Soldato
My fists.
Come at me bro!
Come at me bro!
Medieval Weapons
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Soldato
A flail dipped in cholera.
Soldato
Unfolded of course, or I'll get tasered and then eaten alive by Harambe's 10x great grandfather
Harambe
Man of Honour
He emphasises that it's opinion when it is opinion and that he provides extensive references to sources. I think he's a much better source than you think he is.
Other than the almost universal knife, I'd say a club of some sort would be much more common in most situations for most people. A quarterstaff is really rather bulky to be carrying around routinely.
By the late medieval period, swords could be bought for less than a shilling in England. There are references to swords being as cheap as 6d by the end of the 14th century. A day's pay for a man at arms. Metallurgy improved a lot in the latter half of the middle ages and England had plenty of resources for it, so metal items became a great deal cheaper. A good sword was still expensive and flashy good swords very expensive, but mediocre swords were cheap. Different kettle of fish earlier in the medieval period, when swords were very expensive indeed.
Commoners hardly ever wore swords, but not because they were hugely expensive. It was illegal in many places and generally pointless to most people anyway. Why would a commoner need to carry a sword for daily medieval life in their home village or town?
A good point.
Soldato
Yep Dave used to do similar things with us my favourite being "Oh, no that's not a repro that's a 14th Century original" he said as I was cleaving chunks out of a hanging pig side with a Falchion
There is nothing like the understanding you get of an item than when you try to reproduce one yourself
and even if doesn't come out quite right the (sweary 
) journey of construction is the most fun part anyway, also as any armourer will tell you nothing is ever any good until you're making the mark III
Soldato
One of the difficulties in primary source is the what is the interpretation of a club and a quaterstaff, in a lot of court rolls where weapons are referred to club and staff seem interchangeable as those recording were often ignorant of or saw no need for a specific definition
Ammunition grade swords were famously next to useless and many treated them susoiciously as generally when used with any force they would fail
In many area's the illegality wasn't only down any sense of danger of arming a common population but one of social strata and maintaining the status quo, regardless of the cheapness of a low grade blade, a sword in the English psyche was (and to some extent still is) a symbol of status and local sumptuary laws and definitions could dictate the legality of public show.
Soldato
GD has the weirdest questions... Okay, well I think it would have to be dysentery every time. That would sort the lot of them out.
But if we're talking something more immediate then I guess some sort of sword for the gorillas. I'm not big and strong so a little one. Polar bear has to be a spear or a halberd or similar. You want to keep polar bears far away from you if you're to have a chance so something you can poke it with from far away to make it change its mind whilst you hope for a seal to appear and distract it. For the pack of wolves one of those spikey balls on a chain. You could keep spinning round and once you'd struck a few they might run off. (Maybe).
But that's about it. I don't fancy my chances with any of them really. Unless the polar bear is just looking for someone to optimise their database queries I'm probably out of luck.
Soldato
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He is full of sources and resources... but he's also regarded a complete wassock by almost all of his contemporaries. Partly because he averages about 10,000 Sword Forum posts a year jibbering on about his stuff! But I find there are some fundamental errors in his opinions, to the point where he goes against the very sources he uses to substantiate his ideas, ignores universally accepted historical fact, or comes out with something that even people not involved in any martial arts can see will not work. On the surface he's fine, if a bit up himself, but when you get down to the detail he really does pull stuff out of his backside sometimes. I recall one particular quarterstaff video he did on YouTube that attracted an army of ridicule, with a number of other noted researchers doing response videos to (quite politely) disprove the crap he'd just come out with.
While some of his stuff is perfectly fine, particularly the Fiore side, his practices, his attitude toward other practitioners and the loudness with which he shouts his opinions around (inversely proportional to his actual understanding of the matter, usually) makes for quite a dislikeable and unreliable source.
Club = Cudgel, pretty much. They're so similar, they're often regarded as the same, although I like to think of a cudgel as being longer, hence its use as a training sword.
And yet it was SO often used in combats, assaults, fracas, and the like, at least in England. It likely wasn't a full-on battlefield Longstaff or even Quarterstaff, but something around 5-6' anyway.
You wouldn't really want to trust your life to anything poor quality, though. The sword of a standard suitable for any Scholler starting in a 'school of fence' around 1180 was about 40 shillings, but this didn't really change until the mid-1600s. Company of Maister records, mainly around Prize playing, were pretty good at setting down costs and fees for their students. I think this last part is also a factor, since the fees for tuition and membership were also quite expensive for commoners... and yet, it was a bone of contention that the rich nobility would rather pay hundreds of Pounds to learn inferior weapon-handling from foreign instructors of flawed systems, than learn their own country's ways, simply because the other was fashionable!
But at the same time, metallurgy didn't improve so much, as people simply learned about making the swords they previously just imported from Germanic and Norse lands (why the Anglo-Saxons didn't bring this knowledge with them when they emigrated, I don't know). Armoury and general smithing "improved" a bit, replacing awesome-but-heavy pattern-welded Norse blades with lighter Broadswords designed to be used without benefit of a shield, although I'd argue it merely changed to keep up with the culture rather than specifically improving, as such.
Swords specifically?
Why would they ban swords, but not the large number of other more effective weapons, unless it was purely a Class thing?
Certainly "schools of sword and buckler" were outlawed in a few towns, mainly because they felt it led to young men going out of a night and picking fights with each other - This is reckoned to be where Swashbuckling comes from; 'swashing' or bashing their swords against their bucklers to basically announce, "Come and 'ave a go if ya fink yer 'ard enuff" to rival groups.
If you need a knife for daily EDC defense, a sword would be better... but a staff is even more betterer and more readily available, as are things like forest bills and mauls.
