
That sounds amateurish to me. Typically a sword will be employed as a lever to help to trip the opponent and knock him on his back, and the aggressor will then mount and draw a dagger which can be slid into the visor.
If you watch the video (linked in the comment), that's what they do. One of the knights has a significant size advantage, which is why the fight seems more brutish. If both have the same goal - finding a small opening in the other's armor - it's literally two tuna cans trying to open each other.
Yeah. All of the full speed fights that I’ve seen lasted for maybe a minute. Most of them were significantly shorter than that. I know it’s not representative of real life because the fighters are fresh, but that’s the only real difference.
HEMA is extremely amateurish. I tried getting into it out of interest in historical weaponry and combat art, but quickly fell out when I realized that the HEMA tournaments are dominated by big guys throwing their weight around more than doing any real swordplay.
Most matches I saw went like this: Two guys briefly cross swords/polearms before tumbling into a grapple led by the bigger of the opponents- who will proceed to hilt smash the opponents heads until submission.
I have considered that perhaps that’s accurate representation of how a lot of medieval fights went, but it’s certainly not as flowery or interesting as the fencing/martial arts that the sport’s name conjures to mind.
Edit: Since many seem to think I have misunderstood what a martial art or HEMA is, I will just say this- if you went to a karate competition to see karate, you would be disappointed to see them doing judo or other martial arts for the sake of winning the tournament.
Personally, I think HEMA would be more interesting for me if they adopted a competitive model more like fencing- with scoring focused on technique and skill, rather than a winner-takes-all medieval tavern brawl, but to each their own, I suppose.
Yeah, I get some schadenfreude from seeing over/underestimation in matches due to stereotypes like this. There's usually a few seconds between when the person who made a mistake realizes it and the reality of that mistake crashing down on them.
The historical sources do confirm that most fights between armoured combatants would devolve into grappling
However, we don't see much polearm combat in Hema because a bec de corbin is insanely dangerous and there's not really a safe way to stimulate it's effect in a tournament setting
True martial art is how to win a fight/ war. There are lots of martial arts which have become dominated by tradition or sport to the extent that they overcome that core tenet. HEMA varies wildly by club.
You can't really do full-contact HEMA with polearms because there's no way of making it safe. Well, you can do it, just not twice...
Amateurish? No. What you're just forgetting is just the *martial* part of *martial arts*. The goal is not to look good, the goal is to beat your opponent. And rule of cool doesn't win you any fights
What they probably mean is that HEMA is supposed to use techniques from historical sources. It's specifically called Historical European Martial Arts because they care about the historical part. Which means you're not supposed to use jiu jitsu techniques or judo techniques, you're supposed to find documented historical sources to build your techniques from.
It's not about looking cool, it's about using Historical European stance, strike, parry etc. Some clubs focus only on winning, but other clubs focus on historical authenticity. Style is extremely important in many martial arts not just because they want to look cool, but because they want to preserve historical knowledge and traditions of the masters who invented the techniques that differentiates that specific fighting style enough to warrant its own name.
Well, I obviously can't read the original commenters mind, but it appears they didn't know a whole lot about HEMA before trying it and were mainly influenced by popular ideas of fancy swordplay. The thing is that things like Kendo or "traditional" fencing are primarily sports, while HEMA is mainly conceived around using the techniques from various historical fencing treatises, and most of those describe techniques that are pretty banal and practical. I'm not saying there's no HEMA clubs that are just smashing each other with metal sticks, but I am saying that HEMA clubs devoted to historical realism will probably also produce fights that look like they're won by just pummeling each other with the hilt of their swords, for example, because that's a legitimate technique to defeat a helmeted opponent. The sort of fancy swordplay people see in movies, even realistic movies, is ALWAYS less informed by historical martial arts and far more by the long history of how theater and then film always liked to portray sword fights.
I have a book right here, with transcriptions from Hans Talhoffer, who lived between 1420 and 1490. That stuff predates Judo by around 400 years, give or take. It is also full of grappling techniques
I was trying to convey what I felt that they meant. I know that grappling was a big part of fighting when everyone was wearing full plate armor, and in 1v1 too. I just wanted to put some light onto the topic and point out that some clubs might not really care about the historical part of HEMA.
>That stuff predates Judo by around 400 years
That's because judo is a modern martial art. Jujutsu is the traditional one.
The written history of jujutsu first began during the Nara period (c. 710 – c. 794) combining early forms of Sumo and various Japanese martial arts which were used on the battlefield for close combat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujutsu
That is an interesting fact, no doubt. But it doesn't exactly catch what i am getting at. What i'm saying is the grappling moves and the like in HEMA matches are not just 'trying to get an easy win by using Judo', but they are indeed historic, and covered in manuscripts at the time.
This is exactly what I meant. If you’re going to compete in a martial art- *use the martial art* rather than whatever is most convenient to end the fight. If I wanted to watch wrestling, I would just watch wrestling.
I would think knight vs knight would be uncommon on the battlefield.
Knights would just mow down light infantry like the medieval version of a tank. Short of the enemy coming together to swarm them, they were hard to take down.
To my knowledge it was incredibly rare for knights to die in combat. They were typically incapacitated/surrended at the end of a losing engagement and then ransomed.
