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Effectiveness of Medieval weapons

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Mike W.:
Various scenes in the Maciejowski Bible depict people being hacked apart. In this one particular scene (my favorite I might add) a guy is being cut in half and another is having his head cut open. I'm assuming this is merely an artistic representation of battle, but it makes me wonder if a sword in the right hands could really hew a spangenhelm, or cleave a man in chainmail.

Sir Wolf:
i dunno........ sir edward i think has one, who wants to wear a helmet and lets try this out....

Sir James A:
Nope and nope.

I do have a junk 16 gauge mild helmet I'm going to show how effective a mace / war hammer / pollaxe is on, with video, at some point this summer.

But steel won't cut through steel unless it's a fabled anime katana. ;)

Ian:
Most of the crazy feats of strength and martial prowess in illuminations are depicting heroes and biblical characters.  So just like today when we depict superheroes doing things not possible, they were most likely doing the same thing, showing a hero or villain in a story doing something a normal person knows to be the stuff of heroic fantasy.

A lot of these things have been tested out to various levels of accuracy and the general consensus is armor is very effective.  Don't expect to ever cleave a helmet in twain or cut someone clean in half (especially through maille and padded armor). 

Sir Wolf:
hm that is a good point Sir Ian.

I have exerts from my 6th great grandmother's diary that stated that her husband split the drunkard land lord in half with a shillelagh after the guy had shot into the house killing my grandfather's brother and shooting her in the arm.... what would that mean? lol

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