Reenactment, HEMA, and Death in Context
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
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~~Video Description~~
Military reenactment, alongside a few other historically-inclined hobbies, often prides itself on its accuracy down to the minutest of material culture details. The uniforms being made to historical standards, the drill being practised as it was historically, and all the rest...but there are some ways in which no reenactment, no matter how amazingly well done, can ever be even close to accurate...and that's okay! But we need to understand what those limitations are, and keep these hobbies and the information they provide us within their proper context. Otherwise, it can lead us to make poor assumptions, and even convey those assumptions to the public, which defeats the original purpose entirely!
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Haha that ad segue was the best I've seen I think! :D
As a mutual reenacting friend of ours once said-in our drill, we’re only gonna be as fast as the slowest of them.
I'd love to eventually start up a Fencible group. With a whole lot of drill and event experience, the best reenactors will look reasonably like non-professional but still regular-ish troops!
@@BrandonF well, I'm sure that the Napoleonic community would approve
I could imangine a line infantry soldier would feel terrorized when the enemy formation shoots faster than his formation, knowing full well that his formation would most likely to be routed
@@BrandonF "Lord Brandon's Company of Fencibles"
My friend with reenacting experience told me of a time an infantry group was being charged by horses. The battle they were reenacting, the charge was to be repulsed, but it was so intimidating being charged by armored horse the infantry actually broke and ran.
Oop
If one is feeling fear in a reenactment, then that reenactment is doing something right.
I heard this happened during the filming of the movie Waterloo.
In American Civil War reenacting, the most common form of this is people saying soldiers never fixed their bayonets, because the reenactors never fix bayonets due to safety regulations and a misguided belief of “bayonets were never used as bayonet wounds were so rare”
No, they would have been fixed at almost every battle. Maybe not put through someone, but always fixed.
I think it's stretch to say they'd always be fixed, but if you were advancing on the enemy then, yes, they'd be fixed.
Maybe they’re thinking plug bayonets were still in use in the late 18th century? Weird
@@colbunkmustyeah they weren’t, why add unnecessary weight when your enemy is far and currently in no threat of melee, or cavalry threats
Not always but often enough.
@@Hockey-gn2tj beuse lne of the main points of a bayonet is defense agenst cavalry and you dont know when you will charged. And the the extra weight on the gun does no mater as you dont stand aming for minuts on en so its not a problem. And you are allredy carying that weight anyway
Started as a WWII reenactor two decades ago (US and Russian) and ended up in the actual army, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Another difference, bluntly and uncomfortably, is the hate. Personal squabbles that tend to ferment in reeactment aside, most reenactors, regardless of side, don't hate each other. When you know that the combatants on the other side actually want to end you with every fiber of their being and you don't feel so kindly towards them either, it's very, very real.
Interesting insight. Thank you.
Actual threat changes everything: During patrols you are taught to take a knee everytime you stop, during training the Lt. ALWAYS had to remind everyone constantly to do it. First two weeks in Helmand same story, until one afternoon there were a couple rifle cracks in the vicinity (nothing happened, later turned out to be just locals poaching), the magnitude and severity of the situation set in and people started taking a knee as soon as they stopped even 10 meters outside of the FOB.
When watching the modern warfare reenactments I can't help but cringe at the guys who just walk around upright seemingly in their own fantasy land like at 6:22 or 16:11. The footage at 5:55 is a lot more realistic looking.
How kneeling became "taking a knee" is beyond my comprehension. Usually language simplifies over time... Is this some colonial invention?
@@olanordmann2743 The phrase has existed for a good while; it just became more popular recently.
@@yetanother9127 It's use seems to have been restricted to colonials until ~2016, the earliest use I've found so far is from Florida 1972.
@@olanordmann2743 Kneeling is both knees on the ground, taking a knee is only one
Reenactors are modern people taking part in a fun hobby
THEY were a random farmer from the poorest part of Wales dying 5000 miles from home knowing no one else is earning money for the people they care about.
One of these people is going to be more cautious than the other
As someone who has been shot as well as experienced someone trying to stab me to death I can confirm that threat of death changes the game completely as far as how someone behaves. Likewise once one has been through such they change as a person forever.
Absolutely! Not merely does immediate danger affect the way a person acts 'in the field,' but the prior experiences as well!
What’s the story? If you don’t mind telling.
‘If you used real bullets it would be better’
Some kid to me after the Guildford Courts house reenactment 2022.
She had a point.
I will say that as a hema practitioner, there is a lot of variety in how different groups approach sparring. There are some groups that treat it as a sport. My instructor focuses a lot on treating hema as a martial art rather than a sport. This includes sparring at full force (with stabbing and only if you are wearing the suitable gear) and focusing on non stop fighting so that people need to defend themselves as they attack. When we run tournaments, we also try to create rules sets that punish doubles, amd encourage people to defend themselves. This still doesn't quite cut it however. There are certain cuts, like schaitelhau for example, that doesn't translate as well to hema because it depends on the other person wanting to defend their head, which someone wearing a helmet might not care as much about (it depends tho, concussions are still a worry, but some people are just murder hobos). One of the biggest limitations in longsword specifocally is that since the swords are dull, they will not bite each other and stick in a bind like how sharp swords will, which also changes things. There are plenty of other tiny things that add up too but this comment is long enough as is
I had never considered that a sharp blade vs a dull one would actually have different properties beyond the impact on humans. That is incredibly interesting! Thank you for your comment.