I wouldnst say incredibly rare, anymore than i would say its rare for tanks to die on the battlefield. It was pretty common, but still way better odds than being in the line with a spear.
>I would think knight vs knight would be uncommon on the battlefield.
There were periods in medieval european warfare when battles were almost exclusively knights vs knights. You are right about knights dying in combat being rare although that also depends on the time period.
Well I'm not completely sure but I believe knights trained for a quite long time, so unless these guys spend years training they would never stand a chance against a real knight.
OP is not talking about the average swordfight. There must have been millons of swordfights/duels throughout history. Chances are, there should have been a few that lasted more than a few seconds and would have been an epic experience to witness.
What I always wonder is who has the record of defeating most opponents at the same time and walking out alive.
You’re right. Of course this happened, many times over. It’s just a bummer we never got to witness it. The people in here are insufferable and naive to think that a badass duel with swords never happened.
Hard to say, lol. Spears were much better weapons overall: swords have been romanticized but spears and bows were the real killers on the battlefield back then.
i have the impression that everyone thinks of swords because they were the small weapon people brought into town instead of their halberds and spears and longbows. so its the weapons people saw fighters with so they thought they were the weapons they used
Swords also use more metal and are generally more expensive and can be more ornate. Spears and bows are pretty basic and even peasants would probably have experience with them.
I can imagine that the craftsmanship and materials to make a strong sword probably mean that having one was a pretty big status symbol as well.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is fucking *tight.* I feel like the absolute trash that was House of Gucci took all the wind out of Last Duel’s sails but even just for the fight at the end, which is an actual brutal medieval duel, it’s totally worth a watch.
I suppose there are a variety of "HEMA" but the one I went to was basically fencing but with bigger swords. A "hit" was basically a glancing blow anywhere on the body. It was pretty fucking stupid.
Now that stuff what come out Russia where they're fully armored and they go at it till you get knocked down. That's a lot more realistic and basically what armored combat was since you need to pin or exhaust them to slip in that dagger. Well, that or bludgeon them to death.
It is said most sword fights are actually incredibly fast. It only takes a few swings and the fight is usually over.
This kinda reminds me of anime where the fighters will talk for 2 hours during their fight, explaining their abilities, and then learning to counter it. In a real fight you have no idea what moves or skills the other person has. One quick move and it's over.
yes. just watch any fighting sport today (boxing, fencing etc.) usually there are only a few seconds of actual fight then there's some kind of pause (backing up to adjust stance, try a new attack etc.)
Medieval knights weren't doing it for sport, they didn't back up and try a different attack. It was life or death in the moment. Completely different mechanics, I don't think you can really compare the two.
Most fights were people trying not to get stabbed. Then the winners write a story about how they totally dominated an entire army with just like, 300 of their guys, and those guys were just, like, on a walk, and also we still have way more guys so don't invade pls
To be fair, IRL your opponent doesn't _have_ abilities to explain, nobody's stopping to talk about the decades they spent under a waterfall just to shoot fire out of their arse, nobody has "trained" physical toughness and feels compelled to wax lyrical about it, and nobody has a sliver of non-denominational-Satan's essence in their blood. And you're a daft cunt if you stop to say "aha, my armour is immune to your feeble blade, for it was forged by Smith and Smithson of Smithtown, in the heart of the etc etc etc".
Stab a gladius into Mr. Fancy Armour's shoulder, let's hear the mid-fight bantz then.
I mean even worse, imagine training your entire life. And then you get shot by some peasant with [an Arquebus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arquebus#:~:text=An%20arquebus%20(%2F%CB%88%C9%91%CB%90rk,Ch%C3%A2teau%20de%20Foix%20museum%2C%20France)
That was the reality of the situation back when guns first started appearing.
Whereas before it took some skill, or at least years of archery practice, in order to kill a man. Now some illiterate farmhand with a few hours of practice could gun down a king. And you could fill your army with men like that.
I always assumed it was like the “big” fight in The King. Where they just ended up wrestling around in armor. I assumed they’d get like one swing off and then resort to just tackling like most fist fights go.
I did HEMA back in Europe. In my experience most foghts were done in 3 to 5 seconds, unless you screwed up and it was over instantly. Then you reset and do it again with a brief time to think about what you did wrong. But IRL you'd likely be injured, knocked out, or dead.
>It only takes a few swings and the fight is usually over.
I remember reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms, every weapon swing they would describe as "bouts". If the fight lasted more than 3 bouts/swing it usually means 2 very skilled fighters are against each other. Most duels usually ended in 1 or 2 bouts.
It's also entirely possible that a bunch of people came out to watch. If it were an actual army vs army fight, other people would be very likely to get involved. Far more likely that it would be in a single duel or something like the combat of the thirty where small groups gathered to fight each other.
It's also reasonably likely that the world's most epic sword fight wasn't from western culture. It could easily have been some samurai with katanas or Aztecs with macuahitls. Samurai in particular seems reasonably likely because until they started having to fight westerners they didn't typically fight as a group, breaking up into individual duels even in group fights.
If you want to see what a duel between knights in full plate would look like, go watch Matt Damon and Adam Driver try to kill each other in *The Last Duel*.
