The "Evolution"
of weapons
Regional
Differences - the context in which the weapons were used
Types of Armor
Types of Weapons
Weapons
as part of the daily life of the warrior
The "Evolution" of weapons
Medieval society, in spite of its stereotypes, was not inherently more
violent than modern society. Although there was no state in the modern
sense, and therefore no set of laws that inherently took away the power
of the average man or woman to exercise violence, the violence of the day
was considered differently, and without the inherent sense of criminality
that accompanies it today. Our understanding of the weapons of the medieval
world is skewed by the vast disarming of "the civilian" that is taken for
granted today, yet is a vastly different situation compared to what existed
in many parts of "the West" as little as seventy years ago. Arms and Armor
were taken for granted as a part of medieval daily life. Although there
were professional soldiers and ever-suspect groups of mercenaries, the
upper strata of medieval societies were almost universally recognized as
those whose duty it was to be highly skilled with weapons. The nobility
were characterized not only by their birth, but by the fact that they fought,
whether it was on the battlefield or in the tournament. Given this, one
can no more understand the medieval world without having an understanding
of weapons and armor than one can understand European intellectual development
without ever having been exposed to Aristotle.
Medieval weapons and armor are, for better or for worse, generally considered
in light of the knight and the nobility. The nobility, fighting as heavy
cavalry, had exerted a tremendous influence on the battlefield. In spite
of the pressures brought to bear on the knight by the increased use of
the longbow, crossbow, handgun, and pike, heavy cavalry continued to play
an absolutely essential role on the battlefield. The 14-16th
century saw great changes in weapons and armor, not because they "evolved"
per se, but because they changed to maintain their effectiveness under
different conditions: as John Clements puts in his book Medieval Swordsmanship
"After all, swords did not get sharper, stronger, or especially more effective
after the Middle Ages. They did not evolve as guns did to become more accurate,
of longer range, and with faster rates of fire with each successive generation."
Instead, as threats to the knight increased in capability, and as the knight
himself (and the masculine pronoun is appropriate here) became more and
more specialized at breaking formations, and also better at doing so, the
cycle of adaptation resulted in a wide variety of new forms of weapons
and armor.
To look back and get a perspective on this, let us take a (very) quick
look first at the Holy Roman Empire as it existed in the early Middle Ages.
Military force was provided by the King or Emperor and his military retinue.
This traveling court consisted of the best-equipped and best-trained mobile
force in the Empire. When numbers were needed, one man in seven was recruited
to serve as infantry. This system worked well for some time, based on the
success of the traditional methods of warfare and training, which relied
on skilled footmen fighting from a "shield wall" in which group infantry
could effectively hold ground while the cavalry, whether drafted from the
nobility or semi-dynastic servants (Ministeriales and various milites).
All of this changed dramatically under the influence of the Vikings,
Saracens, and Magyars (Hungarians). The Saracens and Vikings both moved
rapidly with boats along rivers, and armies that consisted largely of footmen
simply could not be mobilized and react quickly enough to defend territory.
By the time that they arrived on the scene, the damage was essentially
done, particularly in the case of Vikings, who were essentially raiders.
The Magyars moved with small steppe-type horses with amazing speed, conducting
raids, sometimes independently and sometimes as mercenaries. When armies
of footmen actually did manage to bring the Magyars to battle, they were
steadily wiped out, because the lightly armored footmen were unable to
bring their hand weapons to bear while the Magyar horsemen pelted them
with a river of arrows.
The answer to this, besides an increasingly sophisticated system of
fortification, was essentially to develop the horsemen into military organizations
that were both mobile enough to manuver strategically and also armored
sufficiently to both resist archery and make up for the fact that, a cavalryman
being drastically more expensive to equip and maintain than even a comparably
armored infantryman, there were generally far fewer of them. The "western
knight" was born. The knight was, however, far from the lone-wolf hero
of the romances, which can be likened in a way to a sort of medieval version
of the modern action movie, whose hero inevitably survives actions and
situations that would doom the finest fighters. "Schwarzenegger in chainmail"
would have been quickly and brutally killed on the medieval battlefield.
There was a truth, however, to the potential of the heavy cavalry. Templar
rules prohibiting flight unless facing odds of more than 3 to 1, and the
staggering successes of the Normans in Ireland, Sicily, and against the
Byzantines, show that the mobility and shock value of the knight provided
a tremendous advantage for close-quarters fighting. With these advantages
he was able to defend groups of infantry and baggage trains while on the
march, and could provide great offensive power applied exactly where it
was needed to turn a battle. In a region where composite bow technology
was generally unknown, heavily armored men-at-arms could shrug off missile
fire that could and did devastate more lightly-equipped footmen.
By the fourteenth century, improvements in the range and power of the
crossbow 
had made it an indispensable tool of war, and arguably the weapon
of the cities and the seas. Time and time again in the Crusades, the crossbow,
and not force of the knight in melee, proved the decisive factor. However,
although mounted crossbowmen were used extensively in Spain, crossbowmen
could not manuver quickly while shooting, and this meant that they were
vulnerable while reloading. Missile fire could be devastating from a protected
position (as used, for example, by the Ottomans at Nicopolis and the English
at Agincourt), but the archer simply could not hold open ground against
a well-performed cavalry charge.
The long spear, and eventually the pike, was used successfully to hold
ground, and on numerous occasion troops using polearms beat back cavalry
charges. The Swiss became renowned for their skill with the pike and halberd,
and at Courtrai and Stirling heavy cavalry was decimated by charging blocks
of spearmen. However, this was generally the exception to the rule: usually
polearm-equipped footmen could indeed hold ground if they were well-trained,
but they usually could not take ground, because moving quickly made it
difficult to maintain the close order that these formations depended on
for survival. A disordered formation was certain to be cracked open by
a well-timed charge.
Perhaps paradoxically, the cavalry charge became more and more decisive
as factors on the battlefield arose that challenged it. The additional
weight of heavier armor that would resist crossbow bolts (and, in northwest
Europe, longbow arrows) provided additional power for breaking formations.
It was an ongoing spiral of offense and defense as relatively light mail
gave way to heavy mail, and then mail with pieces of plate 
,
and finally to the knight in full suits of plate armor. Just as archers
and polearm-equipped infantry had to adjust to the increasingly heavy armor
of the knight with new weapons and tactics, the knight had to cooperate
closely with his own formation not only to protect or defeat infantry,
but also, and perhaps especially, the opposing knights. It is this set
of challenges during the period of the fourteenth- sixteenth centuries
that spurred huge changes and developments in weaponry and defensive gear.
