Why Spears Are Better Than Swords

Hello, I'm here at Fight Camp with Matt Easton. Thank you for inviting me, Matt. Very welcome. Now, I noticed that you're training all the people here in very, very useful skills. What are people learning here? So they're learning everything, for example, rapier, sword and buckler, longsword, saber, these kinds of things. Lots of swords there, I noticed. Mostly swords, it has to be said, yeah. But surely, I mean, you know, the universal weapon, you know, the spear. The spear, it's the greatest weapon in the land. You can't put it in your pocket, but you can hold it in your hand. And it's the universal weapon from primitive Stone Age hunter-gatherer tribesmen, Stone Age civilisations, the Aztecs, and the Maya, and the Incas, and the ancient Chinese, and the Romans, and the Africans, and the Greeks, and the Carthaginians. In fact, almost everybody. In fact, yes, I'm going to go further. Everybody around the world, up until even as far as the 20th century, used the spear. A long, pointy stick, basically. Absolutely, yeah. It's a universal weapon, and it's pretty awesome as well against swords. And yet, huge amounts of time and effort went into developing steel good enough to make long blades out of, and of course, in the Bronze Age, bronze blades. But a huge amount of money and effort and attention went into designing and building swords. And yet, spears are sort of better, aren't they? Well, I mean, how many spear classes have you got? This is a three-day event. Zero spear classes. There are 40 classes at fight camp, and there is not one spear class. But this is ridiculous. We have to put this right. Because the spear is universal, I suggest, because it was good. I can't believe any weapon would be universally adopted, probably independently invented several times, and last such a test of time if it weren't flipping good. But everybody wants a sword. Everybody on the internet wants to know about katanas or long swords, and everybody comes here wants to learn about how to use a rapier or a sword and buckler. They're not wanting to learn to use a spear. Why is that? Why are these so more? Well, I can remember from my live-action role-playing days that when you create your character, he's going to be a hero. And a hero's weapon is a sword, right? Because it just is. A broadsword. Worn on the back. Yes, yes. And nobody wanted, you know, to be beaten by some peasant who just poked him with a stick. And yet when anybody ever actually came up against someone armed with something like this, they found that they worked really well. But these have to be better weapons, don't they? So huge treatises written about how to use these. Not how to use these. Yes, there's some that deal with these. But all the attention's on these. All the famous heroes from history use these. Achilles is described as being fantastically skilled as a warrior by reference to his spear. He won cities by the spear. I can only think that there must be some things that the sword is better at. There must be some scenarios where the sword triumphs. So I think there should be an experiment. I think we should look at this. Eight-foot spear without shield against one-handed sword. Go! Pink Trousers has a problem. He can move about and parry with his sword to keep himself safe. But to have any chance of winning the bout he has to close with his opponent who outreaches him. Will he manage it? No. A sudden charge can work. Disclaimer, can also go fatally wrong. Another man tries his luck with a dagger. A bit of quarterstaff technique there. Can he close to stabbing distance? No. Next man has an arming sword. Same problem. Spearman hits him while retreating. There. Back sword. No better. Arming sword against the rather short spear. Here you can see that the swordsman's eyes are open. And here they are screwed tightly shut. The spearman scores a quick light hit here, but the swordsman doesn't notice, which is quite understandable. It then gets all rather messy. I think we'll call that a draw. Okay, did he not get you on the way in? And now with slightly more experienced spearman. Another man tries a quick rush. Fails. Tries to grab the spear. Fails. And he's dead. Pinklegs attacks with a messer. He's doing well. He closes. He wins! Oh, he goes too far. Another arming sword. This hit is clearly with the flat on a forearm and would not end a real fight. Similarly, yes, there is a hit here, but the mid-shaft of a spear hitting the collarbone like this is unlikely to end a fight. So it's fine that they keep going. The less inexperienced spearmen are actually doing worse than the complete novices. Yellowsocks comes in with a rondel dagger. You can see by the way he holds it that he's done his HEMA lessons. He takes a solid hit to the chest. He ignores it and closes. Savagery breaks out. Whitejacket grabs the dagger. Good knife defence there. An epic struggle for control of the rondel. Come on, Whitejacket. He's on top! You can do it! And he beats Yellowsocks to death with his fist. And now the spearman is not allowed to move from that spot. Pinkleg's now with the spear holding his ground. Showing some aggression with the spear. Using the full length of it there at last. And he wins. Scarletreuse taking his time here. Scoping out his opponent. Not rushing in rashly, but going through all the options in his head. Waiting for a mistake to exploit. He forms a plan and he's dead. Another sword style on display here. Perhaps this higher guard will work. Right, but surely it would be easier for the swordsman to close with the spearman if he had a shield. So let's start him off with a buckler. Ah, the snooker cue spear technique. Yellowsocks now winding up for another bout of futile violence. Look at the way he faces down that thrust. The man has nerves of steel. He makes a big wide sweep with his buckler, gets stoutly thrust in