The Pushing Match

[bobbin]

Drop it. Stomp on it. Put it in a blender. I don't know. Juts stop bringing that up.

My point was that completely ignoring how the user of the spear would react to you knocking it out of the way makes your conclusion pointless. Following that same logic one could say that the sword is equally useless, because if you ignore how the swordsman reacts it is just as easy to knock aside as the spear.

A spearman will tire a lot faster than a swordsman assuming equal fitness. A swordman doesn't need to move nearly as much. Also, as the two opponents become more armoured, the sword becomes more effective; the spearman tires sonner and his weapon is unable to penetrate really thick armour like full plate or a coat of plates. The sword can still dish out blunt force trauma effectively.

It's actually the exact opposite, a swordsman has to cover the distance between the spear point and the spearman to make an attack. The spearman on the other hand can attack with less effort and from a comfortable distance by just jabbing, the only moving they need to do is to keep the minimum safe distance from the swordsman, which in terms of energy expend by both is equal as they are moving the same amount.

And swords were pretty useless against plate armour as they lacked the mass to cause any internal damage, which is why maces and war hammers became the weapon of choice when dealing with armoured knights.

It does have some merit. Some weapons are simply useless regardless of the man carrying it. Lances on foot, knives, a gladius on horseback. A spear outside of a shieldwall fast approaches uselessness. An extremely competant spearman may be able to gain an edge versus a somewhat skilled swordsman, but otherwise it's simply the wrong weapon.

I think a quick look through history disproves that assumption, if the spear was that useless out of a shield wall they why did it see continual widespread use over a vast geographic and social range from the very beginnings of warfare right through to the modern day?