My experience with fails is limited to sparing with the none-metallic kind, but the biggest advantage of the flail I have seen, is that it renders most common forms of defense ineffective. The way the flail moves makes it extreamly difficult to intercept or deflect with most other weapons, and the chain allows it to strike behind a shield with considerable force. The point of the multi-headed flail was to take advantage of the second aforementioned property I mentioned, multiple heads getting around a shield all but guarantees that at least one head would strike the mark. Often multi-headed flails would have heads of different lengths to accommodate this. the length of chain is more important then the shape of the head in my experience, as a longer chain has a greater chance of striking a vulnerable point on the body due to reach, but it also requires much more effort to use. A shorter chain greatly reduces battle fatigue, but forces you to get in closer to guarantee a hit. Using a flail without a shield however is very foolish, as the flail has no really way of providing much in the way of defense. But a proper shield bash as a follow-up to a well placed blow from a flail can, and will, throw most people off balance allowing you to repeat with the flail at your discretion. The flail's greatest failing is that pole-arms, spears, and staffs can disrupt flails in mid swing, by keeping their distance and jabbing at the right moment someone with a quarterstaff or similar weapon can make the flail utterly useless, as you exhaust yourself trying to close the distance and swing it.
However, the nature of the flail is unpredictable, and youre just as likly to kill youreself as the other guy, especially once you hit. Once in motion, it will remain so, so hitting somthing like a shield, helmet or person WILL send the flail all over the place and just as likley into youre face. It seems to be a terribly inconvenient weapon and no where near as trusty and versitile as say a sword, so why would you chose it, even if we stipulate that you could harm or render a shield un usable with it, why would that help, you are efectivly weponless once you struck youre oponent, who can the counter with his own weapon. However I also believe that that it is unlikely that one can effectively harm a shild, even if you get it stuck in the shild, so what, its a spiky thing in my shild, thats what my shild is there for, and wraping it behind or around something, just as useless, it means my flail can now not be retrackted from where it is, I might be able to wrench the object away from my oponent, but I am weaponless until I do so, so I'm dead. Its more likely that flails where a perade weapon or romatick ideal, not a practical weapon of war. However, the farming tool is a great weapon in deed, especially for peasants, since you would have them readily avaliable and there a big stick with a moving head on them, plus you would have partice with them every harvest. However they are no where near as unpredictable as the "military version", because they only have on link of chain, so the head doesnt go all over the place. Flails might have actually started out as chain whips, basically the flail without the head, now that would achieve reasonable blunt trauma, not fly all over the place because it would'nt bounce and not get cought on anything. But hte flail as shown, probably not very effective, if real at all....
Also, it's not that it gets stuck in the shield. It's that it can strike around the shield at the person behind it. Spikes don't just get stuck in things, mind you, and it's unlikely the spikes of a flail would get stuck or even penetrate. I'd imagine it's often the same reason you put a spike on the front end of a warhammer, to effectively deliver force into the opponent. A point hit a lot harder than a metal ball.
idea for why multiple chains: heavier heads without needing to reinforce the chain too much. if you double the mass of each head, you need to double the cross-section of each link, which cubes the weight of each link so as to hold the head safely (it'd be very bad if a link snapped as you flail your flail about), especially if cords and not chains are used also, considering how shoddy some of the stuff in the Battle of Visby remains was, links might not have been tiptop quality, so if one breaks, well you still got another head on your flail
The math on this is wrong. Strength would be based on total cross section thickness, not the diameter. In fact, doubling the diameter would far more than double the strength.
@@kingsford6540 His math is off but I think his general point is still correct. Larger heads would require larger links which would be more expensive, harder manufacture, and probably more unwieldy. Plus if you're dealing with non-metal cords or similar you'd likely hit the limits of your materials in fairly short order. Plus multiple heads means that if one gets damaged or the attachment gets severed you still have an effective weapon.
I could be wrong about all of this, but here's what I've come to over the years. First off I used to have similar arguments with people about nunchaks and whether they were very effective or even ever actually used. Allow me to advance the proposition that a weapon need nit have become common to be effective, nor be widely useful to be important. The appeal of the flail to knight, particularly in the later part of the middle ages where knights were involved in more tournaments and personal combat rather than massed battles against armies. The flail properly swung could generate a tremendous amount of cetripedal force. Maces could do likewise but are more tiresome to use because you end up having to recover from every swing whether contact was made or not. A flail maintains its momentum and when wielded skillfully can remain in motion for a significantly larger period of time. It might have been possible to use a flail to wrap up enemy spears and polearms, a perennial concern for knights sent to fight peasant armies. So where a mace would knock them aside it would also allow the enemy pikemen to recover just as quickly. While a flail would work its way around several shafts and especially likely if fitted with several weights then tangle two or more polearms and preferably become entangled, hence the frighteningly long chains on some of these weapons. Once done there was now a weakpoint in the pike/polearm formation. This was probably very risky, but faced with well a trained retinue of pikeman it seams worthwhile to break up the line. Much more unwieldy things have been done for considerably less advantage. In battle of heavily armed men opposing each other, particularly in single combat such as a duel or a tournament, a flail could be used to batter a shield and break the bonds and ties hilding the armor together in much the same way as a mace would. The point being more to smack someones helmet sideways or force a pauldron to become loose thus creating weaknesses in the opponents armor, if it became entangled in the other mans mail, shield, limbs, weapons so much the better. This is particularly likely to be so during tournament combat as the relatively ineffectual blows the flail was likely to be able to make through a cuirass (chestpiece) or a great helm of the sort worn during jousting/single combat tournaments were nonetheless a great show for the crowd and a long exchange of blows between the "combatants"would assure that the honor risked by losing would be minimized. A far greater concern to a knight of that period. As for the flails with long spikes, these are clearly meant to stick. Most likely they were meant for the opponents shield. Keep in mind squires would stand by ready to hand their liege a new weapon every time he was "finished"with it or lost it or dropped it. A (or several) spiky heavy flail(s) or morning star maces stuck in your kite shield could render the shield unwieldy and thus either lower the guard or cause the shield to be abandoned by its wielder. A point would be gained for stripping an opponents shield while simultaneously denying him a chance for the same counter point and honor could be curried by dispensing with ones own otherwise advantage could be pressed. Most knights gave in during the ring combat portion of a tournament from exhaustion, not injury. In fact injuries were quite rare in the foot portion of tournaments. Its also important to see the value tournament had as training and incentive for knights to maintain their battle readiness especially during long outbreaks of peace. It was jousting that caused most of the worst injuries. All in all I think that flails are useful as both weapons and competition pieces in their specific roles. The flail might not be the most commonly used "tool"in a knights toolbox, but it was the right tool for the job sometimes and he was likely the better for having it.
I believe the main benefit of a chain link between handle and head is to isolate the hand and arm from the force of impact. Plains Indians used a double-pointed stone head lashed to a flexible wooden shaft, giving the same isolation from impact.
Welcome, to Medieval Engineering, Or How Much The Ancients Knew Without Knowing It! Answering your question, why would a flail with multiple heads better than a flail with a single head, and why would someone even use one? The answer begins with how the flail head is connected. Very often, as you stated, they were connected by tough leather cords, not chains. When they were chains, nine smaller heads use nine smaller chains. Let's say you bring this flail into contact with an object of resistance. What was once a taut connection suddenly rebounds, slows to likely zero, and then bounces off at whatever angle it hit at. Imagine it hits and glances off at an angle away from the flail. Flails, being weapons relying on centripetal, rather than direct, motion for all of their force are also subject to centrifugal force on the connection. Glancing away means that the ball suddenly tears away and the hand, meaning it may be difficult to control after contact (they are already dangerous to the wielder, because if they don't hit something, you can't stop them from moving with the handle). Nine heads hitting a relatively spread out area (the nine mace heads would never be exactly the same length) mean that there are fewer possibly skirting off. So the same force arrives, but you reduce force on the connection (which could snap) and certainly on the force traveling away from the handle trying to drag you forward or pull the flail from your hand (since it's likely many of the heads bounce off in a more advantageous direction). This means the weapon will likely not snap its cords or chains and also will be more stable after impact. Also, keep in mind that a spread impact is not always completely disadvantageous when force is applied. In small areas, a lot of force can pierce and dent armor. However, this produces localized internal injuries (imagine a single rifle bullet hitting you). Spreading the same force over a larger area with multiple striking points doesn't do as much direct damage, but it's FAR more punishing having that damage, for example, slam into your entire side or shoulder. The contusions would be immense (think of being hit by a shell of .00 shot). Sort of a pick-your-poison moment, whether you would rather cause more damage with a successful strike or cause more direct force overall. Remember that all these heads wouldn't be hitting that broad of an area; they are at least roughly equidistant. The third advantage is that if nine heads hit in an area where there is a lot of variation in armor thickness, you are at least more likely to do SOMETHING. Striking an opponent with a single large head in the arm could do significant damage, or it could not. Doing so with nine heads includes the same force over a larger area, but with a higher probability that one head will strike a vulnerable part of the elbow. Why would you use something like this? Centripetal force takes some time to get moving. The hardest part is getting the thing going, because not only do you have to have the haft moving, but it then needs to be moving the head of the flail as well. The good news is that, at worst from a nice swing, you're applying force like a trebuchet. The haft, which might be a foot or two long, suddenly "becomes", according to the physics, a weapon of five feet long. That means the heads are traveling the same speed as something you would field in two hands, provided you can get the speed up. Swinging them above your head in preparation for this gets them moving at top speed already, so being struck by a flail which has been brought up to full speed right in the shield is pretty immense. And that's before we start talking about what happens if the chain stops moving but the heads do not. This is the "over the shield" talk you hear about flails, and it has a basis in physics. Once you've got the thing moving at full speed, let's say you swing down and your chain encounters resistance well before the heads reach a hard surface. The heads don't stop moving, this much is readily common knowledge. However, they start moving FASTER. The reason is that force is collected at the head of the flail (force travels outward, which is how centripetal force works and why being hit with the tip of a sword is often carrying more force than near the haft). If the chain or cord stops halfway, the force continues acting on the heads, but now on a distance that is probably 1/3 the distance (essentially, the length of the haft and length of the connecting chain or cord that has ceased to move). With the same force now acting on a far smaller travel distance, you've essentially not lost any force but gained in velocity. Even if it doesn't manage to hit your opponent's arm, it may well rip the shield out of his hand (what most medieval net and rope weapons were used for included inconveniencing enemies, which was recorded prodigiously in Roman gladiatorial contests). Your only drawback with a flail is that you cannot parry anything, as stated. Having a weapon which uses the force of a two foot haft acting on a five foot arc doesn't actually give you a five foot weapon, and a weapon that doesn't stop when it hits something with the chains or cords also doesn't stop a sword. As such, I imagine these weapons were far more useful, especially in combat against well armored personnel, with nice, weighted, square or round (or if you're really having fun, flanged) heads. A spiked head might lodge the weapon in what you're hitting. Yes, it might disable a shield, but that wouldn't be a great idea (you've now got to draw another weapon, and a flail is plenty dangerous on its own). Being that you don't have a lot of control on how the spike hits, your chance of puncturing the armor would be insignificant. No, if they were spiked, it was likely to be used against lightly armored or unarmed (but possibly shield-bearing) opponents. They would likely be less useful on any well-padded mail coat. I find it more likely that, if one were to field this weapon against an armored knight, the weapon would be relatively blunt or flanged, not spiked. The delivery of force could be enormous! Without running the calculations, imagine you wearing a bulletproof vest. The vest is designed to dissipate small and direct pressure over a larger distance and stop it from penetrating (in a way very similarly to Medieval armor). Now, imagine being hit by a chain with a lock on the end right in the chest with a bulletproof vest. I'm sure you can imagine the sort of damage a chain with a heavy lock on the end can do (such rudimentary flails are still in common use in street brawls, after all, as neither chains nor locks require permits). And only shock absorption can save you. You may not bleed to death, but it would not take much to disable you. You just need to lose your wind a few seconds. Of course, medieval weapons were built to also absorb some shock, but if men still waded into battle with hammers and maces and expected those to be effective (and by all accounts, they were at least as if not more effective than swords), there is no reason to surmise that a flail would not have been at least as effective, if not more so.