the centre of his chest, but laughs it off and lunges in with a massive haymaker of an attack while swinging his buckler out way behind him. Leaving him hopelessly exposed to another hit to his throat. And then face. Keep your shield in front of you. This swordsman looks serious. Until he takes a spear to the face. Redtreuse now. Only a clean thrust from the spear point counts. He's in. First victory for sword and buckler. These two very smartly attired fighters seem well matched. Oh, spear to the chest and sword to the head. This guy in the split grey trousers looks a bit dangerous. He keeps his buckler in front of him, keeps up the pressure, and he wins. Good defensive work from Greyskirt here. Allblack is keeping up the thrusts, but they're all at the same height. Oh, very good defence there with the spear, with the circling motion. He needs to go high low. High low! He does it! That was quick. Well, it seems that we might need a bigger sword. So let's try some longswords. Everyone here has done loads of longsword. This guy adopts a high ox guard. He gets in. It's a virtual victory. Another longsworder giving it a go. Oh, it was very honest of him. Yellowsocks. He makes a grab for the spear. He's only one hand on his... Oh, he's dead. Pinklegs. He's had a few defeats lately, but he seems determined to win one back. And he does. Now, in case some of you were complaining, that spear was a bit short, wasn't it? A longer spear. This one is a bit more like it. A good solid eight footer. Let's see what a swordsman can do against that. Well, all right. Yeah, okay. Yep, early days. Oh, that would hurt your thumb a bit. But yeah, stitch that. All right, then. What if the sword is a lot bigger? Let's try a stocking great big two-handed spirehander. Oh, this swordsman looks a bit flummoxed. He probably hasn't faced a spear like this before. The fact that these long nylon blades are a bit bendy isn't helping him. Big scary swings, and he's skewered. He's learned the pattern. Big impressive swings, but they are predictable. Oh, that's not going to work. A changing technique now, sports fans, as we pit spear against longsword used half-sworded. Using a sword this way turns it into a spear. So this is really spear against shorter spear. Nice glove. Oh, and it worked. Will it work twice on the trot? And go. Yellow socks now, will he go in for the kill? It wasn't, you touched him, but it wasn't a clean thrust. Go. Will Greengreaves even the score? Oh, he could have had him there. No, same again. Nice gloves having another try. Okay, nice gloves. This time he uses his sword like an axe and dies. So far it seems that the spears are carrying the day, but surely it will be much easier for the swordsman to close with the spearman if he has a big shield to help him. Science! I don't think this man has ever fought with a large shield before. The man with the shield has a huge advantage. He should be able to charge down the spearman, and there's not a lot the spearman can do. But the longer he hangs back out of his own range, but in the spearman's range, the more chances the spearman has to land a hit. Which eventually he does. This man has used large shields before and knows what to do. Charge in, keep going, job done. This guy blinds himself, lowers his shield, and it's over. Yellow socks, massive haymaker, dead. Our man again, charges in, done. This man hesitates. Pinklegs is doing well here, keeping him back with varied thrusts. He goes low, gets him in the knee there, draws the shield down, then goes high and lands a good thrust to the throat. You can see by how much the head bends that that would have been fatal. But it doesn't register, and as Redtrews attacks with his right hand, he swings his shield out to his left, exposing himself, and he gets speared. Keep your shield in front of you. Gets in and doesn't stop. That's how to do it. And again, the spearman is doomed. Ah, yellow socks. Some controversy here. He does another big haymaker, swinging his shield out to his left. Exposed, he gets thrust in the throat, and then he goes on to land an arm hit. Now some might say that that's a double, but I'm counting that as one for spears. Look how much the whole spear bends on him as he comes in. You can see here in the reverse angle that it's a solid central hit long before he lands his afterblow. This swordsman tries gamely, but he ducks his head and blinds himself behind his own shield. The spearman winds in well and lands a hit. But in a battle, of course, the spearman can't just run around all over the shop. He's got fellows to protect and the formation to be part of. So what if the spearman can't move around much? Honestly, Matt, sometimes. The problem for the swordsman remains how to close. Once he's in, the result is the same. Whoa, keep your shield in front of you. Now here is an unusual move. Fancy Pants hooks the pommel of his sword around the spear, and brings his shield over his opponent and levers him into a throw, exploiting his foe's tenacious grasp on the spear, and then hits him. Our man, so reliable hitherto, does something very odd. He halts, kneels, blinds himself with his own shield, and then shuffles forward. The spearman just sidesteps and has him. Not the most stylish skill, this. Get hit, trip over, and hit your opponent by accident. Well, it wasn't exactly elegant, but it did the job. Now to pit sword and shield against spear and shield. I don't think anyone here had fought with one-handed spear before. Yellow Socks going at it with his favoured manner. Lots of big wild swings. But he demonstrates that what a man might lack in style, he can make up for with extreme violence. Right, Fancy Pants should win this. The one-handed spear is easy to fend off with a shield, and doesn't have the lateral strength to force its way through a determined guard. Ah, now we tried this just the once. Spear