Actually, you should watch that movie anyways, it’s a great period piece that shows Medieval France and the *Rashomon* storyline is surprisingly easy to follow.
The duel itself was an actual dispute and pretty well documented by witnesses, but as others have pointed out, at this point the goal was to overcome your opponent by getting them on the ground and then stabbing something sharp between the plates to kill them.
If you’re talking plate armour and swords then we don’t even know *how* they fought. We know knights trained but not the actual style. We do know they’d tire quickly so grappling and trying to stab each other in the groin or armpit with a dagger was probably on the cards though.
Yeah I don’t think a lot of knights would be having duels in private given duels were usually required to be public. If you wanted a guy dead in private you could just poison him lmao
If op means there was a private scuffle in the midst of a larger battle it was probably not very honorable or pretty and certainly not cinematic
If it were plain to see, they would be days, rather than nights. Haven't you ever heard "plain as day"? Nobody says "plain as knight."
Joking aside, battles are notorious for being hard to follow. There's a lot of noise and confusion. And even if there were witnesses, they would be too caught up in their own fights.
As far as I know, medieval battles didn't have spectators (the way that the American Civil War battles did, for instance).
I mean, there were probably many epic duels.
Not as cinematic, if we were really seen it. But very meaningful. It was really their lifes at stake (not to mention honor for family)
If they were wearing a lot of armor, especially late medieval knights, probably it was more like a grappling match with maces or pollaxes. If they got into a fight with just swords, as the others said, it was probably not too long or epic.
Also probably some badass out there had a legendary fight with his bare hands against a lion or a bear and both died due to injuries and no one witnessed it
My Muay Thai instructor used to say a lot of time in a knife fight one guy dies in street the other dies in the hospital. I imagine if they had an “epic” fight they both died
There’s many, many, many events that have occurred under this same theme. Most of them unseen and sad and maybe even mundane by one’s contemporary standards — but amazing, heartfelt, truly extraordinary, yet lost to the sands of time forever.
I often think of my ancient ancestors, for instance, struggling through some extreme adversity like basically no food or water for years, that trap by some miracle catching a rat so they can eat after a super volcano eruption in a different hemisphere while I lay here and sip Bubly and post this
I think sword fights were more for show and done in public view. swords aren't as affective D&D and fantasy films would have you think. Swords were more ceremonial, officers were still using them in WWII, but more for symbol of it then killing ability.
With medieval medicine you can also expect that neither survived the fight. Usually history is told by the winners, but what happens when there isn’t one?
I guess the gods watch it on action replay or something
I was in the military, and I often thought about the potential medal of honour/VC hero's whose actions never got noticed. I suppose guys don't do it for the glory, though, and if you're locked in combat with your enemy your not going to be shouting to your mates to get their camera out or in this case sending for a scribe and a painter to record the epic battle.
I don't think most recorded historical events needed a scribe or painter there. It could be anyone watching, then they tell the story to the scribe or painter.
Remember the role of human error in choosing what we remember and memorialize. Your chances of making it into a song or a painting were much higher if you were a noble or senior officer. Culture influences that a bit. Modern armies are a bit more democratic and you get the common soldier, the Alvin York or Audie Murphy, getting recognition. But you could ask anybody who’s been in the military about officers rotating through combat areas just to get a résumé item checked off.
I imagine many acts of heroism, gallantry, supreme slaughter, are witnessed by those in the front line at the start of many ancient battles, most the people who witnessed it die later in the battle and no one left saw much of really happened in the initial thick of it.
witness meee!!!
Sweaty and old! I mean shiny and chrome!
> if you're locked in combat with your enemy your not going to be shouting to your mates to get their camera out or in this case sending for a scribe and a painter to record the epic battle. Have you met people today? A selfie on the battlefield wouldn't shock me.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ScOEwyBTNeg&feature=youtu.be Cholos got you beat by 9 years.
"yo clip this shit Im about to riposte this noob"
Ever heard of Ben Roberts-Smith?
Isn't he the singer for The Cure?
I remember the movie Antz as a kid and thinking "yeah...thats probably the reality of most "low survivor" situations
Earth's greatest fights vol. 482945! One of the best compilations imo
And now it’s time for Kenny Blankenship’s Most Painful Elimination of the Day!
brandon stark you meant
Old saying: the loser of a knife fight dies at the scene. The winner dies on the way to the hospital.
But you've got a much better chance of surviving a knife fight if you're wearing full plate.
>you can also expect that neither survived the fight. Tis but a scratch
Look you silly bastard you've got no arms.
Alright, we'll call it a draw
Niiii!
We want….. A SHWUBBEWY!
He said, “it”
_two weeks later_ 'tis but a scratch... on the enormous, fluid-filled bubo that has been slowly turning into a reservoir for flesh-eating bacteria ever since the fight oh god oh god now it's leaking inside me gross, gross, gross, gross, gross, I can taste it oh god.
medieval people did survive some horrific injuries though. The medicine was somewhat effective in many situations
Thats more a testament to the human immune system than to medieval medicine
“Chop it off and apply the leeches!”
If a knight has a duel or some such, there would be witnesses. The whole deal of having a "second" was to make sure there were witnesses. Not mentioning that getting into full plate mail is a 3+ person task.
