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I'm rather skeptical of those claims of the thrust being particularly wont to expose the attacker, you know. The movement involved is after all linear, and inasmuch as the weapon arm is wont to become exposed to the enemy "tracking" it with your shield to cover the limb oughta been SOP - it certainly was with a lot of sword-cut techniques anyway, far as I know.
Well, depending on the attack, you can or cannot expose your limbs all too well. Unless both sides are awfully close, and depending on blade sizes, I dare say that the weapon arm has to go quite a lot of distance to do so, and in an angle that is particularly favourable to a well made done slash from left or right, assuming he's going for the torso or the face. That could be practically a "straight line" of exposed flesh from the attacker to the defender, whereas making up-down vertical slashing or horizontal movements would put the arm in a much more protected position. Supposing the enemy's grip is on the right side, and yours on the left, you could effectively block a thrust with a shield (or duck it) while still performing a deadly cut, OR hack his limb with a cutting movement in a way that he, thrusting, would be simply not capable of performing, like immediately blocking the stab with a buckler, and immediately doing an attack on his exposed limb, hacking it off.
Of course, I think we delving too much into a subject which is the domain of few. I rather feel not very qualified because I'm at best an amateur sword fencer and reenactor. It's probably a "thousand ways" scenario, all of which are not necessarily wrong.
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Also good luck cutting effectively at the weapon arm when the attack is a low thrust with a short blade from very close in (below and around the shield, for example) or just about anything done with a long spear from the overhand "reverse" grip... not exactly good angles of attack for an effective cut there, I daresay.
A low thrust can be effectively neutralized if you're skilled or if your shield is big enough, whereas a longspear, like any thrusting movement, can still be more easily dodged if attacked at one of the body extremities; another advantage is the fact that every wooden pole can be simply hacked off, depending on factors. Dodging in particular should not be underestimated: there are a thousand ways of avoiding it, simply because the effective "area of attack" is too small. You could jump under the pikes, dodge them and even set them aside easily with your hands, by grabbing them. Or this.
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Except of course the mid-late-Medieval and later Europeans with their penchance for thrusting blades of various forms - the specific reason being that the edge was pretty much useless against the armour they were wont to face, while the tip wasn't. (Rapiers, used for civilian combat, are a different story and need not concern us here.)
Oh, and didn't I mention something about spears and penetration ? There's very little difference between spears and thrusting swords in this regard...
Again, not necessarily every thrusting movement is effective vs. armour. The spear was more of a weapon of necessity for what I know: cheap, relatively easy to use, and good in particular situations, like working in formation.
I can understand the use of half swording and other sharp things to pierce armour, but before armour became thicker and widespread on the battlefield all the evidence points towards the clear preference for cutting blades.
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And of course pretty much *every* warrior everywhere carried the sword as a sidearm; his primary weapon, if not a missile one, being nigh invariably something stuck atop a long pole. (Samurai battlefield roles, for example, basically came in two versions: archer or spearman/lancer.) The use of which, naturally, was studied as obsessively as that of the sword by the kinds of people who made their living by war. The main difference was really that the far more easily carried sword was the weapon he most likely had at his disposal if he suddenly had to fight outside the battlefield...
Samurai and other Eastern armies carried a lot of poles that I can remind of. One was a specifically glaive-like pole which was lengthy and extremely cumbersome, being a specialized weapon for charging at enemy formations.
Samurai were specialized in a lot of weapons, to be true, although for individual combat (and not general in-formation ones) the katana ruled supreme, and it was a superb cutting blade as we all know...
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Spears and polearms are, after all, simple enough to use effectively to make "cheap and cheerful" main weapons for troops that cannot be trained too thoroughly, but versatile and plain effective enough that even elite warriors invariably swore by them and used them just as intensively.
Agreed. Spears and most polearms have a far better value amidst a collective all than in individual combat, and thus their role on the field is perfectly understandable.
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Half-swording, yes; it's a two-handed technique for a thrusting blade for use against armour in close quarters after all. (And, oh, spears again...) Sharp tips, though, much less so. They turn up even in Celtic longswords, a type of weapon not generally known for its emphasis on running folks through, and keep occasionally popping up throughout the interregnum before the High Middle Ages. Even when the blade geometry as a whole was optimised for the cut, one gets the impression many a warrior liked having the option of an effective thrust at his disposal...
In combat, it's best to leave every door open... Still most swords that I'm aware of have been since the Celtic Age specialized for slashing, and often light weight. That doesn't mean thrusting was effectively left out, since even with these round tips it was good to thrust at something. Again, provided it wears no armour.
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Anything but. As may be also gathered by studying the assorted incidents in the ARMA articles linked earlier, taking a swipe at the other guy's leg when the opportunity presented itself was quite popular in infantry fighting as well - *especially* if leg armour wasn't commonly worn in the context. Why hack at body armour when you can take the man out at the legs ? And given that most standard fighting postures "lead" with one leg, and are relatively low, it's not like it required that much extra effort either...
I'm not to keen to believe this yet... It takes a lot of strain and complicated movements just to reach the legs, which are also thin and flexible targets. Slashing maybe good, but if the enemy warrior has minimum movement freedom dodging attacks from there might be too easy. Hoplites worked in very close formations, so that might be why they opted for greaves when many others in different situations didn't.
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Historians are actually pretty puzzled by those "double" and "triple" mail armours. Is it mail worn in layers, for example a byrnie over a hauberk ? Certainly doable and effective enough, if rather heavy. Or is it mail made of thicker, stronger wire ("double" or even "triple" the usual thickness, at least figuratively speaking), perhaps combined with a different weave (say, 6:1) ? And/or, in different times ?
But certainly such protecion wasn't easy to get through, particularly the layered kind. With nigh *any* weapon actually, though I'd take the occasional claim of "lance-proof" doubled hauberks with a grain of salt...
Well there's at least one claim from the Crusades where someone (don't remember exactly whom) claimed to have lanced a Crusader Knight at full speed for no effect. Turns out he was pushed back and lost his helm and sword, but was intact; it's a bit dubious whether or not the hauberk was pierced, but it might count as a case. Not something you could hope for all the time, however.
As for double layered armour, I believe it was just another identical layer of mail or the likes. A hauberk is a flexible thing, so I'm not too much skeptical of one or two more hauberks being worn over the original. "Double-maille" in particular was especially recommended vs. arrows and mailed warriors have been consistently shown to defeat arrows from even the most powerful bows. Since an arrow and a spear (and other thrusting weapons) work in similar ways, I assume a well armoured mailed man-at-arms had nothing to fear from them either.