@@BrandonF
Because simply it's not a thing in actual full speed combat.
@pinocchio418 what isn't a thing? Sharp swords biting each other definitely is a thing especially if they hit together at full speed
@@pinocchio418 and what is your experience to argue that?
I actually think that on a certain level both you and @benjaminmcclelland2464 may be falling into one of the specific traps discussed in the video; that we have a tendency to assume that our experience translates directly to a truth.
I have used sharps to spar, and I did find they feel different when making blade-contact. Perhaps not different enough to fundamentally alter the way I wanted to fight, but definitely something of which to be cognizant.
I will also say that the assumption that a strike "primarily works because they opponent wants to defend their head" is one interpretation among several I've seen, and used, and changed over time, and that that using a different interpretation of, in this example, sheitelhau, in my experience yields far more positive results in sparring.
Point is, for any of us to blanket say "This is what the master meant", without being able to further contextualize and contrast to other possibilities, falls into that trap.
@@benjarashow7148 There is no dissens regarding the wider fencing context.
I am just saying, just like you, that sword biting happens but not to a degree that it changes the dynamics.
Yes it feels differently but it does not act differently. And I will stick to that statement because it was proven several times. In a personal space and even here online, on UA-cam.
Sticking swords is a hyped trend in HEMA that has no significant impact on the fencing itself.
Should be noted that HEMA is a reconstruction- reliance on a few published works as it has been suggested a lot of educators kept training knowledge to themselves to increase their value. They are still some gaps in what we know to historical European combat. We are more fortunate in that we have historical archives of US, UK, France, et cetra that go back to the 18th (Probably earlier for some nations) to modern times so we can see "Ah, this is how they drilled, this is accounts from battles and reports!"
Hey Brandon,
HEMA guy here
I will say, there are moments mid bout where if its high intensity enough we can absolutely get a taste that survival rush.
Granted its only for a few moments but at the end of the day you are trying to stop somebody hitting you with a big metal bar and you can be stressed to the point of forgetting you're in armor and all you want to do is stop what's happening. And the fight or flight reflex kicks in, especially when you're physically exhausted trying to breath in as much oxygen with each breath through a helmet.
It doesn't happen very often, but when it does there no other rush that compares.
I mostly agree with your points but I thought I would include a bit of my experience here.
The fact that we can get that whilst sparing a friend in modern protective kit with blunt 'weapons', gives a very limited insight in to just of f****** terrifying it must have been for real.
I wasn't carried off an SCA battlefield due to injuries sustained, but only because I was stupid and didn't wait long enough to be. And yeah, when you're physically wounded you can get a taste for that fear. Remember, actual deaths in battle were fairly low; I've read of Roman accounts where legions lost the battle and only suffered a few hundred casualties (to put this into perspective, this is less than 1% of their force). Being wounded badly though to be out of commission was the more common outcome.
Is it a perfect view of the past? No, of course not, not even close. There are a thousand things that make it different. I've also been stabbed a few times and dodged more than my share of small arms fire, and the experiences were sufficiently different to drive home that modern recreational martial arts are not actual combat. But I do think there are important insights to be gained if we're careful.
It's like geology. We can't actually go into the mantle, and we can't actually wait five million years for some solid-state reaction to occur. So we build analogies, document the places where our analogies break down, and acknowledge that some things are beyond our capacity to investigate experimentally. We can't actually kill each other in the name of understanding the past, so we approximate it, acknowledge that it isn't perfect, and try to gain some insights both at the personal and the academic level.
Definitely not the, but i will say there are some guys in my club that hit like a truck, and im doing everything i can to not get hit from a point of "this will hurt a lot" still not the same as life or death, but i do think there is something to be said for pain avoidance, pushing thr approximation a little further.
And of course im talking pain as in bad bruises, not broken bones from improper protection
@@therecalcitrantseditionist3613and then you face one of thoose guys in a cometition that really want's pepole to go full contact and where that guy has no reason not to hurt you if he can. In my first competition I got my arm hit so hard that my armguard from SPEC shattred and I couldn't use my right hand properly at work for two weeks. Still by the time my next match was on the adrenaline pumped so high that I didn't even feel the pain until that match was over...
The HEMA point is similar to any combat sport. MMA fights are indeed "real" fights, but nobody hits their opponents in the throat or uses a downwards elbow strike to break an arm or collar bone, because these folks need to be able to fight again. Non-sport combat, whether on a battlefield or in a back alley, is *always* going to be more vicious.
Honor, tradition, and respect goes out the window when it's not in the ring with someone who agreed to spar or fight with you. In the streets? I'm coming home to my family.