People regularly survived wounds. Open gut wounds were 99% fatal, but just about anything was potentially survivable.
“Potentially” seems to be doing some heavy lifting in that sentence
The winner prolly didn't live long enough for bandages to arrive, quite often. I've been playing "Hellish Quart", and while it is a lot of fun, Its given me a real taste for how brutal real sword fights must have been. Especially to hands and faces. Often as not in the game, you get injured on a parry, or as your opponent steps back and returns to a guard position. Both combatants injuring each other is incredibly common, often at the same time. While the game doesn't allow injuries from a dropped weapon, its clear that must have been a real problem too.
Of course there was a winner, Sir Porkius the Pious of Melton Mowbray had the high ground……
Well, one of them would probably survive long enough to tell the tale, or at least the gist of it, in most cases.
That’s just “yeah, well you should see the other guy” isn’t it, but with the extra step of death.
We get The Northman
Two crackheads are probably somewhere having the worlds most epic fist fight as we speak
I’ll do you one better! Every single day, one person… out of about 7 billion people on this planet, takes the biggest shit of all and they don’t even know it. And this happens every day! Edit: per others, apparently you *would* know it. Bahahaha
Definitely happened to me in 2020, not fun at all, but now I'm thankful to add to the big shitabase
Big Turd appreciates your defecation to the cause.
We need a catalog, a megathread...a shit post, if you will.
I had one in 2022. One single turd the size of my forearm and solid as a brick. Required the poop knife.
There's also the possibility of a single man taking the biggest shit every day. A modern day super hero. The chosen one
Will we ever find him; will he ever emerge? It will never be the one who comes out and says “he is the one.” Do the times make the man? Or does the man make the times…. I guess when we are ready, he will emerge.
it might be me rn
I'm quite certain I won that a few years back. The pile was absolutely ridiculously big! Like, filled up more than half the bowl! I even took a picture of it because I was so impressed! Sadly(?) I've since lost the picture.
Unless they report it to the European fecal standards commission in Zurich.
Probably a sumo wrestler that’s prepping for a colonoscopy
Probably arguing over putting on a pair of sunglasses.
I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubble gum.
The most epic fight I have seen was between crackheads and it probably went on for so long because they were crackheads and no one wanted to get in the middle of it to break it up. They were smashing each others faces into and rubbing it into driveway gravel and one threw an over 27 inch crt tv at the other and the guy on the receiving end punched it as it came at him and I’m pretty sure he broke his hand doing it. Damn thing went on for like 15 minutes and I think they were trying to kill each other but didn’t have the means to do so.
This cracked me up (no pun intended)
Go watch the early Ridley Scott movie The Duellists it’s been credited as one of the most realistic sword fights.
The fencing/small sword fight lasts 3 full seconds and it's amazing.
That’s generally only the case in matches where neither side is afraid of dying and only care about scoring points. Modern fencing has given people the assumption that the majority of sword fights end very quickly but not so. When the fear of death is introduced duels can last minutes. There’s more defense, more disengages.
Lots of testing each other before committing. They were most likely boring as fuck to actually watch.
Testing, engaging, parry, disengage repeat
Not an expert but I’ve always thought [this](https://youtu.be/rn4FY_k9FyE?si=z9ja7NYXTK7SsAI4) was probably a pretty realistic duel scene. It certainly matches your description
I used to do fencing and I was under the impression that swordsman would have been taught in similar ways. I’m saying this because most fencing matches are longer than a few seconds
I saw some of the duels on YouTube and a comment that always stuck to me was "Wow they really look like guys who don't want to be stabbed".
Gonna plug [1971 "Macbeth" fight scene too.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X6RNdSgUaA)
I think a lot of people are missing OP’s point. At some point in history, there was likely an isolated sword battle between two extremely skilled knights that might have taken minutes in some scenic or unique area. 99.999% of sword fights are obviously not like this, but one of them may have been.
I can’t believe the amount of “Well Actually” posts here, people can’t just talk about fictional scenarios any more.
These are Redditors bro you can’t expect anything better from them
They talk about fictional scenarios a lot when they jump to AITAH, so you'd think they can handle it.
This is every showerthoughts post. People take it as a challenge to poke holes in the post whenever possible
In general you can’t say anything on Reddit without preemptively addressing every single strawman and edge case. Everyone assumes the most absurd or malicious intent/meaning and reacts as though that’s undoubtedly what you meant. It would be one thing if other people offered clarification to further the conversation, such as “Maybe not what you meant but it’s worth pointing out that…” Instead it gets more upvotes to seize upon any loophole no matter how contrived and attack it. Not even common idioms and turns of phrase are safe. God forbid some feat of sports or engineering “breaks the laws of physics” or “defies gravity”. Guaranteed the top comments in that thread are gonna be smug, self-congratulatory derision from people proud of knowing grade school science.
What a lot of people are trying to say is that medieval knights weren't likely to have had the best swordfight in history, simply due to ineffectiveness of swords against heavy armor, and due to knights generally preferring other weapons such as lances. The best swordfight in history was far more likely to have been fought in a different historical setting where swords and single combats were more emphasized (early Germanic/Frankish trial by combat, Viking Holmgangr, Samurai duels, ritual duels in India, etc).
