When Short Swords Are Better Than Long Swords

Hey folks, Matt Eason here, Scholar Gladiator. Pretty quick video this time, honestly, and really just to say that I spend a lot of time on this channel talking about the length of weapons and kind of impressing upon people how longer is better. But as I've spoken about before, that is true within certain parameters, and there are some situations where a shorter weapon is better, which I'm sure is fairly obvious, but one of those is accessibility. So whilst some people might like to wave around a long weapon and point out that they've got greater reach, and in fact, yes, in an unarmored duel where you've both got your weapons out, you both know you're about to fight and you're fighting, reach is an advantage in an unarmored situation where shields aren't involved, where armor isn't involved, and where you've already got the weapon out, okay? And clearly in that situation, there's no bounds, well, almost no bounds to that, that, you know, for example, this kind of sword, a shorter, relatively short medieval arming sword, is generally speaking, it's a disadvantage to a longer, especially in this case, it's two-handed, long sword, medieval long sword, so both kind of of the same period, both 15th century. The longer blade has an advantage, it can thrust from further away, it can cut from further away, it can control the fight. Equally, the massive montante or great sword or sveihander that's behind me has an advantage over the long sword, and a spear, generally speaking, has an advantage over the montante, or a spear has an advantage over swords. There is, of course, an upper limit to that, there is an upper limit to which a person can wield effectively, and a pike doesn't necessarily have an advantage over a spear in single combat, because the spear is a lot more wieldy, and a pike is of a length where it's really, it's a mass-formation weapon, and you can't, although they did duel with them, you can't, generally speaking, duel one-on-one with a pike, they're a little bit unwieldy for that. But in a scenario where you find yourself in a fight, you think about the, we often think about this as a duel setup where we've both encountered each other and we've agreed to have a sword fight with swords out here, but if you think about most sword fights, probably happened, like brawls often happen, unexpectedly, and so the sword isn't in your hand. So anyone who practices Japanese martial arts, of course, will be very aware of this, because in Kenjutsu and Kendo you have the weapon out, but in iaido, for example, the weapon generally starts and it's scabbard, and this isn't a specially Japanese thing, as I've spoken about in previous videos, you do find unsheathing techniques in European sources, for example, in Fiore, in Vardy, and elsewhere, and this is very, very important, because, of course, as I often say in many of my videos, in fact, I believe I've become somewhat known for it, the sword is generally a secondary weapon or a backup weapon, but most importantly, it can be a primary weapon, but most importantly, it is a sidearm, that is, it's something you can wear. Yes, of course, generally speaking, a glaive or a halberd or a spear or a montante has an advantage over a one-handed sword, but the advantage the one-handed sword has is you can wear it anywhere, and there is an upper limit to the length that you can comfortably wear, back wearing aside, in terms of wearing it at your side, walking around everywhere, doing normal jobs, you know, there is an upper limit, and generally speaking, the upper limit is about the length of a longsword or a rapier, which both total roughly the same kind of length, that's about the maximum you can comfortably wear, but if you want to be even more comfortable and be even more versatile, you often wear shorter weapons, but that's not the only reason, having a shorter weapon is quicker for accessibility, so I don't even know if you can actually see on camera, but I'm wearing a sword at the moment and practically not even noticing it's there, and it is a relatively short and quickly accessible medieval sword that was popular at the same time as these other two straight and double-edged swords I've been showing, the arming sword and the longsword, and that of course is the langmesser, often known just simply as a messer, although messer just means knife, but it's, you know, it's the German version of a falchion, and basically this is a super accessible and practical weapon to have in a scabbard at your side, because you saw how quickly you can get the thing out, now one thing I do have to quickly mention is, with the way that scabbards are suspended, you usually have to put one hand down to keep the scabbard where it is while you pull it out, but you can get the thing out super quickly and be doing things, whether it's guarding yourself from an attack that's just coming your way, or pulling straight out and attacking from there, sometimes the one flows through the other, so as I've noted in previous videos, often the act of pulling the sword out, and I assure you that was in the scabbard, so let's just lift up, there you go, so it's in the scabbard, as the thing comes out, that is often regarded, if we look at saber fencing, that's prime, because it's the first position you come to having pulled the sword out of the scabbard, and it's also a very good protection against the dominant blow which is aimed at people, which is a downwards blow from the right hand side, so you can protect yourself and respond, or in whichever way, could be a thrust, could be a cut, could be a cut anywhere, to any angle, quite quickly and easily, but the real point is that you can get a short weapon out a lot more quickly than you can get a long weapon out, because quite literally you have less blade to pull out, and long blades like rapiers and long swords can be quite unwieldy to get out of their scabbard, so there we go, I'm not going to witter on for any longer, short swords are generally speaking at a disadvantage, unless there's shields, unless there's armour, or unless you're in a squished in space like a melee, or inside a small room, or a ship, or something, but the one massive advantage they have over long swords is accessibility, and in real terms that is a super important factor, because in the real historical scenarios and contexts that swords were pulled out and used, it was very often as a last ditch, holy crap, I have to pull a weapon out, so it's accessibility, so it's a bit like comparing maybe a long barrelled pistol to a short barrelled pistol, accessibility being able to get your weapon out and defend yourself or attack as quickly as possible is sometimes, in some situations, more important, in some cases much more important, than reach. I hope that's been useful, see you soon for another video, give us a like, give us a subscribe if you haven't done already, there's extra videos on Patreon, and I'll see you guys soon for another video. Cheers folks! Thanks for watching, we've got extra videos on Patreon, please give our Facebook a like, and subscribe if you haven't already. Cheers folks!