@@SergioMartinez-xv9tt If it was just one spike. The process of deflection around one spike brings the rest of the head into contact. Unless you aren't encountering armor at all, this would preclude sharpening the spikes. You don't want them to stick, you want the head to orient correctly on contact.
Flail's can generate more force then a mace/hammer of equal weight (due to arc physics, even before counting build-up), which would make them exceedingly good at breaking shields or hurting heavily armoured opponents. Anecdotal but from my combat experiences; flails are surprisingly hard to block or defend against (even with short chains), this is for a variety of reasons, but notably: 1. Obviously the tendency to bend around blocks, however especially with the normal way you would block another weapon! ordinarily you intercept lower down on the blade/shaft for leverage and accuracy reasons but with a flail you have to block close to the end of the weapon), e.g. if I swing at your head and you block/parry the shaft the chain will keep swinging down and it will crush your head anyway. 2. Deceptive reach, visually it's hard to judge the weapons actual reach as it's never fully extended except towards the end of the attack, which is doubly problematic since to defend against it you need to know where the end is, and it makes even dodging trickier. 3. Even with a shield you may need to move the shield more then normal as again you have to intercept the end of the weapon and not just any part of it like you could with a sword or mace, this also means that in order to block it with a shield, the shield itself must take a lot more of the force. So the point is that for all it's faults a flail can be a surprisingly effective offensive weapon, especially against anyone who is not accustomed to fighting against a flail user as many ordinary techniques he might use would fail to defend as they would against other weapons.
TheWhiskyDelta They also are more effective against armored combatants than unarmored ones. Did you notice? The sword won’t cut someone in armor, but the flail will just catch them with blunt force trauma anyways. I totally agree with what you said.
+daniel cason yeah I always thought of it as torture device much like a whip since the spikes on the ball are quite small for it to be considered lethal first go.
To be honest, the best explanation of why you'd use a flail is that it's ridiculously hard to parry, IF you're quite skilled with it. I think perhaps that fills in most of the holes. Yes it's dangerous to the user, but IF quite skilled, it's also incredibly dangerous to the opponent. Setting a flail into even a slow spin can increase the force by an incredible amount, and the direction of the spin can be combined with a set of attacks that can keep the flail moving constantly by landing angled, glancing blows, that will still bash around the opponent, but don't have to fully stop the flail unless you're certain that you can do enough damage with it.
My opinion, from taking fencing back in the day, studying medieval weaponry, and owning a replica flail...for what this is worth: They are great for going over a shield, as you said in the last flail episode. If I had to make an educated guess, knights who had practiced a lot with it...which probably most didn't...but some guys who wanted something out of the ordinary up their sleeve kept this as one of their secondary weapons, for use if the right opponent came up.
That French accent was absolutely amazing. More please. On topic; A big advantage that should be noted is that the flail has pretty amazing reach for a one-handed weapon. Another reason why using it on horseback would be plausible. Horsemen are on the move most of the time, so you'd be swinging left and right, knocking people in the head mostly. I don't see a huge danger of hitting the horse, as long as you've trained. I'm not sure about the timeline exactly, but could it be that the flail was meant as a replacement for knights, when the regular sword wasn't doing the trick anymore on armoured targets? Imagine a knight having just routed an enemy infantry formation with a lance charge. How is he going to run these men down? With a sword, traditionally. However, what if all these men are now armoured? Imagine foot knights, or just well-armoured men-at-arms. A sword isn't going to cut it, literally. However, a flail to the head, coming from a riding knight, would probably kill even heavily armoured men in a single blow.
That thought had occurred to me as well. If you are attacking a man in armor with a sword it won't do you much good to offend with the edge. You won't cut through their armor plate. Halfswording is preferable when both combatants are armored, which takes an otherwise long sword and shortens it to dagger length in the hand. Against an opponent halfswording (presumably because you are wearing a lot of armor) Lindy's flails have a tremendous advantage of both impact and reach. Much has already been made about the flail's ability to get around shields, imagine trying to stop one with just a steel bar.
Multiple heads hitting the same spot is an improvement because a single head hitting a hard surface like a shield or weapon, while giving a hell of a knock, bounces off and risks self-injury. Multiple heads staggers the impacts forcing the impact point to have more give, preventing a sort of head ricochet, while also driving the first head to make contact deeper in to the target.
i would say the first time a flail was used was at the threshing house when some farmer went after the local boy that knocked his daughter he found out that it made a pretty good weapon
My guess would be storage and carrying, both for what a flail was used for and why the multiple balls: A flail is effectively a polearm (when it comes to power and reach) but that can be carried easier by a horseman and much shorter to carry when not in use. A single ball is heavy and unweildy while multiple smaller ones seem to "fold" better along the haft.
Have you heard of glaser rounds? It's a modern 'bullet' that is actually comprised of a bunch af small glass balls. It is valued as a safety round, because the glass pellets convey near to all of their combined energy to the target and do not ricochet. Perhaps having multiple heads on a flail would serve the same effect? I personally hold that the value of a flail isn't so much that you can really dish it out, as much as that you can really dish it out and not suffer the consequences. Try hitting someone really hard with a hammer. You'll be lucky to hold on to it. The chain, on the other hand does not transport any impact vibrations back to your hand. It's a perfect hit-and-run weapon, which does seem to point to cavalry.
One advantage of a flail is that when the weight (ball or other shapes) strikes a target, the equal and opposite force that result from the impact is not imparted to your hand unlike a sword, ax, or club. If you strike and make a solid contact with a sword, ax or club, the shock travels from the point of impact to your gripping hand and also up your arm cause fatigue in your joints and muscles.
I think there's one potential advantage of the multi-headed flail that you may have missed: while the heads will tend to clump together when swinging it at someone (and hit a lot like a single-headed flail of similar mass), they won't tend to *stay* clumped together after making contact with that someone. Assuming multi-headed flails were actually used in period, I expect their existence is owed to that particular property, and my personal guess would be that it's all about the backswing. As anyone who's handled a flexible weapon will know, the part you really have to worry about isn't the swing, it's the backswing, and flails are no exception. This gets a lot worse when you're swinging at solid targets rather than air because solid targets (your enemies' heads included) have a nasty tendency to deflect such weapons in random directions, including some that you may not like. Thus, the advantage of the multi-headed flail might not have been that it would make it easier to hit the other guy or that it hit him harder when you did, but that instead of dealing with one relatively large weight deflecting in an unexpected direction after you hit someone, you'd be dealing with two or three much *smaller* weights deflecting in unexpected directions. So long as you had the good sense and pocketbook to be wearing some decent armor, this would likely move the risk of ricochets from "rather justifiable concern" to "mostly harmless": unlike the poor sap you just hit you wouldn't have to deal with all three heads hitting you in the exact same spot, so you could be pretty sure that your armor would just shrug it off. I'm honestly not at all sure how much of a backswing/ricochet risk flails would actually have presented in combat (so this may all be entirely off-base), and a brief look hasn't been much help: virtually all the videos I could find of actual target striking involved either light targets that didn't even slow the flail down or soft targets that the flail completely pulverized and/or embedded itself in. Neither of these approximate the kind of reaction you'd get from a glancing blow to armor, so they don't tell us much. Any "expert" swinging one seemed to make a decided point of armoring up, which suggests that it's at least perceived to be a significant risk, but it's also possibly they're simply being cautious. Regardless, one potential advantage of multi-headed flails MAY have been that, for an armored fighter, they presented a lower risk of accidental self-injury than a larger single-headed version.
When I was a kid, I figured flails were actually a type of throwing weapon. They just feel throwy, and on some painting I saw one that looked like it was being tossed over some guys (in reality probably laying on the ground in the distance).
I have a theory; you say they started out as farming implements, what if these were just improvised weapons made by peasant soldiers in an attempt to counter heavy armor? Granted, there would be other farming weapons like the billhook which might do a better job, but maybe some simply didn't own one. And like you said, it was probably just for softening enemies before using their main weapon.
Yes, there are several historical records where peasant uprisings used threshing flails as improvised weaponry. A couple of times with some effectiveness. These videos seem to be more about military use of one handed flails, on which there's basically any information. In fact, the one handed flails have a lot of weird designs and they lose most of the advantages that a two handed flail would have, so these videos have kind of been trying to figure out what the use of a one handed flail would be, how they worked and if they were even used at all by proper military (peasant uprisings are known to use anything they could get their hands on).
A blunt weapon is better than a sharp weapon against heavily armored opponents, thats one reason to use a flail instead of a billhook. The farmers already have the strength to use the flail because of heavy work.
These (and other flexible weapons) ARE quite effective in the right hands. One advantage is more energy is transmitted to the target instead of leaking back to one's hand, as it could with a cudgel/bat/staff.
Hey, Lloyd. The advantage of the flail is that it swings in the direction you swing, regardless of the angle you hold the haft at, which can help with attempted parries
I have a HEMA flail/mace just like the one he is holding in this video. The chain length and weight are the same, and it works very well. The flail works very well for grabbing weapons and disarming my opponent. Its not too hard to get past an opponents defenses if you know how to counter and be ready. This weapon takes way more skill and practice to use. I have fought against 8' spears, arming swords, great/long swords, and against axes, and this weapon does just fine for fighting. The only considerable problem is the 1/25 chance that the chain wraps on its self just right and catches both weapons dead and stuck together. Just wanted to state my case for anyone doubting the practicality of this weapon and its effectiveness. All his points made a very correct on stability and control. If anyone has any questions i might be able to answer in the comments. Thanks nice video :)
When talking about how flails may be more dangerous to the user than the enemy, I'm reminded of how, in both World Wars, more fighter pilots died in landing accidents than as a result of enemy action.
Farming tools getting 'militarized' was absolutely not unheard of. Some farmers used scythes in battles, leading to military scythes being developed. Can't recall much more than that however as I've unfortunately lost the book.
With more small weights as opposed to a single heavy weight they are less likely to break off and become projectiles. You said they were connected with leather.
Love these. I watch the first one and said "wait... I'm going to have to write you about this!" Then the second video talked a little about what I was going to say... but I was like "wait... I'm going to have to write you about this other thing." and this third video talked about it. I'm impressed. Still, there is a little more... I've scrimmaged with a fail ( steel ball, no spikes ) with a small group of fighters, (SCA, ACL) as an experiment. I found the following. Yes, you only want it as a secondary weapon. With a small team, I've found that fighters can't block it with a sword easily as it wraps over the top of the sword, whereas, a sword could easily block another sword the flail continues past it and still strikes the head. Not only can that hit disorient the person getting struck it ties up their weapon enough where a team mate can easily make the final kill and the flail handle still serves as pretty good protection from the other opponents sword strikes against the wielder. If I lose the weapon, it isn't an issue as it was a secondary weapon. I would also like to note that the flail I was using had a short chain and all of this worked rather well. I tried it one on one as well, this was a spectacular failure.