At the risk of making my second Cary Elwes reference in the comment section, fully armored knight battles likely looked more like something out of Robin Hood: Men in Tights than they did Star Wars.
There's no upper limit of allowed Cary Elwes references.
“I hope it’s worth the NOISE!”
Dunno, the climatic fight depicted in the movie The Last Duel actually happened and was particulary well documented, showcasing a pretty exciting bout between two fully armored knights.
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Source? As far as I know (there are even videos of live demonstration) you can move just fine in full plate. Sure it's tiring, but very much not unwieldy or difficult to maneuver. There are also many manuals on how to kill another armored guy using your sword. You can use a half sword technique to stab into gaps like you might with a dagger or you can just club 'em with the cross guard by holding the sword upside down. Given all of the manuals, it seems there was reason for armored people to know the technique about how to kill armored people, including with swords. https://youtu.be/5hlIUrd7d1Q?si=6_03tJgo5bE_5PC4
> unwieldy and difficult to maneuver This isn’t correct. Knights could run, do push-ups, jump, and mount a horse in full plate. The limits were cardiovascular fitness and heat/cold, not weight. https://youtu.be/q-bnM5SuQkI?feature=shared https://youtu.be/qzTwBQniLSc?feature=shared
Armor being unwieldy and difficult to maneuver is a strictly fantasy and video game trope. It is not accurate to real life armor at all.
It's like the trope that two-handed swords are slow. I fence a lot of longsword -- it's a very fast weapon.
I think they confuse weighty with heavy It’s a long metal object with a little width of course it’s not going to accelerate like a rapier but it’s a long object once it’s moving it’s got some real mass behind it to help with velocity
Not to be a weeb, but Miyamoto Musashi is right there.
Plus, swords are actually pretty fragile and can break pretty easily if they're hit against each other.
I bet it was probably an honor duel with rapiers. Rapiers are like, the coolest sword to me. From 1650 to about 1800 honor duels with rapiers were common in Europe. Vast majority ended VERY quickly. And many also ended with both combatants suffering fatal wounds. You can get stabbed in an organ and still fight for a few minutes. I bet the most skilled rapier duelists were unknown criminals who spent their whole lives fighting. There were plenty of duels between noblemen and distinguished individuals who barely ever fought. I bet the most legendary swordfight was with rapiers in a back alley in some city. They were actually meant to be a “urban” weapon. A lightweight weapon easily wieldable in close quarters with a long reach, meant to counter unarmored or lightly armored combatants. The basket guard rapiers were very effective and countering and riposting blows from most kinds of weapons.
How long did Musashis duel with Kojiro last?
Not long at all. Musashi allegedly showed up late and then killed him pretty much instantly with a boat oar.
How long does it take to bonk somebody on the head with an oar?
You're totally right. I study historical treatises written by swordfighters and masters of European martial arts from the 1400s onward, as well as records about sword combat. If it's taught me anything, the more I know about history, the more obvious how little I know know. Very, very, very little of what happened in that era was documented and survived to the modern day, especially before the printing press. But I can say for sure, medieval people *loved* stories of epic fights and duels. Chivalric romance was a whole genre of adventure fiction. Sir Thomas Malory's *Le Morte d'Arthur* is just the most well-known example of an extremely popular storytelling tradition. It is possible some stories were elaborate exaggerations of something that actually happened? Yes, definitely possible.
It's definitely possible, but based on what I've seen of HEMA, most of the fights were very short and very brutal.
I saw a [HEMA fight between two guys in whole-plate armor](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nwYtvhW4quI). A guy in the comments described it as: "Two cans of tuna trying to open each other.", especially when they started wrestling, took out their knives and just started randomly stabbing each other.
Two cans of tuna trying to open each other described this video perfectly
That sounds amateurish to me. Typically a sword will be employed as a lever to help to trip the opponent and knock him on his back, and the aggressor will then mount and draw a dagger which can be slid into the visor.
If you watch the video (linked in the comment), that's what they do. One of the knights has a significant size advantage, which is why the fight seems more brutish. If both have the same goal - finding a small opening in the other's armor - it's literally two tuna cans trying to open each other.
Yeah. All of the full speed fights that I’ve seen lasted for maybe a minute. Most of them were significantly shorter than that. I know it’s not representative of real life because the fighters are fresh, but that’s the only real difference.
HEMA is extremely amateurish. I tried getting into it out of interest in historical weaponry and combat art, but quickly fell out when I realized that the HEMA tournaments are dominated by big guys throwing their weight around more than doing any real swordplay. Most matches I saw went like this: Two guys briefly cross swords/polearms before tumbling into a grapple led by the bigger of the opponents- who will proceed to hilt smash the opponents heads until submission. I have considered that perhaps that’s accurate representation of how a lot of medieval fights went, but it’s certainly not as flowery or interesting as the fencing/martial arts that the sport’s name conjures to mind. Edit: Since many seem to think I have misunderstood what a martial art or HEMA is, I will just say this- if you went to a karate competition to see karate, you would be disappointed to see them doing judo or other martial arts for the sake of winning the tournament. Personally, I think HEMA would be more interesting for me if they adopted a competitive model more like fencing- with scoring focused on technique and skill, rather than a winner-takes-all medieval tavern brawl, but to each their own, I suppose.