and buckler is a stupid combination. It swaps all the vigour of two-handed spear for the feeble protection of an overgrown thimble. A lefty. This gave him a slight advantage in attacking the swordsman's open side, but not enough to offset the drawbacks of one-handed spear. Danger Pants now with a tomahawk. Pink Legs is using his spear overarm. The main problem with this method is that it doesn't work. I would not sell him life insurance at this point. Another example of why you should not hold a spear like this. The result is very predictable. Yeah. Spear and shield didn't do so well, but the spear used by itself did pretty well. But spear and shield was used all over the world for thousands of years by lots of different cultures. So is it rubbish? No, it's not rubbish because it was used with a shield in large formations. If you've got a man either side of you who can skewer anyone trying to close with you, then you can keep yourself safe, you see, keep your fellow safe. But then you've got famous duels from antiquity, you know, the Iliad where people are using spears and shields. We see it on Greek vases. Why didn't they just put out a sword? Do you know how difficult it is to draw deep scenes and perspectives on a Greek vase? Right, come on, let's try this. Science! Right, now spearmen who have no idea what they're doing against a charge of vengeful expert swordsmen. And the spearmen win. Second bout, and ... well, it's all very confused. But the spearmen win again, somehow. Why does everyone wear black in this hobby? It's so difficult to find out who's who and on whose side. Bout three, and out of the chaos comes a third spear victory, with a little encouragement from me. Quick, spearmen! Come on, spearmen, help your mate! Oh, yeah, that's ... swordsmen, you're dead! Swords, you're dead! I'm telling them, right. Good! Fourth group bout. Surely the randomness of it all will even things out. Come on, help him out! Nope, the spear still reigns supreme. Yes, good! That's what should happen. Go! Going in with half sword, you see there. Now the swordsmen are not required to start by attacking from the front. One swordsman gets round behind, takes out his man, and that decides the issue quickly. I suggested that the spearmen counter-charge, but they didn't. Danger Pants runs freely round to the back at the start, as he is now being allowed to do, and quickly ends up in a one-on-one. The spears get spread a bit thin, and then get swamped. For Sparta! Again, I suggested the spearmen a pre-emptive counter-charge, and this time they heeded me a bit. Very nice! Good, we'll use that one. Now let's just sit back and witness the pinnacle of spearmanship achieved by this day's activities. Are you going to be putting Benny Hill over that one? Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have now done the science, and what can we conclude from the science, Matt? Many things. Not as conclusive, not as black and white as I expected. No, it was. But we did have, you know, some of the people were more experienced with spears than others. Some of the people were more experienced at closing spears. A lot of them, in fact, had never, as far as I can tell, held a spear in their lives. And bless their cotton socks, and thank you to all of you who volunteered to help out. People tell me they had a lot of fun, but I did feel that their inexpertise did show a bit. Yes, but I think that was part of the interesting experiment, because clearly people actually, you know, if you imagine levies, for example, given, here you go, you're forced in to do military service, here's your spear, this is how you use it, now we're going off to war. That was sort of interesting. Yes, but it did mean that there wasn't a nice level playing field for the scientific impartiality, because all of those people were very familiar with the use of the sword. And a lot of them had never used a spear, and those who had used a spear hadn't used it much. And I don't think any of them had used spear and shield. And that, I felt, really showed, not just in the use of the spear and shield, but also when taking on someone who is armed with spear and shield, there were swordsmen who should have been taking those guys apart who were not doing so. So equally, and in that sense it went both ways, because whilst the people using the spears weren't necessarily very experienced at using the spears, the people using the swords sometimes had maybe never closed on a spearman before, or had only done it a handful of times in the past. True, so these are all factors that we have to take into account. I would say from my... When I did reenactment many years ago, I was doing it, we would fight every week for about four years. So I did a lot of work with spear and shield. And if you were on your own with spear and shield against someone with sword and shield, you were dead. However, of course, when we were fighting we didn't just have the spear, we had a sword dangling from our waist as well. So when we realised, oh, he's got me, we would just drop the spear and then draw a sword. So the formation armed with spears would always beat swordsmen because the spearmen were also swordsmen. Yeah, and I would also say, you know, we're talking about swords and spears here, but shields were a major part of this whole experiment. And a lot of HEMA people, for want of a better term, don't do much with shields. Right. So that the inexperience with shields was also a factor, whether they were on the sword side or the spear side. True, yes. But despite everything we've just said, it remains the case that the spears usually won. Yeah, which confirms certainly what I expected. Yep. And I think some people have a perception that spears are a weapon to equip a number of people to fight together in a formation with. But my view is very strongly that if you can use a spear as an individual