I don’t think MMA and HEMA are that comparable in that sense. In mma people do get knocked out, strangled and have limbs broken. Those illegal moves you mention are not any more dangerous than a flying knee or head kick(for context throat hits are legal when standing and elbows are legal except one specific direction cause of some weird compromises made to make mma legal)and back in the day almost all moves were legal.
mma has real dangerous similar to an actual fight. HEMA has to simulate it with points cause we don’t want to die.
I gonna debate tho that medieval Training could also be similar to combat sport. It meant to remember the mistake so avoid making them in combat, not killing the trainee outright
It's also not a reason for untrained people to despise HEMA like "nah they are not real combat lol" when they could have more sparring experience than normal medieval infantry.
@@wolfensniper4012 don’t get me wrong I love hema and compete in it. I do think someone trained in hema would be effective in a real sword fight.
However hema does have an extra level of separation. A Hema bout simulates a real fight, mma is a real fight in a controlled environment
Ehm i got soo many times stabbed in my throat in HEMA. It is a valid target in our rules and soo we have triple protection there....
As an avid airsoft player, vice captain of a university airsoft club and a war studies and history students nothing makes me feel more crazy than hearing airsoft players parrot re-enactorisms.
Here's my addition to your Warthunder Ad: Its so realistic people will leak classified documents just to prove they are right about their favorite in game vehicle!
Edward Snowden walked so Tanks4TheMemories420 could run
The guy who ran the hema club i went to when asked about realism in sparring always said
"The only way to properly represent a fight is to have a real fight... And we dont do that because we run out of sparring partners very quickly"
There a big difference upbetween "using the move together" with a friend and actually trying to disassemble another human in a 2-way competition for keeps.
Armies all over the world should stop training with that logic. It doesnt matter if you cant actually shoot people in training, you still have to train
brandon f is whats gonna get me into reenenactment when i get the time i swear to god
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@@BrandonF oh i will brandon, just give me a few years to finish high school and im all set to reenact history (and all the nitpicking you mentioned in the video)
I got started with it right out of high school, too! Just make sure not to rush into any new group or part of the hobby, though. I know it's super exciting but it's also important to speak with many different groups and to find the one that will work best for you. Not just based off of what impression looks the coolest or what historical unit had the most interesting history, but the size of the group, the kinds of people in it, etc. Chris the Redcoat has a great video about the "red and green flags of reenacting" that you may enjoy!
@@BrandonFdefinitely will be watching that! and thanks for the advice!
Brandon is the reason why I got into re-enacting, too! His and Chris’s advice is priceless in case you wanted a peer confirmation of his lessons. 😂
In my experience, it's the less experienced fencers who fight with no regards to their "lives." A lot of people I know wear the minimum of protection in order to force themselves to be more aware and more conservative with their actions and strikes.
Also, the more lethal you try to be, the safer you end up as you always present a threat your opponent can’t just rush. When you’re trying to take your opponent’s head off and not just snipe their hands you end up presenting a better cover.
As someone who has done some of the biggest battles in the SCA (reenactment level medieval arsthetics with modern safety standards for full contact combat), I can say it definitely gives you just a taste of the real thing. But that's what play is all about. Getting just enough of a terrifying experience to be fun.
I always thought this. Blank fire only is theater, and airsoft is sport.
I'm a HEMA practitioner and Civil War cavalry reenactor. I like your video!
When it comes to reenacting, I *totally* agree. Nobody is going to die and the main goal is to have fun (everyone achieves "fun" in different ways). It's a much better experience when you have actual military veterans with you or, even better, in charge of you as an officer or NCO because some things never changed when it comes to military life. There are times when the frustration and desperation feels quite real when you do war games and improvised choreography... the danger can be real too! I've seen people be thrown and trampled by their animals, get sliced by rusty sabers, and take blanks to the face.
I think you give an honest and polite view on HEMA. However, no one wants to pay medical bills or be injured, the hits can in fact hurt and even hospitalize. I know quite a few folks that broke bones or got stabbed for real on accident. Your gear is to you what a net is to a trapeze artist, the training dictates that you don't rely on that alone. I find that lots of people are subconsciously suicidal in fencing until they've either had a serious injury from that attitude or had a chance to train without protective gear.
You know Brandon, when I saw the set-up for this the lyrics of Pulp's "Common People" came into my head:
Still you'll never get it right
'Cos when you're laying in bed at night
Watching 'roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all.
Reenactment is like building an amazingly realistic scale model of, say a MKV Spitfire, no matter how accurate you make it, how much work you put in, and how close to the original you manage to get, at the end of the day, it's still "just" a model. And that isn't a dig. Reenactors do a lot of good stuff, but it's not real.
Real soldiers are usually exhausted, generally hungry and, in the black powder era, often drunk.
And always scared.
I absolutely love that comparison! I hope you don't mind that I WILL be stealing it.
@@BrandonF Not at all mate, steal it and use it to your heart's content!
Reenactment is theater on another stage where everyone can be his own director. Experimental Archeology is when where research begins and results then are documented. But nothing wrong with playing theater.