Man of Honour
I'm just a mildly interested amateur, but I get a definite impression that a lot of the wish to have precise categorisation is a modern thing. No doubt in some cases it was ignorance (either of the details of the case or ignorance of weaponry in general by a clerk writing the records), but I get the impression that people often didn't consider specific and complex categorisation as being necessary or particularly useful. e.g. Robert killed John by hitting him in the head with...do the details matter? It's murder whether it was a club, a quarterstaff or an axe handle or anything else. John is dead and Robert will be hanged if he hadn't died in jail before the trial or escaped and become an outlaw. Perhaps the change to is due to the more scientific approach of modern society?
True, but they were there. Although I suppose it could be argued that the really cheap ones weren't really swords as such and would be better classified as sword-shaped objects. But there was a range of cost. Sort of like buying a car today. No doubt that a £50,000 car would be a lot better than a £500 nth hand rustbucket that was rubbish even when it was new, but a useful car could be bought for something in between.
That's what I was thinking of. Many people in the common population were sort of armed anyway. Many medieval tools could be used as quite effective weapons, particularly in the hands of people very used to wielding them, and weight of numbers counts for a lot. The lone fighter defeating a dozen enemies at once is something that requires the most powerful of allies - the script writer
Public order wouldn't be helped much either, since pretty much everyone carried a knife and in many civilian situations a knife would be more than adequate for murdering someone. Better than a sword in some situations.
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Soldato
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In some ways, yes. The distinctions of categorisation in a court of law have become more important, perhaps.
But contemporary sources draw massive distinctions between a hedging bill, forest bill Black bill, Brown bill, Welch bill and so on. They all look pretty much the same at first look, but the differences are distinct enough that they're given different names. The same when it comes to fight manuals, poetry and general literature - The language used and specific choices of words were far more precise than we mostly allow today. The difficulty for us now is in understanding what the words meant back then.
For example, hawking someone - It's believed this referred to an attack made from above, like a hawk swooping down. This comes up against attacks like the wheel, throw, wrench, cut and defence moves like the block, stop and ward. Initially there's not much discernible difference, but when you get into it the differences and the reasons seem quite stark.
There is (was) a massive and obvious difference between hitting someone with a cudgel and hitting them with a quarterstaff, especially when harm is intended and this can give reason as to the person's intent to merely harm, or almost certainly kill. Kinda like going out to hit someone on a bicycle, versus doing it in an HGV.
The sword has long since been as much a symbol as a practical tool. It was usually a secondary weapon anyway and many people had them as simply wallhangers, much in the same way we do today.
Depends on his weapon.The lone fighter defeating a dozen enemies at once is something that requires the most powerful of allies - the script writer
Against six fairly well trained swordsmen, I should only need a 6' quarterstaff and the space to swing it. More opponents are actually easier than fewer, in that respect. My instructor could do nine and talk us through what he's doing at the same time, but we suspect he's possibly superhuman!!
Soldato
Nice to see GD coming up trumps like it does every now and again and what should have initially been a pointless thread has given me an enjoyable discussion with other people (you just don't know what lurks behind those user names
) who have an interest in historical arms and martial arts. Cheers that can be an issue in hand-to-hand combat too, attackers can hamper each other and you can grab one and use him to block another etc.
Soldato
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It's easier with a polearm, though, as you can move your weapon faster than they can move their bodies and they're also further slowed if they have to move around their buddies, especially if they want to avoid hitting each other... which is hilarious when it happens!!
1 versus many will mostly come down to the skill involved - if you have one highly functioning i.e. mentally able to think through the fight, well trained with a lot of actual fighting experience (not just play/training fights) against several not particularly intelligent, skilled or experienced opponents it is an entirely different story to 1 versus several people who are reasonably competent.
Soldato
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It's usually a mix of the above, to varying degrees.
Against many opponents, being able to observe & think around them and use basic physics against them is the primary deciding factor, but eventually you'll need to deal with them if only one at a time, which is where psychology, skill, technique and experience all make their differences. If you can think around them and use basic skills to start dropping them it can scare the others enough to send them running.
Soldato
You need to stop watching Steven Seagal films.
Soldato
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Indeed... not for any reasons of martial inaccuracy. Just don't watch them!!
Man of Honour
I think that's over-stating the case a bit. More like a car and an HGV, I think, or at least a motorbike and an HGV
A cudgel isn't the "whatever gets hit is very broken indeed" weapon that a quarterstaff is, but it's pretty potent.How much did it matter in law in various times and places? If, for example, a person in 12th century England hit someone else in the head with a weapon and with intent to harm and that person died, would it matter legally how powerful the weapon was?
That's something that surprised me when I started looking at it, even just with my casual interest. Nowadays, we're generally given the impression that swords were The Big Deal until guns became common enough and reliable enough. That swords were the main or only weapon of anyone who had a choice in the matter. That they were the very essence of what a weapon was and any other non-ranged weapon was an improvised weapon used only by people who couldn't get a sword and almost always only by people who weren't trained.
How do you deal with the ones behind you while you're dealing with the ones in front of you?
that seems very counter intuitive
If we take that at face value then you're saying that say 6 opponents are easier than 2 right?
they're trained swordsmen so there is always the risk that one of them does kill/wound you at any time...
but say you've got 6 opponents, you take out 4 of them... you've now got 2... so the dangerous situation we were comparing to earlier.. and you had some level of risk when dealing with the 6 together to begin with
it doesn't seem to work out at all
lets assume it is some function of them all being bunched around you, well you say they're trained so if that makes them weaker then really we should assume they don't do that
I can't see how more of them can make things easier for the bloke with the stick unless they all collectively do something to increase the risk to themselves, which if they're 'trained' we ought to assume they don't do.
6 attackers could well be say 2 attacking and 4 standing back a bit further... ready to replace either of the first two. I can't see how that could possibly be easier to deal with.