+Lindybeige I have little knowledge about these things but I thought these flails were a counter shield weapon? They are used to swing over the edge of parrying weapons and blocking shields to hit the defenders arms or shoulders/head?
i like the poem at the end. as you read the french manual, it describes that the seperate heads, will act as a "shotgun". one may strike his back, one his neck, one his head, it adds a scatter effect, aslo it said the chains were of cord. that is my understanding of many heads.
Nobleman called to arms would often bring along some of his peasants to support the war effort but not all could afford to equip or perhaps even thought it was worth it to equip them with actual weaponry and so the peasants would grab what they could and flail was very cheap, handy and useful weapon with two 'buts'. The flails were usually set on a long staff with short chain and shorter stick (about the size of the grip that appears in the video) at the end because that shape was best suited to whip the crops and they were used, as I said, by peasants who carred little about anything but the result which was beating the life out of any poor knight or soldier that was unfortunate to get within their reach, and they would achieve that by attacking together, just bashing over and over. As for the short flails I think it was more of an attempt to make flails into weapon worth of a soldier or a knight or perhaps it was solely a tournament weapon or duel weapon(in duels they especially had a lot of ... 'innovative' weaponry like long-shields with spikes, veils with stones for women etc.)
It strikes me (yes lol) all these years later that an advantage of flails is their modular nature. Where forging a sword is a difficult and time intensive job, making a flail would likely be simpler as there are likely to be lengths of chain available for general use already. From there, the striking head of the flail could be as simple as a weight or ingot. If a sword is damaged, it requires some specific maintenance and repair, where any single piece of the flail seems rather rudimentary and by comparison easy to replace.
I tend to concur that the star flail would potentially be used against a horse as the initial point of attack, either head on or from the rear, the point being to make the horse lose its rider. Target points could be potentially the head, legs or hindquarter. once the horse either buckles or bucks, the dislodged rider could be easily dispatched with a blow from the flail to the head. I appreciate many horses were armoured to prevent such attacks, yet the achillies heel so to speak is the metacarpus or metatatsus. Alternately it would be effective to dispatch wounded soldiers who were at a disadvantage to defend themselves. Mind you this is purely speculation, but potentially feasible. I love your channel- keep up the good work!
chained weapons have a big arc that allows more force to be delivered and use minimal metal saving finance and in tandem with a shield such used by late medieval royal guards offer a weapon with enough power to crush a surrounded by a helmet. chained weapons can also swing around a shield to hit an adversary. so chained weapon offer high attack and way around shield whilst used with shield offers high defense combining the best of both in one combatant.
I think I have an idea for how the flail was effectively used with multiple heads/bashy bits: You're supposed to swirl it above your head in a circular pattern, as fast as possible. With one bashy bit, it might become unwieldy after you got it up to a certain speed. But with multiple bashy bits, they might spread out a bit by pushing into each other. This could stabilize the weapon, allowing the user to swirl it up to even higher speeds, so that it would hurt even more getting hit by it. It's a wind up weapon, you stand with a shield at a safe distance, swirl it up to great speeds and then go in for the attack.
A flail would be good for getting around a shield, and a few manuals I saw translated indicate they were used for that. The lack of wide spread mention in manuals and the limited amount of them found would indicate they were not the most popular weapon, most likely due to their lack of versatility.
Perhaps they use multiple balls because it is easier to control once it has struck something. Having lots of small balls bouncing in random directions sounds easier to control than one giant ball bouncing in one direction. The small balls may cancel each other out to some degree and make it seem like they have an effective weight smaller than their actual mass.
When I was a kid we had "access" to a nice workshop (my fathers). We would make all kinds of weapons and armor (we also had a huge stack of tool leather) and fight almost daily in forest melees of up to about 30 kids. For the most part they were not friendly fights, somebody always got hurt and bloody, lost teeth or broke bones. We made several flails, to give to our enemies. They looked really scary, until they hit themselves and their friends by accident. Try as they might my brother and I never got hit once by a flail. We found the best weapon was a small shield and light but strong wooden sword (more like a club).
This is purely speculation from experimentation on my part, but in a mixed unit against a shield wall, this seems to be a decent way of getting around a shield. If you smack the end of the stick against the top edge of the shield, the ball tends to hit either the head or the hand, depending on the position and length of the chain. I've heard that primitive two-handed flails were used this way against roman troops.
when i visited the war museum in france, they said the flail could be used by cavalry in a similar manner to a cavalry sabre in the charge, where if you gripped your weapon during the impact your wrist would shatter- cavalry were trained to let go of sabres during the charge and momentum would drive them into targets, from where the rider would use the wrist strap to retrieve the sword. perhaps the flail might be used in a similar manner by charging cavalry to swing at enemies in the charge without shattering wrists?
Flails seem to have had great cultural and perhaps religious significance in the ancient world, because they were agricultural implements and such devices are prerequisites for developing a civilization in the first place. So I wouldn't be surprised if they were often used mainly for ceremonial purposes. As for the multiple heads, they could be useful in the defensive method of swinging them around oneself, as they might splay out and cover a wider area, making it harder to get in close to the wielder.
Just watched your 3 video's on Flails (or whatever you want to call them), and your video on '1 handed late medieval hitty things' and recalled an experience I had with a hammer. I hit a heavy hammer against a solid object and really hurt my own wrist when it came to a sudden stop! This might be more my lack of skill at DIY then a hammer design flaw but now I am thinking: "Could the advantage of having a weight-on-chain weapon be that it is less strenuous to have your attack parried? (Because either the chain swings back, absorbing the impact, of the parry hits the handle, and the heavy bit just wraps around it.)"
Like a lot of Asian weapons these would require very specific training to use them effectively and safely. I have used a number of Asian weapons where the skills were transferable, But at one stage I was given a three sectional staff, and after searching in vain for someone to learn its use from, I gave it away, rather than try to survive learning a battlefield weapon by trial and error. Thanks for all the wonderful videos. Please ignore the grammatical errors, I am short on time and tend to let the words dribble off my fingertips at this time of night.
One thing I've figured out in very limited experimentation with these is that they make for less wear and tear on the wielder. Hit someone hard with a mace the shock runs up your own arm. Do it repeatedly; your arm goes numb. Put a chain between you and the target; no vibration. I'm still not convinced that they were common or effective.
They might have used multiple chains because the weapon started out using cord or something less strong. The thinner cords can't support too heavy of a weight without risk of breaking and if you increase the thickness of the cord too much it loses flexibility and becomes unwieldy. Chain remedies these problems but the multi-end design carried over. It's also possible, as someone else pointed out, that there was a high probability of one or more weights becoming detached over the course of the battle and having multiples kept the weapon usable longer, even if it wasn't hitting quite as hard. I think it's also possible that different soldiers prefered different flail weights, and multiple ends allowed for standardized parts and easy customization, but I think the historical basis for that is probably pretty weak.
I agree that multiple chains seems to offer little or no advantage. However, the point of the weapon is impact and armour penetration. The flail was generally used in later periods to penetrate armour such as plate. A cutting weapon such as a sword (certain types of sword at least) are rather ineffective against heavy armour. This is one reason why swords got pointier (to find gaps, such as groin, armpits etc) and weapons like the mace, hammer and flail became more prevalent.
Lindybeige do you know the movie "Ivanhoe" from the year 1952? It is a GREAT medieval monumental movie with lots of medieval combats, arming sword vs. arming sword, jousts, and the last fight is a duel between a knight who wields a battle axe and his opponent wields a morning star. Watching that scene, a morning star seems to be quite a suitable weapon for just tremendous damage.
When you mentioned "so why have this chain at all", I came up with the idea that one of the reasons a flail isn't a totally crap weapon is that it affords the user a lot more reach. If you imagined a pole the length of the handle of your flail plus the chain with an equal sized ball on the end, there's no way the resulting weapon could be feasibly used with one hand. The pivot of the chain moves the center of gravity toward the hand when the ball isn't in action so the weapon is slightly easier to control, then when swinging the weapon, you're swinging a short, manageable, weapon until the chain becomes taught at which point the existing momentum is enough to keep the longer weapon stable. It's just a more efficient method of accelerating a large mass at the end of a long pole than say a sledgehammer is. So the idea behind the flail would be giving the wielder the reach to achieve the first swing, and then maximizing the power of the first swing to incapacitate the opponent before they can close the distance. I would imagine a flail would be absolutely useless at close quarters.
Lindybeige - i'm not sure if this has been addressed, but re: Who used flails? Flails were historically associated with the Hussite infantry. "The Hodetin ordinance states 2 drivers, two handgunners, 6 crossbowmen, 14 flailmen, 4 halberdiers, two pavisiers. " This was for a "wagenburg" - a mobile wagon-fortress used to transport materiel. The wagons could be circled, and flailmen could guard the spaces between wagons. Apparently, they were especially effective against cavalry. The flails they used were based on agricultural flails, and consisted of a large staff with a cylindrical, spike-covered head attached by a short chain (1-2 links). Source: Christopher Gravett, German Medieval Armies 1300-1500
Does your source mention why they were considered effective against cavalry? What this describes sounds like a long two headed flail, was that because it's optimized to land one very heavy hit on a rider as they pass within reach, or maybe to break the knees of horses?
LamiaDomina Thank you for your question. Unfortunately, the source does not specify. It was indeed a staff weapon, and probably benefited from the same properties which made pole-weapons effective against cavalry throughout the ages - namely, a long reach coupled with a natural ability to deter horses. If I had to guess (and mind you this is only a guess), I would say that both your suppositions are probably correct - the movement of the head on the chain coupled with the forward momentum of a charging horse would probably be sufficient to dismount a rider, or to sweep the legs out from under a horse.
from what I've gathered, but perhaps not from the best sources, you can generate the same velocity as a mace more easily by swirling it. What I find a more convincing argument however is that it does relatively the same job as a mace, but the flail has a much longer reach then the metal stick of a mace. and I guess they pair nicely with a shield.
The only advantage I can see to multiple heads rather than one bigger head is possibility of poor construction. If one of your tethers breaks, you'll still have SOMETHING to continue to bash with.
From the discriptoin of that nine-ball flail, it sounded like maybe the user wasn't swinging them all as one group of balls, but as 9 planets around the stick. This would require a setup with some kind of bearings, but I'm sure that could be worked out. It would probably make a formidable all-or-nothing one-hit-or-die dueling weapon but be useless in battle for those same reasons.
One reason I can think about for using a flail, is that comparing to a mace, when hitting a hard target, the reaction/shake force that goes through the shaft back to your hand is significantly reduced.
I may be wrong as of how practical it might have been, but perhaps it's designed purpose was to reach and hit weakspots in armor that would have been otherwise unreachable, as after hitting the opponents side, the chain would wrap around it while maintaining and even increasing the velocity of the weight at its end, which would then hit the side of armour facing away from the attacker.
I think a possible key detail being left about these mid-evil multiheaded flails is that they chains on them probably weren't all the same length. If you have an 8 ounce steel or lead weight on the end of a chain, that alone would be enough to completely incapacitate a solder if it hit him across the nose or in the eye or temple. Most solders would be wearing helmets though and possibly carry a shield. If you had multiple heads on a flail and you were aiming for their head each swing gives you multiple opportunities to hit something soft and incapacitate him. Even if half the heads are blocked by a sword parry or a shield block, all the energy of the swing at the end is in the angular momentum of the chains. Having a weight small enough to pass through the face of a bulky helmet would be advantageous if your goal was to incapacitate and clobbering an unarmored skull would still be enough to kill someone or at least knock them unconscious.