I think it's interesting that you bring up the modern military training aspect of this issue because; a common complaint that I and many of my peers (company level officers and ncos) have with modern military training is, that it does not capture the morale/fear aspect of actual combat. People act in ways they (probably) never would if we were slinging live rounds at each other. I don't think there's a good way around this but it's still a thing that we often talk about
Brandon doing a breakdown of guts and blackpowder innacuracies would be so funny but atleast i know zombies are definitely accurate to the napoleonic wars
I do often wonder how realistic or applicable HEMA techniques are. The wearing of armour and the genuine desire to *injure* would substantially change the equation vs "first hit".
When I watch HEMA so many "hits" scored just look like light dings on armoured areas. In a real fight, would that hit even be noticed? I suspect not.
I think that different schools and methods of practising HEMA do this to better degrees than others. I've definitely seen a lot of footage of the 'dinging' counting as a full 'kill' / ending the bout, but I've also seen schools where it's much more...rough, so to speak. I imagine it depends on the level of professionalism and safety equipment, and the precise goals of the participants. It is something that can be done incredibly well, but it can also be done poorly, just like reenactment.
This is absolutely something that gets some discussing in HEMA, and I think it is worth considering (as is so often mentioned) a bit of context.
Some weapons and systems in HEMA are meant for fighting in armor against armor (harnisfechten) but many are intended for “plainclothes” (bloßfechten) combat or even for dueling. A cut to the hand can be fight-ending even outside of a dueling situation if it renders the opponent unable to properly grip their sword. And some sources/systems are clearly intended for dueling where maiming would not necessarily be the intended outcome.
This is not to say that anyone using, say, a rapier/sidesword/etc is participating in a duel to first blood or that even someone who *is* ostensibly doing so will show such restraint, but it does leave room for such actions to be meaningful in the right circumstances.
Rules often attempt to address some of this (i.e. afterblow/doubling/failed retreats in events meant to simulate unarmored combat), but no ruleset can replicate the *feeling* of being in a genuinely perilous fight. And, as you rightly point out, no ruleset can effectively evaluate whether any given strike *would* immediately incapacitate a determined attacker of be shrugged off due to adrenaline in the moment. It is entirely possible that someone who truly wants you dead could push through even a severe wound to a deep target and continue attacking.
So - and apologies for this turning out way longer than initially intended - a lot of HEMA fencing is not intended to simulate armored combat, but certainly there is room to debate the merits of techniques in various dueling/street fight/self defense/battlefield situations.
It's one of the reasons I chose to train saber rather than long sword. The fact that it would have use primarily by un-armoured combatants makes HEMA saber the opportunity to be a slightly closer analogue than longsword. It still only get you so far though.
Most of HEMA combat is simulating "unarmored" combat. The competitors wear protection because if you didn't, you'd have broken bones or worse even without the sharp edges. It's also the reason why most poleaxe combat even in full harness isn't done at full force. Spinal injuries aren't something that you can just walk off.
most hema is supposed to represent unarmored fighting
if you wanna look up how armored fencing is done, look up harnischfechten (note: people don't strike each other in the head with swords if they wear a helmet, it's quite pointless)
Brandon, I absolutely love your content. There's something about the respectful way you talk about things I find really inspiring. Thank you for your well-read content, mate.
That is a lovely thing to hear. Thank you, I appreciate it!
I run a HEMA organization and sometimes I will try to put myself in the mindset of "I cannot let myself die no matter what" which definitely gives a different perspective on the matter although obviously far from the actual reality. It is very interesting though to feel the difference as I go to an extremely defensive mode and don't throw myself out there. As such my kill counts drop drastically though I can generally keep myself in for much longer. It generally ends with my desire to increase my kills again so I let the mindset fade out after a few minutes....
Wait a minute....
You didn't die?
Damnit man!
You had me fooled this whole time!!!
Okay now I have to figure out whose grave that was....
You make some interesting points on HEMA and I would like to expand on some of them and add a bit as well since I am a teacher at my local HEMA club. Definitely I've seen at a fair few clubs that people take a LOT of unnecessary risks, even in some tournaments you can score points for an "after blow" which is when you strike your opponent after you yourself have been hit, and this encourages people to "risk it for the biscuit" in the name of points. Having seen all of this it started to change the way I wanted to fence as well as teach. I know that I can't completely recreate the mindset of someone in that kind of life or death fight but I try to put myself in the mind set of "DO NOT GET HIT ABOVE ALL ELSE OR YOU WILL DIE!" which makes me a lot more cautious and I find myself staying out of range or hanging out in a guard called Long point, as in I have the point fully extending in front of me to discourage an attack, and when I do attack I try for lots of faints and false cuts to fool my opponent and get his weapon almost completely out of the way before I strike.
I also started teaching and practicing techniques that were taught at the time specifically to keep people safe. For instance binding, binding being when the two blades make contact in front of the two fencers, and from the bind you can get a lot of information from a fairly safe place, because when you are at distance you know nothing about your opponent but when binding you can tell almost exactly what kind of swordsmen he is. Your opponent might be weak in the bind so you can displace his blade and stab to the face or he might be too strong in the bind so you can just void the bind (as in remove your sword from contact) and let his blade carry on into air well you deliver a cut. Or he might be highly skilled and be winding around you sword quicker than you can keep up and so retreating might be a prudent idea.