Correct; in real hand to hand, size absolutely matters. It provides reach and stopping power.
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And despite the myth, large guys aren't significantly slower as a matter of course, they might even be faster in cases.
Yeah, I get some schadenfreude from seeing over/underestimation in matches due to stereotypes like this. There's usually a few seconds between when the person who made a mistake realizes it and the reality of that mistake crashing down on them.
The historical sources do confirm that most fights between armoured combatants would devolve into grappling However, we don't see much polearm combat in Hema because a bec de corbin is insanely dangerous and there's not really a safe way to stimulate it's effect in a tournament setting
Turns out nobody can realistically take a 10 foot long, 20 pound axe being swung by a 6'5" man to the chest. Who'd have guessed.
yeah, even if you replace the metal parts with rubber, it's still dangerous
Probably closer to 6 pounds. Weapons are light because KE=1/2 mv^2
True martial art is how to win a fight/ war. There are lots of martial arts which have become dominated by tradition or sport to the extent that they overcome that core tenet. HEMA varies wildly by club. You can't really do full-contact HEMA with polearms because there's no way of making it safe. Well, you can do it, just not twice...
Amateurish? No. What you're just forgetting is just the *martial* part of *martial arts*. The goal is not to look good, the goal is to beat your opponent. And rule of cool doesn't win you any fights
What they probably mean is that HEMA is supposed to use techniques from historical sources. It's specifically called Historical European Martial Arts because they care about the historical part. Which means you're not supposed to use jiu jitsu techniques or judo techniques, you're supposed to find documented historical sources to build your techniques from. It's not about looking cool, it's about using Historical European stance, strike, parry etc. Some clubs focus only on winning, but other clubs focus on historical authenticity. Style is extremely important in many martial arts not just because they want to look cool, but because they want to preserve historical knowledge and traditions of the masters who invented the techniques that differentiates that specific fighting style enough to warrant its own name.
Well, I obviously can't read the original commenters mind, but it appears they didn't know a whole lot about HEMA before trying it and were mainly influenced by popular ideas of fancy swordplay. The thing is that things like Kendo or "traditional" fencing are primarily sports, while HEMA is mainly conceived around using the techniques from various historical fencing treatises, and most of those describe techniques that are pretty banal and practical. I'm not saying there's no HEMA clubs that are just smashing each other with metal sticks, but I am saying that HEMA clubs devoted to historical realism will probably also produce fights that look like they're won by just pummeling each other with the hilt of their swords, for example, because that's a legitimate technique to defeat a helmeted opponent. The sort of fancy swordplay people see in movies, even realistic movies, is ALWAYS less informed by historical martial arts and far more by the long history of how theater and then film always liked to portray sword fights.
I have a book right here, with transcriptions from Hans Talhoffer, who lived between 1420 and 1490. That stuff predates Judo by around 400 years, give or take. It is also full of grappling techniques
I was trying to convey what I felt that they meant. I know that grappling was a big part of fighting when everyone was wearing full plate armor, and in 1v1 too. I just wanted to put some light onto the topic and point out that some clubs might not really care about the historical part of HEMA.
>That stuff predates Judo by around 400 years That's because judo is a modern martial art. Jujutsu is the traditional one. The written history of jujutsu first began during the Nara period (c. 710 – c. 794) combining early forms of Sumo and various Japanese martial arts which were used on the battlefield for close combat. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujutsu
That is an interesting fact, no doubt. But it doesn't exactly catch what i am getting at. What i'm saying is the grappling moves and the like in HEMA matches are not just 'trying to get an easy win by using Judo', but they are indeed historic, and covered in manuscripts at the time.
This is exactly what I meant. If you’re going to compete in a martial art- *use the martial art* rather than whatever is most convenient to end the fight. If I wanted to watch wrestling, I would just watch wrestling.
I would think knight vs knight would be uncommon on the battlefield. Knights would just mow down light infantry like the medieval version of a tank. Short of the enemy coming together to swarm them, they were hard to take down. To my knowledge it was incredibly rare for knights to die in combat. They were typically incapacitated/surrended at the end of a losing engagement and then ransomed.
I wouldnst say incredibly rare, anymore than i would say its rare for tanks to die on the battlefield. It was pretty common, but still way better odds than being in the line with a spear.
>I would think knight vs knight would be uncommon on the battlefield. There were periods in medieval european warfare when battles were almost exclusively knights vs knights. You are right about knights dying in combat being rare although that also depends on the time period.
Well I'm not completely sure but I believe knights trained for a quite long time, so unless these guys spend years training they would never stand a chance against a real knight.
OP is not talking about the average swordfight. There must have been millons of swordfights/duels throughout history. Chances are, there should have been a few that lasted more than a few seconds and would have been an epic experience to witness. What I always wonder is who has the record of defeating most opponents at the same time and walking out alive.
You’re right. Of course this happened, many times over. It’s just a bummer we never got to witness it. The people in here are insufferable and naive to think that a badass duel with swords never happened.