Hypothesis: 1. Transportation. You have the power of a pole-arm(ish) mace that can is easier to carry. (Just wrap the flail with some cord to the shaft). 2. It gives a better smack than an equivalent length long mace (chain + shaft) because the limited factor would be to get up inertia and you having a leaver. 3. Peasants would be used to handling the agricultural flail and such would have advantage due to being custom to the behaviour. 4. An equivalent long mace could be blocked or parried at the part closer to your hands. I'd suggest a spear would be a superior weapon. However. Other weapons where used. Including axes and big maces. One big mace from the Flemish was appearantly called "Guten Tag".(Good day). Appearantly to good use when defending against fewer heavily armoured troops. I would thing these kinds of strong offensive weapons might be good by many poorly armoured and underskilled people to take out fewer well-trained and heavily-armoured soldiers. Some suggestions. Cheers.
I once saw a documentary claiming that small flails were used by Vikings as an anti-shield weapon. As mentioned in one of the previous videos, the flail's flexibility allows it to "reach around" a shield. In the case of the Vikings, so the documentary claimed, the length of the chain was such that when the end of the handle was struck against the top edge of the shield, the ball would swing down behind and strike the arm holding said shield, breaking or otherwise injuring it. As also suggested, this was not intended as a primary weapon, but as an initial "softening up" attack, after which a different weapon was used for extended combat. I don't place much authority in such programs, but the explanation seemed reasonably plausible.
About the softening the enemy a little bit, I've fought with a fake flail and shield while my friend had a shield and sword and although this is purely attack weapon with basically zero defense capabilities, it is fantastic at hitting your foe when he's behind a shield. Mainly because the chain (or in our case, a rope) will bend unlike a sword, so it's really hard to defend against flails if you use them right. but you'll have to be really good at using a shield. Or you can have a dagger in your shield hand and when your enemy comes close, you use the flail, drop it and use the dagger or use a sword, cause flails are absolutely not something you want in too close combat. Can't defend at all, unless you're really strong and know how to use the flail.
I use to belong to a Medieval reenactment club. I found that the flail was used in a way where the solid shaft was swung to hit the top of a shield, and the chain and ball, or balls would flip over the shield to strike the person holding the shield.
Medieval flails make the best force against armour. If it bend the armour thats make the armour uncomfortable or criple the joints smooth movements/rotations. - The spikes make it possible to penetrate on helmet. - One hand use this weapon and the second use a shield for defens. When a user stronger then he put more chain for two reason - more weight more force around in a small area and more opportunity for a spiked ball to hit the right spot. - But more important: this weapon was very cheap and easy to make at that time :)
You could conceivably block or parry the single ball of a "normal" flail with your weapon if you're quick and precise enough, but this becomes much harder to do when there are multiple balls. As for hitting the same spot, I think this might actually have a negative effect on your attack. Normally, all of the energy in the ball is transferred to the target area in a very short amount of time, which would let it break bones with ease. But when you split the ball up into multiple smaller balls, they won't hit at exactly the same time. So while the same amount of energy might be transferred, it's over a longer period of time which could cause less damage. Still, if even one of the balls hit you would do more damage than if you had used a club, so multiple balls makes sense as a way to make your weapon a little more reliable.
I feel that the chain made it harder to predict were to parry the weapon. I.E. a sword has a precisely known area in which a block would stop the sword where as the chain is harder to stop with a sword or axe, as well as it has the potential to come over the shield and still inflict damage, similar in theory to the kopis.
Actually a huge advantage to this is that it can wrap around shields. For example, if you hit a shield with the stick part the chain could wrap around and maybe even hit the other guy in the shoulder.
One version of the flail which is effective (although you need a lot of space to use it properly) is the meteor hammer. I created one (a foam ball on the end of a rope) just to mess around and my opponents, who were all using either a spear or sword and shield couldn't parry or approach at all. I had to be really careful not to hit myself though, but to be honest it wasn't that hard.
a threshal is described like a mix of flail & cat-o-nine tails (or Roman scourge)...still a good description. I have had a flail facination for years and I find vioding and counter striking is best, a shield or buckler in off hand helps a ton but casting the ball like a fishing rod, or a trebuchet as stated, when side stepping an attack limits the potential of self injury. True the weapon has no defensive ability in single hand variety, but I have never been injured training with a steel ball as the head. I have nearly broken myself many times using nunchaku and they also are weaponized flails.
I've always theorized they were used as single-shot anti-tank weapons, so to speak, one really good hit to dismount or stun an opponent, followed by faster strikes from a lighter weapon so It was really cool to see Lindybeige sorta support that school of thought.
Clearly you need multiple heads because each one is enchanted with different elemental effects - one for flame, one for frost, one for electrical, etc. Just a purely random example. Such a weapon would be a flail - for the ages. ;-)
I agree with the comment that the multiple chains were derived from weaponizing a farm implement (a grain threshing tool). I also agree that claims were not likely battle melee weapons. More likely, they were for smacking drunks and other unruly types. Lastly, there is no way somebody with a sword could defend against a flail strike.
the more heads you have, the more time you'll strike. Each one is in fact independant of the other, and a lot of stuff can happen between the very first and the very last strike. 9 whip effect, 9 target close to one another. big spiky thing. Armor is a bad thing when it's stuck in your skull.
I always imagined having a flexible chain would allow a person with a flail to circumvent shields by swinging high, allowing the heads to wrap over the top and hopefully hit a head.
I suspect the flail had a couple of advantages. The first is the ability to speed up the chain ball, spinning it around and then delivering a massive blow. By charging a lot of speed before delivering the blow, it can gain a lot of kinetic energy. This might make it more eficient than a war hammer. And the ability to charge up kinect energy, might make it a good throwing weapon. The second advantage is the ability to go around shields and swords. The person defending has to act upon the ball, but if he is unable to do so and just acts upon the chain, the ball will hit him.
The morning star is a fantastic weapon for line battles. It arcs the head OVER the shield of your opponent, delivering a mortal blow to his back. I have used a Wooden facsimile (using a weighted tennis ball for the head) on long line battles (All using fake weapons, of course). Against a line of shield men, it was devastating. No so much in a tournament but great in a line battle against a wall of shields.
Flails are supposed to be used in perpetual motion, that is to say that you are not supposed to stop spinning them until you strike. This gets the benifit of adding the angular momentum to the strike while making the weapon a lot easier to wield.
If you swing it against an enemy's shield so that the stick part hits the shield, the chain/Star part will swing around behind it, negating the shield.
My two cents on why several small balls might be better than one large one: Soft tissue damage, and the potential to damage the bone in more places. If you just have one ball, you're unlikely to cause much in the way of tissue damage, and if you do hit the bone its likely to be just one break or fracture, which adrenaline could very well render moot. But if you have several smaller balls, each will rip open the flesh in a manner similar to a whip, and if you hit hard enough you have a good chance of fracturing the bone in several different places in close proximity making a mess of the bone beneath. Additionally, it could also be that one ball is easier to parry with a sword or axe etc, while several smaller balls the target may parry one or two, but the rest might still find there way to cause damage. Also, several small balls might tangle the enemies weapon, at which point you could drop the flail and draw your own sword on the now effectively disarmed enemy.
Multiple heads can provide more impact weight without putting a lot of tensile stress on a single chain. Since a flail is under nigh-constant centrifugal force when in use, there's a fair bit of tension between the shaft and the weight, which only increases with the size of the head. Under that amount of stress, eventually that chain's gonna break if swung around too much, and you'd be left with a stick with a broken chain on it, and your weight may very well have flown into the unfortunate face of your shieldbearer, Steve.
I guess it was manly a *tournament weapon* (like the weapon of the previous video). The point is not really to cave the helmet in nor to pierce it but to give a good concussion (and to look badass).
kenneth mcgriff I thought that was Joker. PS: there was a famous Samurai that had like 60 duells to proof his skill (FATAL duells!). In one he defeated a famous Samurai with an oar.
Hmm, I wonder if having two chains would make the weapon harder to remove if tangled up. If one advantage was to entangle the enemy's weapon, it could make sense. I could see it used in such a way. He parries with a sword, or pole arm of sorts, the chain wraps around, you then drop the flail and draw another weapon. If he only has one weapon, then he either has to fight with an awkward weight attached to it (not optimal), or try to disentangle the flail (not optimal either, since it leaves him vulnerable).
Not sure if I'll be able to explain myself but...anyway...I think that we're analyzing the weapon under some somehow wrong perspectives. I think those "smaller" one-handed flails (in comparison with the agricoltural\military ones, which were more likely part of the pole-weapon family and are a totally different subject) were usually used by knights or horsemen in "indirect" charges against footmen...let me explain better. By "indirect charge" i mean a situation where the knight using a flail will direct his horse on the right side (not directly at) of the infantrtyman he wishes to attack wielding the flail with his right hand horizontally (parrallel to the ground) whithout swinging it. The speed of the horse would give enought power to the hit... and the chain, once striken the first man,will do a 360 degrees circle and hit the guy who stands behind the first victim whithout ever have the knight actually "directly involved" in the fight. I think of it in use somehow like the scythe of a scyted chariot, if you follow me.
i always figured the multiple heads were for the purpose of acting as backups. If you smash the chain and a head breaks, your not left with just a chain on a stick.
My experience with fails is limited to sparing with the none-metallic kind, but the biggest advantage of the flail I have seen, is that it renders most common forms of defense ineffective. The way the flail moves makes it extreamly difficult to intercept or deflect with most other weapons, and the chain allows it to strike behind a shield with considerable force. The point of the multi-headed flail was to take advantage of the second aforementioned property I mentioned, multiple heads getting around a shield all but guarantees that at least one head would strike the mark. Often multi-headed flails would have heads of different lengths to accommodate this.
the length of chain is more important then the shape of the head in my experience, as a longer chain has a greater chance of striking a vulnerable point on the body due to reach, but it also requires much more effort to use. A shorter chain greatly reduces battle fatigue, but forces you to get in closer to guarantee a hit.
Using a flail without a shield however is very foolish, as the flail has no really way of providing much in the way of defense. But a proper shield bash as a follow-up to a well placed blow from a flail can, and will, throw most people off balance allowing you to repeat with the flail at your discretion.
The flail's greatest failing is that pole-arms, spears, and staffs can disrupt flails in mid swing, by keeping their distance and jabbing at the right moment someone with a quarterstaff or similar weapon can make the flail utterly useless, as you exhaust yourself trying to close the distance and swing it.
However, the nature of the flail is unpredictable, and youre just as likly to kill youreself as the other guy, especially once you hit. Once in motion, it will remain so, so hitting somthing like a shield, helmet or person WILL send the flail all over the place and just as likley into youre face. It seems to be a terribly inconvenient weapon and no where near as trusty and versitile as say a sword, so why would you chose it, even if we stipulate that you could harm or render a shield un usable with it, why would that help, you are efectivly weponless once you struck youre oponent, who can the counter with his own weapon. However I also believe that that it is unlikely that one can effectively harm a shild, even if you get it stuck in the shild, so what, its a spiky thing in my shild, thats what my shild is there for, and wraping it behind or around something, just as useless, it means my flail can now not be retrackted from where it is, I might be able to wrench the object away from my oponent, but I am weaponless until I do so, so I'm dead. Its more likely that flails where a perade weapon or romatick ideal, not a practical weapon of war. However, the farming tool is a great weapon in deed, especially for peasants, since you would have them readily avaliable and there a big stick with a moving head on them, plus you would have partice with them every harvest. However they are no where near as unpredictable as the "military version", because they only have on link of chain, so the head doesnt go all over the place. Flails might have actually started out as chain whips, basically the flail without the head, now that would achieve reasonable blunt trauma, not fly all over the place because it would'nt bounce and not get cought on anything. But hte flail as shown, probably not very effective, if real at all....