Things like this I think are important to tell and teach HEMA students because it makes the experience a lot more authentic than a larp session. I also wanted to comment on the force of the blows given in duels. It depends on who's dueling but for the most part the blows are controlled to prevent over swing as said in the manuals but are still powerful. Folk like SKallagrim have done tests with ballistic dummies where they cut with about the same force as they do in duels and the effects are usually devastating. Again like you said though we really don't know how strong or how fast fencers and soldiers would have been in reality, we can only speculate. Another interesting part of that speculation is energy conservation. Some battles could drag on for days and a single soldier may have to fight for ten hours or more so it would logically be unwise to expend all your energy at the start of the battle, this has led to many believing that the strikes would have probably been measured yet powerful.
Hopefully this helped add to the video and teach a thing or two to the viewers. Thanks for making thought provoking videos for all of us who love history : )
The way to handle the after blow is not to score the 2nd hit, but to say you don't get points for a hit if you're hit in return a fraction of a second later. If two people are fighting for real with swords, each one hitting the other is definitely a possibility, and if that happens neither of them won and both lost.
Reeanacting is valuable because on sees and gets a feel for how it was like for the period in question. It will never be perfect for many reasons but it can inform others of about the period in question.
I remember seeing someone try to show the difference between modern communication methods and WWI methods for controlling forces. It was striking how difficult it was to control infantry using WWI methods, especially when new orders came down. Modern communication methods made it much easier to control the forces in a timely manner.
I do western style viking fighting, and I agree with your sentiments here. We have safety rules (no blows to the head and no ranged weapons) and kill zones (only strikes above the knees and to the body kill). These rules really changes the way fighters and units behave.
You really delve into the lack of fear, which I completely agree plays a major role. We constantly do "risky" stuff because we know we won't die. Most commonly if we spot an opening in enemy lines we will try to make a break through. That makes sense within the rules of the game, because breakthroughs can devastate the enemy forces. However, the individual doing the breakthrough is almost certainly going to die.
I think you left out another more broad consideration though. Understanding the mindset of the past is difficult. People are shape by the time they are living in, and no amount of reenactment or knowledge of the past can really change that. You will always be a modern person pretending. This issue gets more profound the further from the present you get. Understanding the viking mindset is close to impossible for modern people. That matters for reenactment of both peace and war. For instance we have no real comprehension of how the viking beliefs shaped their behavior on the battlefield. On one hand we can assume that survival is a basic human drive overriding everything else. On the other the religious belief that death in war leads to "salvation" might actually shape the risks you are willing to take.
I am really glad you made this video! As a hemaist I wholeheartedly agree.
I really wish we were a little more self-aware and self-reflective about the way we communicate not just outwards to curious non-practicioners but also to our own students and collegues.
So I practice Harnischfechten (which can fall into a HEMA context, understanding the HEMA is an organization and not a system within itself ), and also have the unfortunate luxury due to occupation knowing what edged arms actually do to the human body.
A large issue is indeed a lack of understanding of actual violence, controlled violence takes on a different context in a sportive setting, even in period the difference between outrance & plaisance was highly noted, both with war fighting (kampfechten) and dueling (zweifechten) which is an interesting thing to note in itself as a level of expected violence in combat could fluctuate in the moment depending on desperation. One of the largest issues and oldest debates among European martial artists is sportification, it is in this regard where your point becomes most apparent, as people confuse the goal of an engagement as being “of defeating one’s opponent” where it should rather lye in “staying alive”. There is of course other factors that simply can’t be factored in as well, in a modern setting, such as committing to an action to die with purpose or to brave death with purpose. So yes there are issues in this setting, that said not all settings are equal, much to the quality of re-enactments and living history events some are better than others, it’s knowing what to take away and what to leave that is key.
You're right of course. I came to this conclusion years ago and totally gave up the re-enactment hobby as a result.
Its prob fair to point out real militaries have the same issues doing training. In force v force training you dont have live fire to contend with - at best laser simulators. In live fire exercises its all one way and no-ones shooting back - most of your safety conditioning is about not getting friendly fire. Trying to get realism in scenarios is very hard when real life is vastly more intense.
I've also done airsoft and you def take ridiculous risks you never would in real life - because respawn is only a few minutes away at worst, and it doesnt actually matter if you win or lose apart from a bit of pride lost. Occasionally bigger games might have more punitive rules, but its still never going to be equivalent.
a quick example I've used a few times. In training infantry are normally only issued about 6 mags, and a section attack drill is normally completed against a single unsupported position in 10 - 15 minutes.
In the falklands there was one para who talked about going into battle at goose green with 14 mags, a couple of 200 round belts, a couple of bandoliers, and a sandbag of loose ammo. By the end of the battle he was rummaging in the pouches of fallen argentinians for spare mags/rounds. Trying to convey that in a training scenario is hard.
Yes, absolutely. It's a common concern from the Scholastic/Martial side that HEMA risks becoming too sportified - too distanced from its source material. What works in sport does not necessarily work in martial context A or B, but maybe C, and vice versa. If one pursues what is simply good sport, they'll be a better competitor, but *potentially* more distanced from being an authentic portrayal of the source.
