Originally Posted by
Watchman
"Cleaver" type blades, designed for chopping and shearing cuts, are more or less per definition designed to focus their impact power at the tip. And focused impact energy is pretty much the end-all be-all of anti-armour effectiveness - even if the protection itself isn't structurally breached, focused blunt trauma may still well get through to make the distinction somewhat academic - deep internal bleeding, mauled flesh and broken bones don't differ overmuch from a honest-to-God open wound, no ?
AFAIK Celtic longswords aren't terribly large or heavy by for example Medieval standards; typically barely a kilogram in weight or so, and usually topping out at around 80cm lenght or so. Compared to some Medieval designs, especially the big "mail-killers", they're positively whippy and puny. (For the sake of comparision, the few weights I've seen given for falcata/kopis type swords suggest the average weight was about the same as that of the Celtic longswords... And the longsword eventually DID replace both the recurve chopper and the short sword as the military sword par excellence. It's really just that at the time their availability was limited, on account of technical difficulties and high cost.