Jan Zizka actively used threshing flails in warfare and effectively defended an excommunicated Bohemia up to his death.
Also, it's not that it gets stuck in the shield. It's that it can strike around the shield at the person behind it. Spikes don't just get stuck in things, mind you, and it's unlikely the spikes of a flail would get stuck or even penetrate. I'd imagine it's often the same reason you put a spike on the front end of a warhammer, to effectively deliver force into the opponent. A point hit a lot harder than a metal ball.
@@mikeb8441 hits just as hard but with less surface area btw
@@chundermunt5151 Fair enough, it's still there to improve the effectiveness of the hit. Point stands.
Epic flail.
idea for why multiple chains: heavier heads without needing to reinforce the chain too much.
if you double the mass of each head, you need to double the cross-section of each link, which cubes the weight of each link so as to hold the head safely (it'd be very bad if a link snapped as you flail your flail about), especially if cords and not chains are used
also, considering how shoddy some of the stuff in the Battle of Visby remains was, links might not have been tiptop quality, so if one breaks, well you still got another head on your flail
The math on this is wrong. Strength would be based on total cross section thickness, not the diameter. In fact, doubling the diameter would far more than double the strength.
@@kingsford6540 He was speaking about the mass, not the diameter.
@@guybrushthreepwood3054 no, he said, if you double the mass, you would have to double the cross section of each link. That's incorrect.
@@kingsford6540 His math is off but I think his general point is still correct. Larger heads would require larger links which would be more expensive, harder manufacture, and probably more unwieldy. Plus if you're dealing with non-metal cords or similar you'd likely hit the limits of your materials in fairly short order. Plus multiple heads means that if one gets damaged or the attachment gets severed you still have an effective weapon.
what an outrageous french accent!
It started as outrageous french and ended as outrageous german.
+Magnus Dahler Norling Perhaps Belgian - Poirot?
+GeneralZ
I am French and it's painful to hear his accent but nonetheless true lol
To me it sounded like a German scientist in Indiana Jones.
Fetchez le vache.
Flails get a lot more useful when you put Ko, Vex, Pul, Thul runes in one.
+drewmandan and for god sakes dont use a knout!
My favorite thing to do is transfer a Khalim's Will flail to a level one character. Makes bashing out those first few levels so much more fun. :-)
Is this a reference to something?
arte0021 Yep, it's a reference to Diablo 2 - using these runes makes a runeword which empowers a weapon
Omfg you took me in a trip to a few years back having the time of my life playing Diablo II. Downloading right now
I could be wrong about all of this, but here's what I've come to over the years.
First off I used to have similar arguments with people about nunchaks and whether they were very effective or even ever actually used. Allow me to advance the proposition that a weapon need nit have become common to be effective, nor be widely useful to be important. The appeal of the flail to knight, particularly in the later part of the middle ages where knights were involved in more tournaments and personal combat rather than massed battles against armies.
The flail properly swung could generate a tremendous amount of cetripedal force. Maces could do likewise but are more tiresome to use because you end up having to recover from every swing whether contact was made or not. A flail maintains its momentum and when wielded skillfully can remain in motion for a significantly larger period of time. It might have been possible to use a flail to wrap up enemy spears and polearms, a perennial concern for knights sent to fight peasant armies. So where a mace would knock them aside it would also allow the enemy pikemen to recover just as quickly. While a flail would work its way around several shafts and especially likely if fitted with several weights then tangle two or more polearms and preferably become entangled, hence the frighteningly long chains on some of these weapons. Once done there was now a weakpoint in the pike/polearm formation. This was probably very risky, but faced with well a trained retinue of pikeman it seams worthwhile to break up the line. Much more unwieldy things have been done for considerably less advantage.
In battle of heavily armed men opposing each other, particularly in single combat such as a duel or a tournament, a flail could be used to batter a shield and break the bonds and ties hilding the armor together in much the same way as a mace would. The point being more to smack someones helmet sideways or force a pauldron to become loose thus creating weaknesses in the opponents armor, if it became entangled in the other mans mail, shield, limbs, weapons so much the better. This is particularly likely to be so during tournament combat as the relatively ineffectual blows the flail was likely to be able to make through a cuirass (chestpiece) or a great helm of the sort worn during jousting/single combat tournaments were nonetheless a great show for the crowd and a long exchange of blows between the "combatants"would assure that the honor risked by losing would be minimized. A far greater concern to a knight of that period. As for the flails with long spikes, these are clearly meant to stick. Most likely they were meant for the opponents shield. Keep in mind squires would stand by ready to hand their liege a new weapon every time he was "finished"with it or lost it or dropped it. A (or several) spiky heavy flail(s) or morning star maces stuck in your kite shield could render the shield unwieldy and thus either lower the guard or cause the shield to be abandoned by its wielder. A point would be gained for stripping an opponents shield while simultaneously denying him a chance for the same counter point and honor could be curried by dispensing with ones own otherwise advantage could be pressed. Most knights gave in during the ring combat portion of a tournament from exhaustion, not injury. In fact injuries were quite rare in the foot portion of tournaments. Its also important to see the value tournament had as training and incentive for knights to maintain their battle readiness especially during long outbreaks of peace. It was jousting that caused most of the worst injuries.
All in all I think that flails are useful as both weapons and competition pieces in their specific roles. The flail might not be the most commonly used "tool"in a knights toolbox, but it was the right tool for the job sometimes and he was likely the better for having it.
I believe the main benefit of a chain link between handle and head is to isolate the hand and arm from the force of impact. Plains Indians used a double-pointed stone head lashed to a flexible wooden shaft, giving the same isolation from impact.
Welcome, to Medieval Engineering, Or How Much The Ancients Knew Without Knowing It! Answering your question, why would a flail with multiple heads better than a flail with a single head, and why would someone even use one?
The answer begins with how the flail head is connected. Very often, as you stated, they were connected by tough leather cords, not chains. When they were chains, nine smaller heads use nine smaller chains. Let's say you bring this flail into contact with an object of resistance. What was once a taut connection suddenly rebounds, slows to likely zero, and then bounces off at whatever angle it hit at. Imagine it hits and glances off at an angle away from the flail. Flails, being weapons relying on centripetal, rather than direct, motion for all of their force are also subject to centrifugal force on the connection. Glancing away means that the ball suddenly tears away and the hand, meaning it may be difficult to control after contact (they are already dangerous to the wielder, because if they don't hit something, you can't stop them from moving with the handle). Nine heads hitting a relatively spread out area (the nine mace heads would never be exactly the same length) mean that there are fewer possibly skirting off. So the same force arrives, but you reduce force on the connection (which could snap) and certainly on the force traveling away from the handle trying to drag you forward or pull the flail from your hand (since it's likely many of the heads bounce off in a more advantageous direction). This means the weapon will likely not snap its cords or chains and also will be more stable after impact.
Also, keep in mind that a spread impact is not always completely disadvantageous when force is applied. In small areas, a lot of force can pierce and dent armor. However, this produces localized internal injuries (imagine a single rifle bullet hitting you). Spreading the same force over a larger area with multiple striking points doesn't do as much direct damage, but it's FAR more punishing having that damage, for example, slam into your entire side or shoulder. The contusions would be immense (think of being hit by a shell of .00 shot). Sort of a pick-your-poison moment, whether you would rather cause more damage with a successful strike or cause more direct force overall. Remember that all these heads wouldn't be hitting that broad of an area; they are at least roughly equidistant.
The third advantage is that if nine heads hit in an area where there is a lot of variation in armor thickness, you are at least more likely to do SOMETHING. Striking an opponent with a single large head in the arm could do significant damage, or it could not. Doing so with nine heads includes the same force over a larger area, but with a higher probability that one head will strike a vulnerable part of the elbow.
Why would you use something like this?
Centripetal force takes some time to get moving. The hardest part is getting the thing going, because not only do you have to have the haft moving, but it then needs to be moving the head of the flail as well. The good news is that, at worst from a nice swing, you're applying force like a trebuchet. The haft, which might be a foot or two long, suddenly "becomes", according to the physics, a weapon of five feet long. That means the heads are traveling the same speed as something you would field in two hands, provided you can get the speed up. Swinging them above your head in preparation for this gets them moving at top speed already, so being struck by a flail which has been brought up to full speed right in the shield is pretty immense. And that's before we start talking about what happens if the chain stops moving but the heads do not.
This is the "over the shield" talk you hear about flails, and it has a basis in physics. Once you've got the thing moving at full speed, let's say you swing down and your chain encounters resistance well before the heads reach a hard surface. The heads don't stop moving, this much is readily common knowledge. However, they start moving FASTER. The reason is that force is collected at the head of the flail (force travels outward, which is how centripetal force works and why being hit with the tip of a sword is often carrying more force than near the haft). If the chain or cord stops halfway, the force continues acting on the heads, but now on a distance that is probably 1/3 the distance (essentially, the length of the haft and length of the connecting chain or cord that has ceased to move). With the same force now acting on a far smaller travel distance, you've essentially not lost any force but gained in velocity. Even if it doesn't manage to hit your opponent's arm, it may well rip the shield out of his hand (what most medieval net and rope weapons were used for included inconveniencing enemies, which was recorded prodigiously in Roman gladiatorial contests).
Your only drawback with a flail is that you cannot parry anything, as stated. Having a weapon which uses the force of a two foot haft acting on a five foot arc doesn't actually give you a five foot weapon, and a weapon that doesn't stop when it hits something with the chains or cords also doesn't stop a sword. As such, I imagine these weapons were far more useful, especially in combat against well armored personnel, with nice, weighted, square or round (or if you're really having fun, flanged) heads.
A spiked head might lodge the weapon in what you're hitting. Yes, it might disable a shield, but that wouldn't be a great idea (you've now got to draw another weapon, and a flail is plenty dangerous on its own). Being that you don't have a lot of control on how the spike hits, your chance of puncturing the armor would be insignificant. No, if they were spiked, it was likely to be used against lightly armored or unarmed (but possibly shield-bearing) opponents. They would likely be less useful on any well-padded mail coat. I find it more likely that, if one were to field this weapon against an armored knight, the weapon would be relatively blunt or flanged, not spiked. The delivery of force could be enormous!
Without running the calculations, imagine you wearing a bulletproof vest. The vest is designed to dissipate small and direct pressure over a larger distance and stop it from penetrating (in a way very similarly to Medieval armor). Now, imagine being hit by a chain with a lock on the end right in the chest with a bulletproof vest. I'm sure you can imagine the sort of damage a chain with a heavy lock on the end can do (such rudimentary flails are still in common use in street brawls, after all, as neither chains nor locks require permits). And only shock absorption can save you. You may not bleed to death, but it would not take much to disable you. You just need to lose your wind a few seconds.
Of course, medieval weapons were built to also absorb some shock, but if men still waded into battle with hammers and maces and expected those to be effective (and by all accounts, they were at least as if not more effective than swords), there is no reason to surmise that a flail would not have been at least as effective, if not more so.