For example: the Scheitelhaw / Scalp Cut. This is a vertical cut thrown right for the face. The texbook use is to throw it to scare somebody out of a low guard, then slip under their parry and stab them in the chest. Throwing a point right at someone's face should serve well to spook them into a quick parry. While getting jabbed in the mask is by no means a pleasant experience, it's a lot easier to stare down a blunted tip from behind a fencing mask without flinching. It's hard to spook people into the textbook play because they can respond with more measured alternatives.
Similarly, hand-pressings with the blade can be a tricky one. If someone's just placed a sharp edge against your wrists, are you really going to still throw that cut down at their head and slice yourself the entire way down? Well- maybe, actually, but it's far easier to do so when it's not just a blunt edge, but perhaps one you don't even feel against you to begin with because it's laying against the hard plastic cuff of your gloves.
Eye feints are practically nonexistent in HEMA despite turning up quite a bit in the texts. Looking somewhere like you want to hit that spot, but then hitting somewhere else. They're not of much use when everyone's in a mask.
We have the same responsibility in the spirit of reconstructing the martial art to recognize where our modern context is influencing and altering the results of our interpretations and to not let it overwhelm the historical nuances.
I reenact Germans for WW1 and WW2 and have been in tacticals. There is some training value if you take it seriously and actually try to act as you would in a deadly situation instead of play around. A simulated battle with real guns can help you get a grip on tactics. You never have quite the feeling of a life or death situation like when I had a defensive gun use (guy pulled a gun on me but he ran off when I pulled my own gun) or got into a bad car wreck. In dangerous situations, I was surprisingly not scared and I was level headed, time felt like it was in slow motion (3 seconds felt like over 20 seconds). The fear and anxiety comes after the adrenaline wears off and you contemplate how much worse it could've been. It's a really weird feeling that's hard to describe, adrenaline does odd things.
One example out of many that makes me smile. On my first deployment we were on a small FOB. An Inf CO, arty PLT, SF team, and some misc folks. We received indirect fire daily. Sometimes multiple time a day; and only on a few specific occasions did I actually “get down.” In one occasion they walked 14 mortars up to us; and it was only after the 4th round we decided to move behind the hescos. I’ve not been under intentional arty fire; but you get used to rockets and mortars quick. Usually you’re climbing up higher to see where they landed or hit. Remember that clip in Band of Brothers where a mortar comes in and one guy hits the ground while everyone else stares at him like an idiot? That’s not unrealistic.
One humorous experience from that same deployment. I had a chance to eat at a proper defac as we were rotating out. A rocket blew up over the defac. The AF folks had recently rotated in; and they scattered like roaches; while the rest of us kinda just stepped up in line. In there defense, it was a pretty good boom that rattled the whole structure. Not to sound stoic, but we were used to it, tired of it, and hungry.
A difference i've noticed (im not an expert at anything btw just some observations) when watching reenactments and actual combat footage is that in real combat footage soldiers in irl act very skittish, you can feel the tension their body language and how they act which is not really present in reenactment idk what it is you can genuinely feel the heightened sense of alertness in someone's eyes and body even if it is just on a screen. Ukraine war gopro footage of a trench raid will be the closest thing we will ever get to witness to a battle in ww1, even more so than a historical reenactment. Heck even the stick and rock clashes between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the mountains and modern riots are the closest things we have to what it feels like to be in a skirmish or battle in medieval times
I do HEMA, and I can confirm, may fencers are a LOT bolder than they should be, which is one of the reasons doubles are so common. This is, in my opinion, in part because a lot of them are what I would call overly-armoured, and by that I mean they can barely feel the lighter snipes and draw-cuts at all, much less feel any pain. I tend to fence with less padding, partly because I overheat easily, and partly because I don't want to lose the healthy amount of fear/respect I have for getting hit. While I am definitely still far bolder than someone whose life was on the line, I feel I'm at least a little closer to the authentic experience, or at the very least a little more defensive and twitchy! All that to say, HEMA definitely suffers from a similar problem to reenactment, albeit potentially slightly milder depending on one's mindset and pain tolerance.
A fantastic and insightful video, as always. I wanted to say (if you were looking for ideas) that a video on the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland would be an amazing addition to your works.
There is a lot to talk about e.g, the massive recruitment of Irishmen across the country, the tactics used in the fighting, the brutal massacres, the brutal reprisals from government forces, the glorious and deplorable deeds alike!
If you wanted a great source of information I cannot recommend enough the book “The year of Liberty” by Thomas Packenham.
Thanks for reading!
He didn’t ACTUALLY DIE ?????????!!)!!!!!!! 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
I am so sorry for lying
Zammmmmmnnnn who else has been lying to us?
This reminds me of two comment section debates I had:
-One of on TikTok. A history professor who specialized in the US Civil War and questioned the purposed of reenactments. Part of it was her experience in finding Confederate reenactors who were Lost Cause types. Plenty of people told her reenactments got them into history but she seem stuck on the idea that reenactments don't teach the cause of the Civil War. Which to be frank is true but she didn't seem to understand how reenactments can be a gateway to larger study.