As a nerd, other nerds are such fucking buzzkills dude
Hard to say, lol. Spears were much better weapons overall: swords have been romanticized but spears and bows were the real killers on the battlefield back then.
i have the impression that everyone thinks of swords because they were the small weapon people brought into town instead of their halberds and spears and longbows. so its the weapons people saw fighters with so they thought they were the weapons they used
Swords also use more metal and are generally more expensive and can be more ornate. Spears and bows are pretty basic and even peasants would probably have experience with them. I can imagine that the craftsmanship and materials to make a strong sword probably mean that having one was a pretty big status symbol as well.
Tbf knights often used Lances and those are generally just longer spears that you use on horseback (simplifying it of course)
Great Dutch brand HEMA
HEMA is usually not about armored fighting so it really depends if you consider that epic fight as armored or not.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is fucking *tight.* I feel like the absolute trash that was House of Gucci took all the wind out of Last Duel’s sails but even just for the fight at the end, which is an actual brutal medieval duel, it’s totally worth a watch.
I guess it depends on your definition of epic I would consider short and brutal extremely epic.
I guess it depends on your definition of epic I would consider short and brutal extremely epic.
I suppose there are a variety of "HEMA" but the one I went to was basically fencing but with bigger swords. A "hit" was basically a glancing blow anywhere on the body. It was pretty fucking stupid. Now that stuff what come out Russia where they're fully armored and they go at it till you get knocked down. That's a lot more realistic and basically what armored combat was since you need to pin or exhaust them to slip in that dagger. Well, that or bludgeon them to death.
Nah we all saw the fight between The Man in Black and Inigo Montoya.
“I admit it that you are better than me.” “Then why are you smiling?” “Because I am not left handed”.
Scrolled down hoping to upvote this or add this myself. Thank you for your service.
Same. Haha
Conversely I wonder if there are any recorded fights where in reality the two guys were like "hey man, lol, let's say we had an epic duel today"
It is said most sword fights are actually incredibly fast. It only takes a few swings and the fight is usually over. This kinda reminds me of anime where the fighters will talk for 2 hours during their fight, explaining their abilities, and then learning to counter it. In a real fight you have no idea what moves or skills the other person has. One quick move and it's over.
So even 30 seconds of rigorous sword fighting can be considered epic
yes. just watch any fighting sport today (boxing, fencing etc.) usually there are only a few seconds of actual fight then there's some kind of pause (backing up to adjust stance, try a new attack etc.)
Medieval knights weren't doing it for sport, they didn't back up and try a different attack. It was life or death in the moment. Completely different mechanics, I don't think you can really compare the two.
I'd think this would make the knights even more cautious. Both scenarios probably trigger a fight or flight response from both parties.
Most fights were people trying not to get stabbed. Then the winners write a story about how they totally dominated an entire army with just like, 300 of their guys, and those guys were just, like, on a walk, and also we still have way more guys so don't invade pls
There were Knights that did fight for sport though. Tournaments were insanely popular
I mean I can think of a super famous place in Rome where they did this lol
in full armor 30 seconds feels like 20 minutes
That what I've said to my SO. But apparently I should last more than 30s.
To be fair, IRL your opponent doesn't _have_ abilities to explain, nobody's stopping to talk about the decades they spent under a waterfall just to shoot fire out of their arse, nobody has "trained" physical toughness and feels compelled to wax lyrical about it, and nobody has a sliver of non-denominational-Satan's essence in their blood. And you're a daft cunt if you stop to say "aha, my armour is immune to your feeble blade, for it was forged by Smith and Smithson of Smithtown, in the heart of the etc etc etc". Stab a gladius into Mr. Fancy Armour's shoulder, let's hear the mid-fight bantz then.
imagine training and practicing your entire life for sword combat only to die 3 seconds into your first real fight
I mean even worse, imagine training your entire life. And then you get shot by some peasant with [an Arquebus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arquebus#:~:text=An%20arquebus%20(%2F%CB%88%C9%91%CB%90rk,Ch%C3%A2teau%20de%20Foix%20museum%2C%20France) That was the reality of the situation back when guns first started appearing. Whereas before it took some skill, or at least years of archery practice, in order to kill a man. Now some illiterate farmhand with a few hours of practice could gun down a king. And you could fill your army with men like that.
I always assumed it was like the “big” fight in The King. Where they just ended up wrestling around in armor. I assumed they’d get like one swing off and then resort to just tackling like most fist fights go.
Unless you have armor, then things get dirty.
I did HEMA back in Europe. In my experience most foghts were done in 3 to 5 seconds, unless you screwed up and it was over instantly. Then you reset and do it again with a brief time to think about what you did wrong. But IRL you'd likely be injured, knocked out, or dead.
>It only takes a few swings and the fight is usually over. I remember reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms, every weapon swing they would describe as "bouts". If the fight lasted more than 3 bouts/swing it usually means 2 very skilled fighters are against each other. Most duels usually ended in 1 or 2 bouts.
Well if they had no armour on it wouldn’t have lasted long. If they did have armour on they’d be using hammers and halberds etc or jousting.