I swear, you meet some of the stupidly smartest people on the internet.
Veian Demontrond No Offence but your comment is way too long for me to understand!
I agree but wouldnt the spikes on the head would give it traction on armor if most armor is made to deflect?
@@SergioMartinez-xv9tt If it was just one spike. The process of deflection around one spike brings the rest of the head into contact.
Unless you aren't encountering armor at all, this would preclude sharpening the spikes. You don't want them to stick, you want the head to orient correctly on contact.
What's the tldr for the parent comment?
Flail's can generate more force then a mace/hammer of equal weight (due to arc physics, even before counting build-up), which would make them exceedingly good at breaking shields or hurting heavily armoured opponents.
Anecdotal but from my combat experiences; flails are surprisingly hard to block or defend against (even with short chains), this is for a variety of reasons, but notably:
1. Obviously the tendency to bend around blocks, however especially with the normal way you would block another weapon! ordinarily you intercept lower down on the blade/shaft for leverage and accuracy reasons but with a flail you have to block close to the end of the weapon), e.g. if I swing at your head and you block/parry the shaft the chain will keep swinging down and it will crush your head anyway.
2. Deceptive reach, visually it's hard to judge the weapons actual reach as it's never fully extended except towards the end of the attack, which is doubly problematic since to defend against it you need to know where the end is, and it makes even dodging trickier.
3. Even with a shield you may need to move the shield more then normal as again you have to intercept the end of the weapon and not just any part of it like you could with a sword or mace, this also means that in order to block it with a shield, the shield itself must take a lot more of the force.
So the point is that for all it's faults a flail can be a surprisingly effective offensive weapon, especially against anyone who is not accustomed to fighting against a flail user as many ordinary techniques he might use would fail to defend as they would against other weapons.
TheWhiskyDelta
They also are more effective against armored combatants than unarmored ones. Did you notice?
The sword won’t cut someone in armor, but the flail will just catch them with blunt force trauma anyways.
I totally agree with what you said.
Seems like a nice weapon to keep the peasants down.
+daniel cason i am going to hell for laughing at zour comment XD
+daniel cason yeah I always thought of it as torture device much like a whip since the spikes on the ball are quite small for it to be considered lethal first go.
Definitely something that'd be scary to see swinging at you.
first thought on why more than one...a chain breaks... you have a stick.
thats a very good argument :D
InfantrymanEJB if he broke the chain it means both chains are broken aye wouldnt it
Negative unless the eye that's holding both on breaks. If one chain breaks halfway up you still have the second.
PENIS
But he had established that they were used with a backup.
Perhaps for the phallic and scrotal imagery? Two hangy things and a stick? Maybe it's the 12 year old in me.
Seems to line up with the sense of humor of the period, what with bollock daggers and the like.
To be honest, the best explanation of why you'd use a flail is that it's ridiculously hard to parry, IF you're quite skilled with it. I think perhaps that fills in most of the holes. Yes it's dangerous to the user, but IF quite skilled, it's also incredibly dangerous to the opponent. Setting a flail into even a slow spin can increase the force by an incredible amount, and the direction of the spin can be combined with a set of attacks that can keep the flail moving constantly by landing angled, glancing blows, that will still bash around the opponent, but don't have to fully stop the flail unless you're certain that you can do enough damage with it.
My opinion, from taking fencing back in the day, studying medieval weaponry, and owning a replica flail...for what this is worth: They are great for going over a shield, as you said in the last flail episode. If I had to make an educated guess, knights who had practiced a lot with it...which probably most didn't...but some guys who wanted something out of the ordinary up their sleeve kept this as one of their secondary weapons, for use if the right opponent came up.
That French accent was absolutely amazing. More please.
On topic; A big advantage that should be noted is that the flail has pretty amazing reach for a one-handed weapon. Another reason why using it on horseback would be plausible. Horsemen are on the move most of the time, so you'd be swinging left and right, knocking people in the head mostly. I don't see a huge danger of hitting the horse, as long as you've trained.
I'm not sure about the timeline exactly, but could it be that the flail was meant as a replacement for knights, when the regular sword wasn't doing the trick anymore on armoured targets? Imagine a knight having just routed an enemy infantry formation with a lance charge. How is he going to run these men down? With a sword, traditionally. However, what if all these men are now armoured? Imagine foot knights, or just well-armoured men-at-arms. A sword isn't going to cut it, literally. However, a flail to the head, coming from a riding knight, would probably kill even heavily armoured men in a single blow.
That thought had occurred to me as well. If you are attacking a man in armor with a sword it won't do you much good to offend with the edge. You won't cut through their armor plate. Halfswording is preferable when both combatants are armored, which takes an otherwise long sword and shortens it to dagger length in the hand. Against an opponent halfswording (presumably because you are wearing a lot of armor) Lindy's flails have a tremendous advantage of both impact and reach.
Much has already been made about the flail's ability to get around shields, imagine trying to stop one with just a steel bar.
Multiple heads hitting the same spot is an improvement because a single head hitting a hard surface like a shield or weapon, while giving a hell of a knock, bounces off and risks self-injury. Multiple heads staggers the impacts forcing the impact point to have more give, preventing a sort of head ricochet, while also driving the first head to make contact deeper in to the target.
Yeah, it is like the difference between hitting with a ping pong ball and a bean bag. Balls just bounce off while the bag goes flop.
i would say the first time a flail was used was at the threshing house when some farmer went after the local boy that knocked his daughter he found out that it made a pretty good weapon
My guess would be storage and carrying, both for what a flail was used for and why the multiple balls:
A flail is effectively a polearm (when it comes to power and reach) but that can be carried easier by a horseman and much shorter to carry when not in use.
A single ball is heavy and unweildy while multiple smaller ones seem to "fold" better along the haft.
Have you heard of glaser rounds? It's a modern 'bullet' that is actually comprised of a bunch af small glass balls. It is valued as a safety round, because the glass pellets convey near to all of their combined energy to the target and do not ricochet. Perhaps having multiple heads on a flail would serve the same effect?
I personally hold that the value of a flail isn't so much that you can really dish it out, as much as that you can really dish it out and not suffer the consequences. Try hitting someone really hard with a hammer. You'll be lucky to hold on to it. The chain, on the other hand does not transport any impact vibrations back to your hand. It's a perfect hit-and-run weapon, which does seem to point to cavalry.
I do love the little quips at the end of your videos. Author! Author!
One advantage of a flail is that when the weight (ball or other shapes) strikes a target, the equal and opposite force that result from the impact is not imparted to your hand unlike a sword, ax, or club. If you strike and make a solid contact with a sword, ax or club, the shock travels from the point of impact to your gripping hand and also up your arm cause fatigue in your joints and muscles.
I think there's one potential advantage of the multi-headed flail that you may have missed: while the heads will tend to clump together when swinging it at someone (and hit a lot like a single-headed flail of similar mass), they won't tend to *stay* clumped together after making contact with that someone. Assuming multi-headed flails were actually used in period, I expect their existence is owed to that particular property, and my personal guess would be that it's all about the backswing.
As anyone who's handled a flexible weapon will know, the part you really have to worry about isn't the swing, it's the backswing, and flails are no exception. This gets a lot worse when you're swinging at solid targets rather than air because solid targets (your enemies' heads included) have a nasty tendency to deflect such weapons in random directions, including some that you may not like. Thus, the advantage of the multi-headed flail might not have been that it would make it easier to hit the other guy or that it hit him harder when you did, but that instead of dealing with one relatively large weight deflecting in an unexpected direction after you hit someone, you'd be dealing with two or three much *smaller* weights deflecting in unexpected directions. So long as you had the good sense and pocketbook to be wearing some decent armor, this would likely move the risk of ricochets from "rather justifiable concern" to "mostly harmless": unlike the poor sap you just hit you wouldn't have to deal with all three heads hitting you in the exact same spot, so you could be pretty sure that your armor would just shrug it off.
I'm honestly not at all sure how much of a backswing/ricochet risk flails would actually have presented in combat (so this may all be entirely off-base), and a brief look hasn't been much help: virtually all the videos I could find of actual target striking involved either light targets that didn't even slow the flail down or soft targets that the flail completely pulverized and/or embedded itself in. Neither of these approximate the kind of reaction you'd get from a glancing blow to armor, so they don't tell us much. Any "expert" swinging one seemed to make a decided point of armoring up, which suggests that it's at least perceived to be a significant risk, but it's also possibly they're simply being cautious. Regardless, one potential advantage of multi-headed flails MAY have been that, for an armored fighter, they presented a lower risk of accidental self-injury than a larger single-headed version.
i've seen every one of your videos and was greatly anticipating you doing videos on flails. thank you !
When I was a kid, I figured flails were actually a type of throwing weapon. They just feel throwy, and on some painting I saw one that looked like it was being tossed over some guys (in reality probably laying on the ground in the distance).
your videos are getting better and better
I have a theory; you say they started out as farming implements, what if these were just improvised weapons made by peasant soldiers in an attempt to counter heavy armor? Granted, there would be other farming weapons like the billhook which might do a better job, but maybe some simply didn't own one. And like you said, it was probably just for softening enemies before using their main weapon.
Yes, there are several historical records where peasant uprisings used threshing flails as improvised weaponry. A couple of times with some effectiveness. These videos seem to be more about military use of one handed flails, on which there's basically any information. In fact, the one handed flails have a lot of weird designs and they lose most of the advantages that a two handed flail would have, so these videos have kind of been trying to figure out what the use of a one handed flail would be, how they worked and if they were even used at all by proper military (peasant uprisings are known to use anything they could get their hands on).
A blunt weapon is better than a sharp weapon against heavily armored opponents, thats one reason to use a flail instead of a billhook. The farmers already have the strength to use the flail because of heavy work.
Ha, I'm embarrassed now. I basically repeated your points.
***** What evidence do you have for this? I brought up the Hussites too, but I was only going by two pictures attached to an article.
***** I know a little bit about their success. I think I meant the weapons they used. Thanks for going out of your way to find that book, though!
These (and other flexible weapons) ARE quite effective in the right hands. One advantage is more energy is transmitted to the target instead of leaking back to one's hand, as it could with a cudgel/bat/staff.
Hey, Lloyd. The advantage of the flail is that it swings in the direction you swing, regardless of the angle you hold the haft at, which can help with attempted parries
I have a HEMA flail/mace just like the one he is holding in this video. The chain length and weight are the same, and it works very well. The flail works very well for grabbing weapons and disarming my opponent. Its not too hard to get past an opponents defenses if you know how to counter and be ready. This weapon takes way more skill and practice to use. I have fought against 8' spears, arming swords, great/long swords, and against axes, and this weapon does just fine for fighting. The only considerable problem is the 1/25 chance that the chain wraps on its self just right and catches both weapons dead and stuck together. Just wanted to state my case for anyone doubting the practicality of this weapon and its effectiveness. All his points made a very correct on stability and control. If anyone has any questions i might be able to answer in the comments. Thanks nice video :)
When talking about how flails may be more dangerous to the user than the enemy, I'm reminded of how, in both World Wars, more fighter pilots died in landing accidents than as a result of enemy action.
Farming tools getting 'militarized' was absolutely not unheard of. Some farmers used scythes in battles, leading to military scythes being developed. Can't recall much more than that however as I've unfortunately lost the book.
With more small weights as opposed to a single heavy weight they are less likely to break off and become projectiles. You said they were connected with leather.