-The second was a guy who kept insisting soldiers should go back to wear full plate armor. Despite myself and others telling him how full plate armor was only worn by nobles and quickly went out with the adoption of firearms. But he kept digging in, even ignoring my experiences in Afghanistan. Armor guy had posted videos on his account and I found they were all animations of knights dueling. I have the feeling this guy never wore armor in any capacity and just stuck in a romantic fantasy.
I'm guessing most soldiers going into battle don't think overmuch about the political causes of the war. Maybe they did think about that when joining up and maybe they didn't - maybe they just got drafted.
i never thought of reenacting battles as anything more than big boys playing army. sure i tried as hard as possible not to get "shot", not because i felt it put me in any danger but because i didnt want to have to take a hit and be out of play. being a big history nerd only made it icing on the cake. if it could be a teachable moment to the public; great! if it could fire someones interest in learning more history; even better!
i always felt living history displays "in camp" or otherwise static were more useful in educating others as you could carefully study the vernacular of the time (especially from the people who were actually there if possible) and portray the character and mindset of the times (with certain exceptions for politeness and deference to younger observers). plus i found most people got a kick out of studying the kit.
about the only thing i ever felt approached what those guys felt was being wet or cold and miserable and i was always cognitive it was a minute dose voluntarily taken. it gave me a better appreciation of what those soldiers (past/present/future) have endured on my behalf.
This dude is the literal embodiment of “I own a musket for home defense.”
Hi, someone with a masters here in History (also did HEMA):
The points you describe in relation to HEMA and ones that people who do a lot of research and practice are quite aware of. Things a very context specific: are you training for war? Or for sport (the difference isn't all that much until the moment when it hits)? Are you displaying in front of an audience and therefore displaying humerous moves to make the audience laugh? Are you dueling for first blood? No one who actually delves into historical research disregards these factors. Violence is inherently social and are based on social/cultural norms
What I think fills the hole you've left is the fact reconstruction in HEMA isn't based solely in isolation, it comes with reading manuscripts and historical sources at the time. Coinciding with wider historical reading, you actually find (based on for example crusader first hand accounts) that the experiences aren't all that different from today. People do a myriad of different things in stress: they wet themselves, get very courageous, run away, get immobilised etc. Military stuff is often long travel, eating stale bread, someone getting disciplined harshly for looting, and trying to navigate a hostile land (unless it's yours of course). No one is suggesting we know what it feels like, heck modern military people don't to an extent with the advent on modern facilities and technology (mass manufactured rations and readily available water being two factors in mind).
I would have agreed with you several years ago when HEMA, at least on social media, was still in it's exploratory phase (no one did much reading, or at least never took such reading seriously, or simply didn't know such reading existed; if there was any reading, it was simply the treatises themselves and that resulted in all kinds of assumptions e.g. people just carried bucklers around on a daily basis: plot twist, that never happened), hence why people made all sorts of unsubstantiated claims without proof (and still do e.g. medieval people never used to bathe, now it's the zeitgeist is that they always bathed, with little room for nuance).
Is reconstruction 100% proof that what happened, happened in the way you perceived it? No. Does it inform our opinion on what may have happened at the time? Yes. Can a inter/multi-disciplinary approach aid us in understanding what happened better? A definite yes.
Finally, unless I'm mistaken, we're all human and share similar experiences. Sure they're different but they're understandable, otherwise we wouldn't be able to understand them.
1 view breaking new records
Mr Beast look out!
The frame of mind I go into HEMA sparring, is that of a school kid going to the sand box to play tag. It is challenging to move my body and sword in a way to deliver a cut or stab to a resisting opponent. I enjoy the challenge, I enjoy learning from people who are better at it than me, and I enjoy sharing my what I have learned with others. I accept what you say about how my experience can not 100% align with a duelist or soldier from the past, but it was never my intent to get into their head space. I am a modern man with all the benefits of modern material science, playing a (possibly ancient) game at a level of safety that is only possible thanks to modern material science.
I do wonder who’s running around claiming to be a real knight or duelist. Hema is at its core a sport at this point. At best it’s a fun way to stay active. Even in Meyer’s time that was already a case. They could turn it into practical value, but for us it’s like airsoft or going to a shooting range. What weekend warrior at an airsoft game genuinely thinks he’s better than a trained soldier? Anyone that deludes themselves like that is just being an idiot about it. Even unarmed martial artists know damn well that while your chances in a real life or death fight are better than an untrained person, they’re still going to have a much worse time if push comes to shove. Training of any kind helps, but no one is a main character. And no amount of civilian training can rival real combat experience. We just cannot replicate that nor should any sane person want to. So why does this keep coming up?
@@knightmareza9478 It is not claiming to be a real Knight or Duelist but claiming you hold special insight into those activities because you have participated in the closest modern simulation. There are some among us who do claim that insight, as there are many in the reenactment community who rightfully claim the same. That is not me, I am just here to hit my friends with sticks in a purely consensual manner.