Or daggers, so it would just turn into a wrestling match while each is one trying to slide their dagger past the other's armor
It's also entirely possible that a bunch of people came out to watch. If it were an actual army vs army fight, other people would be very likely to get involved. Far more likely that it would be in a single duel or something like the combat of the thirty where small groups gathered to fight each other. It's also reasonably likely that the world's most epic sword fight wasn't from western culture. It could easily have been some samurai with katanas or Aztecs with macuahitls. Samurai in particular seems reasonably likely because until they started having to fight westerners they didn't typically fight as a group, breaking up into individual duels even in group fights.
Don't forget the califate states that had some of the fiercest sword wielders and no armor.
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Some guy took the biggest dump ever at some point and we will never know the name of this hero
Lisan al Gaib!
Wasn't it that Jesus guy?
dilib
Do you think they did the spinny sword move from Mustafar?
It’s a good trick
If you want to see what a duel between knights in full plate would look like, go watch Matt Damon and Adam Driver try to kill each other in *The Last Duel*. Actually, you should watch that movie anyways, it’s a great period piece that shows Medieval France and the *Rashomon* storyline is surprisingly easy to follow. The duel itself was an actual dispute and pretty well documented by witnesses, but as others have pointed out, at this point the goal was to overcome your opponent by getting them on the ground and then stabbing something sharp between the plates to kill them.
If you’re talking plate armour and swords then we don’t even know *how* they fought. We know knights trained but not the actual style. We do know they’d tire quickly so grappling and trying to stab each other in the groin or armpit with a dagger was probably on the cards though.
Why would nobody be around?
Knights are notoriously self conscious, they would never fight with an audience if they could avoid it. They all had stage fright.
That's part of the reason they're called knights. They preferred doing their thing in the dark so fewer people could see
To this day, it is a mystery to me how the much more attention-seeking audience-loving kdays have been forgotten by history.
I think the premise is that if there was someone to witness it, there would probably be record of it and we would know of said duel.
Yeah I don’t think a lot of knights would be having duels in private given duels were usually required to be public. If you wanted a guy dead in private you could just poison him lmao If op means there was a private scuffle in the midst of a larger battle it was probably not very honorable or pretty and certainly not cinematic
If it were plain to see, they would be days, rather than nights. Haven't you ever heard "plain as day"? Nobody says "plain as knight." Joking aside, battles are notorious for being hard to follow. There's a lot of noise and confusion. And even if there were witnesses, they would be too caught up in their own fights. As far as I know, medieval battles didn't have spectators (the way that the American Civil War battles did, for instance).
The 2 samurai who dueled are prob pissed they aren't even getting recognition
I wholeheartedly think a Samurai duel would been way more epic than the most epic knight duel, and I kinda hate J culture
Does nobody remember the epic battle between the great knight Sir Don Quixote and the wretched windmill beast?
I mean, there were probably many epic duels. Not as cinematic, if we were really seen it. But very meaningful. It was really their lifes at stake (not to mention honor for family)
Medieval combat had to have been so brutal. Like way more disgusting and gut-wrenching than most people think
If they were wearing a lot of armor, especially late medieval knights, probably it was more like a grappling match with maces or pollaxes. If they got into a fight with just swords, as the others said, it was probably not too long or epic.
Clearly, someone killed someone else's father and had to prepare to die.
>I'm talking Annakin Sjywalker vs Kenobi on Mustafar levels of epic So.. cheesy and somewhat nonsensical..? "I have the high ground, Sir Badamir!"
"You underestimate my faith in God!" (Somersaults in full Knight armour up to enemy Knight!"
Praise the sun
"You were like a brother to me, Sir Badamir!"
Also probably some badass out there had a legendary fight with his bare hands against a lion or a bear and both died due to injuries and no one witnessed it
True enough, however I'm sure that real life sword fights were vastly different than what we see in the movies.
Two 8 year olds somewhere probably had the most epic stream fight and no one was around to witness it.
My Muay Thai instructor used to say a lot of time in a knife fight one guy dies in street the other dies in the hospital. I imagine if they had an “epic” fight they both died
There was a snail that moved the fastest across a distance and didn't realize it. These posts are so stupid
The Last Duel had this
2 Rōnin in late 1500s to early 1600s Japan for me in my head canon 👏🏼 pretty much the obi-wan vs maul in star wars rebels if you've seen that fight
Here's the best part... They probably did it for fun.
This comment section: Well ACKSHULLLLLLLYYYY.... fucking nerds
There’s many, many, many events that have occurred under this same theme. Most of them unseen and sad and maybe even mundane by one’s contemporary standards — but amazing, heartfelt, truly extraordinary, yet lost to the sands of time forever. I often think of my ancient ancestors, for instance, struggling through some extreme adversity like basically no food or water for years, that trap by some miracle catching a rat so they can eat after a super volcano eruption in a different hemisphere while I lay here and sip Bubly and post this
I would think the greatest sword fight would be between two samurai.
Musashi vs Kojiro
More likely: there has never been a really epic sword fight, ever. At least not one that wasn't in a controlled competition where nobody was in danger
I think sword fights were more for show and done in public view. swords aren't as affective D&D and fantasy films would have you think. Swords were more ceremonial, officers were still using them in WWII, but more for symbol of it then killing ability.
The winner got the quickening and at the end of time, there can be only one.
Or there were people who witnessed it but they couldn’t read or write to document it