Another entertaining and quite informative video from Lindybeige
Love these. I watch the first one and said "wait... I'm going to have to write you about this!" Then the second video talked a little about what I was going to say... but I was like "wait... I'm going to have to write you about this other thing." and this third video talked about it. I'm impressed. Still, there is a little more... I've scrimmaged with a fail ( steel ball, no spikes ) with a small group of fighters, (SCA, ACL) as an experiment. I found the following. Yes, you only want it as a secondary weapon. With a small team, I've found that fighters can't block it with a sword easily as it wraps over the top of the sword, whereas, a sword could easily block another sword the flail continues past it and still strikes the head. Not only can that hit disorient the person getting struck it ties up their weapon enough where a team mate can easily make the final kill and the flail handle still serves as pretty good protection from the other opponents sword strikes against the wielder. If I lose the weapon, it isn't an issue as it was a secondary weapon. I would also like to note that the flail I was using had a short chain and all of this worked rather well. I tried it one on one as well, this was a spectacular failure.
+Lindybeige
I have little knowledge about these things but I thought these flails were a counter shield weapon? They are used to swing over the edge of parrying weapons and blocking shields to hit the defenders arms or shoulders/head?
Using that logic, it seems they would be put on the front line of battle to go against opposing sides shields.
i like the poem at the end. as you read the french manual, it describes that the seperate heads, will act as a "shotgun". one may strike his back, one his neck, one his head, it adds a scatter effect, aslo it said the chains were of cord. that is my understanding of many heads.
Nobleman called to arms would often bring along some of his peasants to support the war effort but not all could afford to equip or perhaps even thought it was worth it to equip them with actual weaponry and so the peasants would grab what they could and flail was very cheap, handy and useful weapon with two 'buts'. The flails were usually set on a long staff with short chain and shorter stick (about the size of the grip that appears in the video) at the end because that shape was best suited to whip the crops and they were used, as I said, by peasants who carred little about anything but the result which was beating the life out of any poor knight or soldier that was unfortunate to get within their reach, and they would achieve that by attacking together, just bashing over and over. As for the short flails I think it was more of an attempt to make flails into weapon worth of a soldier or a knight or perhaps it was solely a tournament weapon or duel weapon(in duels they especially had a lot of ... 'innovative' weaponry like long-shields with spikes, veils with stones for women etc.)
It strikes me (yes lol) all these years later that an advantage of flails is their modular nature. Where forging a sword is a difficult and time intensive job, making a flail would likely be simpler as there are likely to be lengths of chain available for general use already. From there, the striking head of the flail could be as simple as a weight or ingot.
If a sword is damaged, it requires some specific maintenance and repair, where any single piece of the flail seems rather rudimentary and by comparison easy to replace.
I tend to concur that the star flail would potentially be used against a horse as the initial point of attack, either head on or from the rear, the point being to make the horse lose its rider.
Target points could be potentially the head, legs or hindquarter. once the horse either buckles or bucks, the dislodged rider could be easily dispatched with a blow from the flail to the head. I appreciate many horses were armoured to prevent such attacks, yet the achillies heel so to speak is the metacarpus or metatatsus.
Alternately it would be effective to dispatch wounded soldiers who were at a disadvantage to defend themselves.
Mind you this is purely speculation, but potentially feasible. I love your channel- keep up the good work!
The chain allows the weapon to reach around an enemy's shield to hit them.
chained weapons have a big arc that allows more force to be delivered and use minimal metal saving finance and in tandem with a shield such used by late medieval royal guards offer a weapon with enough power to crush a surrounded by a helmet. chained weapons can also swing around a shield to hit an adversary. so chained weapon offer high attack and way around shield whilst used with shield offers high defense combining the best of both in one combatant.
I think I have an idea for how the flail was effectively used with multiple heads/bashy bits: You're supposed to swirl it above your head in a circular pattern, as fast as possible. With one bashy bit, it might become unwieldy after you got it up to a certain speed. But with multiple bashy bits, they might spread out a bit by pushing into each other. This could stabilize the weapon, allowing the user to swirl it up to even higher speeds, so that it would hurt even more getting hit by it. It's a wind up weapon, you stand with a shield at a safe distance, swirl it up to great speeds and then go in for the attack.
A flail would be good for getting around a shield, and a few manuals I saw translated indicate they were used for that. The lack of wide spread mention in manuals and the limited amount of them found would indicate they were not the most popular weapon, most likely due to their lack of versatility.
Right, no flailing about in the front room. Got to save that for the back room.
Perhaps they use multiple balls because it is easier to control once it has struck something. Having lots of small balls bouncing in random directions sounds easier to control than one giant ball bouncing in one direction. The small balls may cancel each other out to some degree and make it seem like they have an effective weight smaller than their actual mass.
When I was a kid we had "access" to a nice workshop (my fathers). We would make all kinds of weapons and armor (we also had a huge stack of tool leather) and fight almost daily in forest melees of up to about 30 kids. For the most part they were not friendly fights, somebody always got hurt and bloody, lost teeth or broke bones.
We made several flails, to give to our enemies. They looked really scary, until they hit themselves and their friends by accident. Try as they might my brother and I never got hit once by a flail. We found the best weapon was a small shield and light but strong wooden sword (more like a club).
This is purely speculation from experimentation on my part, but in a mixed unit against a shield wall, this seems to be a decent way of getting around a shield.
If you smack the end of the stick against the top edge of the shield, the ball tends to hit either the head or the hand, depending on the position and length of the chain.
I've heard that primitive two-handed flails were used this way against roman troops.
when i visited the war museum in france, they said the flail could be used by cavalry in a similar manner to a cavalry sabre in the charge, where if you gripped your weapon during the impact your wrist would shatter- cavalry were trained to let go of sabres during the charge and momentum would drive them into targets, from where the rider would use the wrist strap to retrieve the sword. perhaps the flail might be used in a similar manner by charging cavalry to swing at enemies in the charge without shattering wrists?
Flails seem to have had great cultural and perhaps religious significance in the ancient world, because they were agricultural implements and such devices are prerequisites for developing a civilization in the first place. So I wouldn't be surprised if they were often used mainly for ceremonial purposes.
As for the multiple heads, they could be useful in the defensive method of swinging them around oneself, as they might splay out and cover a wider area, making it harder to get in close to the wielder.
Just watched your 3 video's on Flails (or whatever you want to call them), and your video on '1 handed late medieval hitty things' and recalled an experience I had with a hammer.
I hit a heavy hammer against a solid object and really hurt my own wrist when it came to a sudden stop! This might be more my lack of skill at DIY then a hammer design flaw but now I am thinking:
"Could the advantage of having a weight-on-chain weapon be that it is less strenuous to have your attack parried? (Because either the chain swings back, absorbing the impact, of the parry hits the handle, and the heavy bit just wraps around it.)"
Like a lot of Asian weapons these would require very specific training to use them effectively and safely. I have used a number of Asian weapons where the skills were transferable,
But at one stage I was given a three sectional staff, and after searching in vain for someone to learn its use from, I gave it away, rather than try to survive learning a battlefield weapon by trial and error. Thanks for all the wonderful videos. Please ignore the grammatical errors, I am short on time and tend to let the words dribble off my fingertips at this time of night.
One thing I've figured out in very limited experimentation with these is that they make for less wear and tear on the wielder. Hit someone hard with a mace the shock runs up your own arm. Do it repeatedly; your arm goes numb. Put a chain between you and the target; no vibration. I'm still not convinced that they were common or effective.
"Truncheon Workshop"? Oy! To this the World has come!? (with a Brooklyn accent)
Superb research as always, of course.
The french accent is a key feature of flail weapons.
They might have used multiple chains because the weapon started out using cord or something less strong. The thinner cords can't support too heavy of a weight without risk of breaking and if you increase the thickness of the cord too much it loses flexibility and becomes unwieldy. Chain remedies these problems but the multi-end design carried over.
It's also possible, as someone else pointed out, that there was a high probability of one or more weights becoming detached over the course of the battle and having multiples kept the weapon usable longer, even if it wasn't hitting quite as hard.
I think it's also possible that different soldiers prefered different flail weights, and multiple ends allowed for standardized parts and easy customization, but I think the historical basis for that is probably pretty weak.
I agree that multiple chains seems to offer little or no advantage. However, the point of the weapon is impact and armour penetration. The flail was generally used in later periods to penetrate armour such as plate. A cutting weapon such as a sword (certain types of sword at least) are rather ineffective against heavy armour. This is one reason why swords got pointier (to find gaps, such as groin, armpits etc) and weapons like the mace, hammer and flail became more prevalent.
Lindybeige do you know the movie "Ivanhoe" from the year 1952? It is a GREAT medieval monumental movie with lots of medieval combats, arming sword vs. arming sword, jousts, and the last fight is a duel between a knight who wields a battle axe and his opponent wields a morning star. Watching that scene, a morning star seems to be quite a suitable weapon for just tremendous damage.
When you mentioned "so why have this chain at all", I came up with the idea that one of the reasons a flail isn't a totally crap weapon is that it affords the user a lot more reach. If you imagined a pole the length of the handle of your flail plus the chain with an equal sized ball on the end, there's no way the resulting weapon could be feasibly used with one hand. The pivot of the chain moves the center of gravity toward the hand when the ball isn't in action so the weapon is slightly easier to control, then when swinging the weapon, you're swinging a short, manageable, weapon until the chain becomes taught at which point the existing momentum is enough to keep the longer weapon stable. It's just a more efficient method of accelerating a large mass at the end of a long pole than say a sledgehammer is. So the idea behind the flail would be giving the wielder the reach to achieve the first swing, and then maximizing the power of the first swing to incapacitate the opponent before they can close the distance. I would imagine a flail would be absolutely useless at close quarters.
Lindybeige - i'm not sure if this has been addressed, but re: Who used flails? Flails were historically associated with the Hussite infantry.
"The Hodetin ordinance states 2 drivers, two handgunners, 6 crossbowmen, 14 flailmen, 4 halberdiers, two pavisiers. " This was for a "wagenburg" - a mobile wagon-fortress used to transport materiel. The wagons could be circled, and flailmen could guard the spaces between wagons. Apparently, they were especially effective against cavalry.
The flails they used were based on agricultural flails, and consisted of a large staff with a cylindrical, spike-covered head attached by a short chain (1-2 links).
Source: Christopher Gravett, German Medieval Armies 1300-1500
Does your source mention why they were considered effective against cavalry? What this describes sounds like a long two headed flail, was that because it's optimized to land one very heavy hit on a rider as they pass within reach, or maybe to break the knees of horses?
LamiaDomina Thank you for your question. Unfortunately, the source does not specify. It was indeed a staff weapon, and probably benefited from the same properties which made pole-weapons effective against cavalry throughout the ages - namely, a long reach coupled with a natural ability to deter horses. If I had to guess (and mind you this is only a guess), I would say that both your suppositions are probably correct - the movement of the head on the chain coupled with the forward momentum of a charging horse would probably be sufficient to dismount a rider, or to sweep the legs out from under a horse.
from what I've gathered, but perhaps not from the best sources, you can generate the same velocity as a mace more easily by swirling it.
What I find a more convincing argument however is that it does relatively the same job as a mace, but the flail has a much longer reach then the metal stick of a mace.
and I guess they pair nicely with a shield.
The only advantage I can see to multiple heads rather than one bigger head is possibility of poor construction. If one of your tethers breaks, you'll still have SOMETHING to continue to bash with.