weapon, even, you know, in a dual situation, if it was an option, choose the spear over the sword most of the time. It's pretty handy. And of course, you can always have a dagger or a hatchet or some secondary backup weapon, if the guy does manage to close with you, to follow up with. And what's more, we instructed our spearmen not to use them like quarterstaffs. So if you have quarterstaff skills as well with a spear, even more options open up for you. So spears were universal throughout history for a flipping good reason, because they really work. Absolutely, yes. Even if we bring other factors which we didn't include in our test into it, such as armour or clothing, or, you know, we often talk in HEMA about the effects that a sword strike or thrust may have on someone wearing different degrees of clothing or padded armour, or if we're going into actual armour, you know, such as a mail or plate even, or brigandine, things like this. A lot of the time, these blows wouldn't have any effect through the clothing or through the armour that's being worn. But a spear very often will, because it's a long, rigid object with a point on the end, with a fair amount of mass and body behind it. And even if it doesn't puncture you, whereas a cut, a draw cut or whatever, doesn't sort of stop you in your tracks physically, a fierce thrust straight into you will stop you, even if it doesn't puncture you. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think... So the reach advantage of a spear is the obvious. That's what it really comes down to, is the fact that the person with the spear can hit the person with the sword, when the person with the sword can only try and close distance. So that's the initial advantage to it. But I did see some interesting occasions where the swordsman either took such an insignificant graze on the way in, or no hit at all, that immediately they were close. The spearman was now having to backpedal, and we did these experiments where they had to stand their ground. And I felt that that went in two directions, because number one, sometimes when the spearman had to stand their ground, they got charged down, they couldn't backpedal, and they got closed down on by the swordsman, and that was the end of it. But sometimes, psychologically, I saw with our spearmen, when they had to stand their ground, they were a bit better with their use of the weapon, because they weren't thinking, run away, run away, run away. I have to fend him off with the point of it. I felt that our spearmen generally just were not aggressive, particularly when they're a solo spearman, because you can threaten someone in the foot, and that's very difficult to do. You can go from foot, head, foot, really quickly with a spear. It go high, low, high, low, and just constant. I just wanted to, admittedly, in between some of the shots, I was trying to encourage the spearman to get a bit more aggressive. If you just keep thrusting, you're constantly posing the problems for the swordsman to deal with. And I think connected to that point as well, it was interesting that a lot of people who got hit by the spear got hit in the groin. There were a lot of groin hits going down, and I think that was partly because it was going high, low like this, and people were trying to either take it up or take it down and divert it from the line. And that middle area where it was often getting caught in was the groin. And the groin has huge stopping power. If you get lunged in the groin, then it's going to be extremely painful. But it also, because it's in the center of your body mass, has this sort of crumpling effect on you. So it was quite interesting. Yeah, I wanted to see a bit more aggression. Also to use more dip attacks. You can, like fencing, you can go forwards and dip against the reaction of the... dip under the reaction of the swordsman and come up. And circling as well. People weren't going around and in. Yeah. Yeah, I think, and true, and I think as well as up and down, left and right, there was also not very much use of the spear to come in from different angles. So usually the thrust was coming in from mid-height like this. One of the good things that you can do with a spear is lift the back end up and come over, particularly with shields. So you're coming over the top of the shield, but quite quickly by moving the back hand down and moving the lead hand down at the same time, you can now be coming underneath something. So there was a lot of changing where the point was without changing where the back end was. And that makes a big difference to coming around. I also felt people weren't using the full reach of the spear. A lot of people were holding them with a lot of useless spear sticking out the back. They weren't getting full reach, particularly when they went to one hand. Some of them were holding them in the middle. Yeah. You lose half the length of your spear as soon as you do that. So hold it near the back and use the full length. Yeah. And if you need to withdraw with a spear, you can withdraw very, very quickly, and you can half spear. You can shorten the length of the weapon. There were loads of things you weren't seeing being done with the spear. And who knows? One day we may see that. That would be exciting. It's a project. Yep. So I think maybe what we need to do in the future is train some spearmen to kill swordsmen, or to beat swordsmen. Train some swordsmen to close down spearmen, and then go at it again with people who've been trained for that specific task. Yes, I remember watching the film Troy, and apparently they got loads of extras and trained them for months in spear and shield fighting. Didn't show, did it? Really didn't show. It's still a good film though. There are aspects of that film which I would say were pretty decent, but the spear and sword fighting doesn't make the list. Well, anyway, science!