Unit Speculation?

[Karl08]

Sorry for the delay. Blame it on TWcenter, for working again.

I'm not an expert but I do have experience with sport and mock melee combat (albeit on foot) and I think the discussion about polearms from horseback being unwieldy is mixing up a lot of different issues. Especially when someone says something silly like you're going to hack your horse's head off (it's like imagining people hack their own limbs off by using swords improperly, which never really happens). First, using anything from horseback is lot more difficult than using it on foot, second, how difficult the polearm would be to use has more to do with how top-heavy it is as much if not more than how long, and third, how ambidextrous a user would be would affect viability a lot.

I haven't heard the "decapitating horse" argument, and that would be a particularly silly claim as the blade would be farther away from the horse's neck than with shorter weapons. I agree with everything you say in this paragraph.

The first point should be obvious, but using a polearm from horseback wouldn't be much different than using a longbow like a yumi from horseback, you'd have to steer mostly with your knees/legs in order to use both hands to wield the weapon. In fact, horse archery is a hell of a lot harder than wielding a blade on the end of a pole from a horse, but no questions the validity of that.

Disagree, because the difficulty of wielding a polearm from horseback has little to do with steering the horse. Horse archery would be easier, because the arm movements are much more manageable, and the bow doesn't impact with anything. The thing about melée weapons is that they do make impact. The shorter the weapon, the more control you have of the impact. Things such as edge alignment and slicing motions become much more difficult the further away the edge is. Footwork is also very important for how you use the weapon, which is a problem you simply do not have with bows. Furthermore, you do not make sweeping motions with the bow, nor with the tachi, but you do with the naginata. How do you propose to do this from horseback? From a static horse I can see how it is feasable, but how do you do it from a moving horse? I elaborate on this point further down.

Horse archers are more common though, despite it being harder, because it's very difficult to counter a horse archer you can't catch.

Because it is more difficult to counter a horse archer, it's harder to be a horse archer? I'm sorry, I don't get that one.


Since melee cavalry is often about shock impact, it's not really much of a big deal what kind of weapon you use (barring lances), so you might as well go with your normal spear or sword instead of something weirder, but there's no real reason you couldn't pick something weird, especially if you were skilled in its use.[/quote]
You'd have to be skilled in its use from horseback. I know how to use a sword on foot, but if I was on horseback, not able to use the footwork I'm used to, and perhaps having to lean down to reach a target, I'd be like a fish on land as I'd have to use the sword in quite a different manner.

In regards to the second point, the unwieldiness of any type of weapon is related to how long it takes to pull back from an attack.

Not just that. There is also how you impact the target. A chop is different from a draw-cut, and draw-cuts become more complicated when you place the blade on a pole. You would not, for example, use a naginata the same way you would a pollaxe - they are very different animals.

Axes, maces, hammers, and especially axes and hammers at the end of poles all have this issue, but you sacrifice attack speed in order to get enough impact from the blow to crush through armor.

They certainly have the ability to injure through armour, but glaives/naginata, which slice rather than chop, do not crush armour. They will not penetrate heavy armour, though may cause damage through the armour all the same. The main thing about slicing blades on poles, however, is simple reach, preferably against lightly armoured targets. They are not can-openers.

Of course, a longer weapon that's top heavy is even more unwieldy than a shorter one, and thus using something like a lochaber axe from horseback would be nutters I'd say, but a naginata isn't that top/front-heavy at all really.

It's not particularly top heavy, no, but neither is a great-axe or pollaxe. If you've noticed the axeheads on those things, they are very thin, and a pollaxe has a counterweight as well. It's a very manouverable weapon.

From what I've seen of people using it, it's actually pretty damn fast, and not just for a polearm either. Granted some of that speed would be lost on a horse from lack of footwork and hip movement, but presumably you'd make it up with the mobility, speed, and shock of the horse.

But that's precisely why it would be unsuited for horseback: the speed and direction of the horse would not help the naginata, which needs to move in an arc in tune with the shape of the blade, but would rather hinder it. That's why you have these sliding motions with the hands along the shaft, after all. A horse's momentum could cause damage to the blade or the shaft, which are not meant to receive that kind of force. I suppose with a short naginata something of the sort might be feasible, but it would have to be angled backward at any rate, to minimize the force received.

Lastly, attacking to your off-hand side is pretty awkward on top of a horse no matter what weapon you're using (again, except maybe lances). You also lose a lot of reach doing so, because your arm has to cross your own body. You can twist to a certain extent or stand up in the saddle on the stirrups, but still this is precisely why most cavalry weapons are actually longer, rather than shorter (like horseman using the tachi for instance).

Why would it be shorter? The reason cavalry weapons tend to be slightly longer than the infantry versions of the same weapon is because you may need to reach further, especially if you're attacking infantry. Off-hand or no off-hand.

The tl;dr version

?

of this would just be that, we know it *was* used and it probably wasn't more uncommon than wielding an odachi on foot was for a comparison, which is also pretty rare in the records IIRC.

Before I can comment on that I need to know what "tl;dr" is.

So most likely the issue was simply that this required much skill or had specialized use or didn't make a huge difference, but because of the simple fact it was used, and by professional warriors who clearly knew what they were doing and were taking their life into their hands, I don't think armchair theorizing on what was possible or viable on pre-modern battlefields should be stated with the certainty a lot of people do, particularly because essentially no one living has direct experience of this kind of combat (where you are actually trying to kill your opponent or be killed). If someone has direct quotes from something like a Turnbull book on this issue, post them, but I've only encountered contradictory interent speculation on this issue.

The use of naginata on horseback is itself speculation, as the only evidence we have is pictorial. And we have pictorial evidence of a great many things, such as dual wielding yari and naginata (good luck with that one). Samurai in desperate situations doing desperate things are a common theme, and should be taken with a grain of salt.


Speaking of grains of salt, Turnbull has presented material of varying quality, especially when it comes to Japan. He has, for example, fallen afoul of the old "katana is the bestest sword" myth in one of his books (don't remember which one at the moment). In his book "Samurai" he graces the ninja with one or two sentences, simply saying they're a problem for historians due to the lack of hard information on them. And indeed, this is true. Nevertheless, he later wrote a whole book about them, caleld "the Ninja". I have the book, and it seems to have been written on popular demand more than anything. So Turnbull is an author who sometimes shines, and sometimes not. Caveat emptor.