From the discriptoin of that nine-ball flail, it sounded like maybe the user wasn't swinging them all as one group of balls, but as 9 planets around the stick. This would require a setup with some kind of bearings, but I'm sure that could be worked out. It would probably make a formidable all-or-nothing one-hit-or-die dueling weapon but be useless in battle for those same reasons.
One reason I can think about for using a flail, is that comparing to a mace, when hitting a hard target, the reaction/shake force that goes through the shaft back to your hand is significantly reduced.
I may be wrong as of how practical it might have been, but perhaps it's designed purpose was to reach and hit weakspots in armor that would have been otherwise unreachable, as after hitting the opponents side, the chain would wrap around it while maintaining and even increasing the velocity of the weight at its end, which would then hit the side of armour facing away from the attacker.
I think a possible key detail being left about these mid-evil multiheaded flails is that they chains on them probably weren't all the same length. If you have an 8 ounce steel or lead weight on the end of a chain, that alone would be enough to completely incapacitate a solder if it hit him across the nose or in the eye or temple. Most solders would be wearing helmets though and possibly carry a shield. If you had multiple heads on a flail and you were aiming for their head each swing gives you multiple opportunities to hit something soft and incapacitate him. Even if half the heads are blocked by a sword parry or a shield block, all the energy of the swing at the end is in the angular momentum of the chains. Having a weight small enough to pass through the face of a bulky helmet would be advantageous if your goal was to incapacitate and clobbering an unarmored skull would still be enough to kill someone or at least knock them unconscious.
The multi-ball might not effect the strike but if it bounces back at you it would spread the impact.
The pink panther accent was perfection.
Hypothesis:
1. Transportation. You have the power of a pole-arm(ish) mace that can is easier to carry. (Just wrap the flail with some cord to the shaft).
2. It gives a better smack than an equivalent length long mace (chain + shaft) because the limited factor would be to get up inertia and you having a leaver.
3. Peasants would be used to handling the agricultural flail and such would have advantage due to being custom to the behaviour.
4. An equivalent long mace could be blocked or parried at the part closer to your hands.
I'd suggest a spear would be a superior weapon.
However. Other weapons where used. Including axes and big maces. One big mace from the Flemish was appearantly called "Guten Tag".(Good day). Appearantly to good use when defending against fewer heavily armoured troops.
I would thing these kinds of strong offensive weapons might be good by many poorly armoured and underskilled people to take out fewer well-trained and heavily-armoured soldiers.
Some suggestions.
Cheers.
I once saw a documentary claiming that small flails were used by Vikings as an anti-shield weapon. As mentioned in one of the previous videos, the flail's flexibility allows it to "reach around" a shield. In the case of the Vikings, so the documentary claimed, the length of the chain was such that when the end of the handle was struck against the top edge of the shield, the ball would swing down behind and strike the arm holding said shield, breaking or otherwise injuring it. As also suggested, this was not intended as a primary weapon, but as an initial "softening up" attack, after which a different weapon was used for extended combat.
I don't place much authority in such programs, but the explanation seemed reasonably plausible.
About the softening the enemy a little bit, I've fought with a fake flail and shield while my friend had a shield and sword and although this is purely attack weapon with basically zero defense capabilities, it is fantastic at hitting your foe when he's behind a shield. Mainly because the chain (or in our case, a rope) will bend unlike a sword, so it's really hard to defend against flails if you use them right. but you'll have to be really good at using a shield. Or you can have a dagger in your shield hand and when your enemy comes close, you use the flail, drop it and use the dagger or use a sword, cause flails are absolutely not something you want in too close combat. Can't defend at all, unless you're really strong and know how to use the flail.
I use to belong to a Medieval reenactment club. I found that the flail was used in a way where the solid shaft was swung to hit the top of a shield, and the chain and ball, or balls would flip over the shield to strike the person holding the shield.
Medieval flails make the best force against armour. If it bend the armour thats make the armour uncomfortable or criple the joints smooth movements/rotations.
- The spikes make it possible to penetrate on helmet.
- One hand use this weapon and the second use a shield for defens.
When a user stronger then he put more chain for two reason - more weight more force around in a small area and more opportunity for a spiked ball to hit the right spot.
- But more important: this weapon was very cheap and easy to make at that time :)
You could conceivably block or parry the single ball of a "normal" flail with your weapon if you're quick and precise enough, but this becomes much harder to do when there are multiple balls.
As for hitting the same spot, I think this might actually have a negative effect on your attack. Normally, all of the energy in the ball is transferred to the target area in a very short amount of time, which would let it break bones with ease. But when you split the ball up into multiple smaller balls, they won't hit at exactly the same time. So while the same amount of energy might be transferred, it's over a longer period of time which could cause less damage.
Still, if even one of the balls hit you would do more damage than if you had used a club, so multiple balls makes sense as a way to make your weapon a little more reliable.
I feel that the chain made it harder to predict were to parry the weapon. I.E. a sword has a precisely known area in which a block would stop the sword where as the chain is harder to stop with a sword or axe, as well as it has the potential to come over the shield and still inflict damage, similar in theory to the kopis.
Actually a huge advantage to this is that it can wrap around shields. For example, if you hit a shield with the stick part the chain could wrap around and maybe even hit the other guy in the shoulder.
One version of the flail which is effective (although you need a lot of space to use it properly) is the meteor hammer. I created one (a foam ball on the end of a rope) just to mess around and my opponents, who were all using either a spear or sword and shield couldn't parry or approach at all. I had to be really careful not to hit myself though, but to be honest it wasn't that hard.
a threshal is described like a mix of flail & cat-o-nine tails (or Roman scourge)...still a good description. I have had a flail facination for years and I find vioding and counter striking is best, a shield or buckler in off hand helps a ton but casting the ball like a fishing rod, or a trebuchet as stated, when side stepping an attack limits the potential of self injury. True the weapon has no defensive ability in single hand variety, but I have never been injured training with a steel ball as the head. I have nearly broken myself many times using nunchaku and they also are weaponized flails.
I've always theorized they were used as single-shot anti-tank weapons, so to speak, one really good hit to dismount or stun an opponent, followed by faster strikes from a lighter weapon so It was really cool to see Lindybeige sorta support that school of thought.
Clearly you need multiple heads because each one is enchanted with different elemental effects - one for flame, one for frost, one for electrical, etc. Just a purely random example. Such a weapon would be a flail - for the ages. ;-)
I agree with the comment that the multiple chains were derived from weaponizing a farm implement (a grain threshing tool). I also agree that claims were not likely battle melee weapons. More likely, they were for smacking drunks and other unruly types.
Lastly, there is no way somebody with a sword could defend against a flail strike.
the more heads you have, the more time you'll strike.
Each one is in fact independant of the other, and a lot of stuff can happen between the very first and the very last strike.
9 whip effect, 9 target close to one another. big spiky thing.
Armor is a bad thing when it's stuck in your skull.
5:00: aaaah, fantastique, monsieur Cousteau!
I always imagined having a flexible chain would allow a person with a flail to circumvent shields by swinging high, allowing the heads to wrap over the top and hopefully hit a head.
3 vids out of one weapon, blimey thats good value for money.
I suspect the flail had a couple of advantages.
The first is the ability to speed up the chain ball, spinning it around and then delivering a massive blow. By charging a lot of speed before delivering the blow, it can gain a lot of kinetic energy. This might make it more eficient than a war hammer.
And the ability to charge up kinect energy, might make it a good throwing weapon.
The second advantage is the ability to go around shields and swords. The person defending has to act upon the ball, but if he is unable to do so and just acts upon the chain, the ball will hit him.
The morning star is a fantastic weapon for line battles. It arcs the head OVER the shield of your opponent, delivering a mortal blow to his back. I have used a Wooden facsimile (using a weighted tennis ball for the head) on long line battles (All using fake weapons, of course). Against a line of shield men, it was devastating. No so much in a tournament but great in a line battle against a wall of shields.
I like the poem at the end too. An excellent summation.
If you use it like lasso above your head you can eliminate half the weight on the down swing
Flails are supposed to be used in perpetual motion, that is to say that you are not supposed to stop spinning them until you strike. This gets the benifit of adding the angular momentum to the strike while making the weapon a lot easier to wield.
If you swing it against an enemy's shield so that the stick part hits the shield, the chain/Star part will swing around behind it, negating the shield.
My two cents on why several small balls might be better than one large one: Soft tissue damage, and the potential to damage the bone in more places.
If you just have one ball, you're unlikely to cause much in the way of tissue damage, and if you do hit the bone its likely to be just one break or fracture, which adrenaline could very well render moot.
But if you have several smaller balls, each will rip open the flesh in a manner similar to a whip, and if you hit hard enough you have a good chance of fracturing the bone in several different places in close proximity making a mess of the bone beneath.
Additionally, it could also be that one ball is easier to parry with a sword or axe etc, while several smaller balls the target may parry one or two, but the rest might still find there way to cause damage. Also, several small balls might tangle the enemies weapon, at which point you could drop the flail and draw your own sword on the now effectively disarmed enemy.
Lindybeige i just love your stuff, allways nice to watch your videos. Peace from Denmark. xD
Multiple heads can provide more impact weight without putting a lot of tensile stress on a single chain. Since a flail is under nigh-constant centrifugal force when in use, there's a fair bit of tension between the shaft and the weight, which only increases with the size of the head. Under that amount of stress, eventually that chain's gonna break if swung around too much, and you'd be left with a stick with a broken chain on it, and your weight may very well have flown into the unfortunate face of your shieldbearer, Steve.
I think the double chain is so that if one comes off you still have one left over
Now go away before I taunt you a second time-uh
I guess it was manly a *tournament weapon* (like the weapon of the previous video). The point is not really to cave the helmet in nor to pierce it but to give a good concussion (and to look badass).
kenneth mcgriff
On the other hand, if you win with a crappy weapon against a well-trained and equipped knight...
kenneth mcgriff
I thought that was Joker.
PS: there was a famous Samurai that had like 60 duells to proof his skill (FATAL duells!). In one he defeated a famous Samurai with an oar.
Hmm, I wonder if having two chains would make the weapon harder to remove if tangled up. If one advantage was to entangle the enemy's weapon, it could make sense. I could see it used in such a way. He parries with a sword, or pole arm of sorts, the chain wraps around, you then drop the flail and draw another weapon. If he only has one weapon, then he either has to fight with an awkward weight attached to it (not optimal), or try to disentangle the flail (not optimal either, since it leaves him vulnerable).
Lindybeige, for all your flail needs!
Not sure if I'll be able to explain myself but...anyway...I think that we're analyzing the weapon under some somehow wrong perspectives. I think those "smaller" one-handed flails (in comparison with the agricoltural\military ones, which were more likely part of the pole-weapon family and are a totally different subject) were usually used by knights or horsemen in "indirect" charges against footmen...let me explain better. By "indirect charge" i mean a situation where the knight using a flail will direct his horse on the right side (not directly at) of the infantrtyman he wishes to attack wielding the flail with his right hand horizontally (parrallel to the ground) whithout swinging it. The speed of the horse would give enought power to the hit... and the chain, once striken the first man,will do a 360 degrees circle and hit the guy who stands behind the first victim whithout ever have the knight actually "directly involved" in the fight. I think of it in use somehow like the scythe of a scyted chariot, if you follow me.
i always figured the multiple heads were for the purpose of acting as backups. If you smash the chain and a head breaks, your not left with just a chain on a stick.