Myself slowly building an Late archaic Hoplite kit, i absolutely have no idea how they would react. 😅
Having been in fistfights and melee in a modern city and ghetto with life and death situations, while being too poor to afford major injury. I will comment that risk aversion, training and experience are the biggest actual factors in real violence. I find Martial Arts and HEMA in particular as just fun while training and conditioning, and actually you understand more of the theory after having experienced actual violence.
In my HEMA club we try to de-sport-ify training, by heavily disincentivizing doubles and self-calling our hits, as well as calling poor hits when we throw them (I.E. “that didn’t kill ya, my blade hit flat!”). Also lower gear (with LOTS of control) better simulates where things actually hit and we can judge better what ended a fight, but we are still waiting for a full-dive VR system so we could test each other in a proper duel until someone stops kicking…
You’ll know when bullets are coming in anger. Usually one puts their head down. Glad you admit it it’s acting. I’m getting all ptsd haha. Yay. I lived we won. Great job. I was in regular clothes too. I did once catch one from an air gun tho. Had to get that surgically pried out. When you’ve tubes and staples and need o neg immediately it sucks. Hospitals should have more o neg
With regards to a medieval context. Much of the footage you showed isn't HEMA or anything historical focused in the first place. Bohurt is basically a modern sport with all of the concessions it involves, and the mock phalanx pike forrays are pretty much just fun experiments without much substance. HEMA is mostly focused on a limited number of fighters with the best documentation not even being that medieval - the intact treatises with illustrations or at least written instructions only really begin in the later half of the 14th century. For the context of judicial duels, tournaments, or tournament melees this is... fairly alright? It's never going to be 1:1 simply because the expense of kits actually resembling the historical (lower and hand crafted) quality are out of pricetag for most, and we as modern people value the safety of everyone far more than they used to back in the day.
That said a lot of HEMA, both in the unarmored and armored context, can resemble what roughly happened at least in training sessions or ritualized combat (tournaments, duels, etc), with some leeway here and there to make sure some weapons aren't sharp or some aren't too pointy to make sure nobody dies. The main issue with HEMA is that the scope is actually super limited if you want anything earlier than 14th century, simply because the material just isn't there. There's many types of armor mentioned in documents that are a complete open question as to what they were exactly (double maille for one), a lack of surviving examples of helms leading to speculative assemblies based on artwork, and a total lack of sparring treatises on to how say, 13th, 12th, etc and earlier melee worked in a one on one context. This means if you go down that earlier road it's experimental, and experimental is the land of asterisks when authenticity is concerned.
And there's other questions of course for authenticity. Quality is super duper variable in the entire medieval period. It happens all the time in anecdotal accounts of warfare - somebody in a hauberk will get hit by a lance and be A-OK. Somebody next to them will get double impaled. Were the energies the same? Were the hauberks that notably different in quality? Is it respectably accurate for representing history to the public to only wear the best of the best armor for your safety and own ego (who wants to spent 1k on a crappy but historical hauberk vs a high quality historical hauberk)? Or the little things for that matter. How accurate are you trying to make your kit? Are you going with a thirty foot rule, a five foot rule, or one to one with a museum piece?
Plus when it comes to field battles all bets are off, especially in earlier eras. What even would a common Latin European infantry formation be like in spacing, drilling, commands, etc? Even if the battles are for show at least we know how men were assembled accurately in a 17th or 18th century reenactment. And different localities matter a lot. One culture might have super, super good detail due to lots of preserved gear - take Japan for example in the Sengoku era. Then if we take a gander to say, East Rome in the middle ages the archaeological preservation of high or early medieval armor is very under researched and poorly preserved.
I do LARP. Yes, it is nothing compared to reenactment but I would say close enough. I am also participating in larger scale and organized battles where units of infantry move in organized manner and fight each other with commanders and such. I can tell that there is certain level of immersion to it. I was even part of medieval battles with steel weapons. But just the notion that I am just going to my comfy home after the event and there is virutally no danger of me not returning there because I would be killed, just makes the entire experience basically a joke. No matter how hard you try or how hard you immerse yourself into it, it is not real. I even heard stories about super immersive LARPs where people broke down in tears or something but still... they know in the back of their head this is not a reality, they can escape, they can survive and all they need to do is just to say "stop the game".
You will never be able to recreate actual combat through living history. We strive to get as close to the real experience to honor the men who went through the tedium and terror of those long past conflicts as possible, and thats what matters.
Wait, you _didn't_ die?! All along, I assumed you were _really_ dedicated to precise historical re-enactment!
I've had friends in SCA War re-enactment battles, and while there can be full-power blows like of old, that's usually on accident. A friend of mine was semi-permanently retired from frontline fighting when he accidentally stopped a pike surge with his chin. The blow came up from below and hit his chin almost straight up, laying him out cold. A buddy next to him had to grab him by his kit and more or less fling him free from the frontline scrum.
Compared to an actual fight, you never went all-out in US Army Combatives training, as well. Obviously, you're not trying to really harm your sparring partner in training, but it was always in the back of my head that the real thing would be different.
I can (as have others) speak to the HEMA Experience - or a lot of us, your entire lecture here is very much preaching to the choir. We regularly work to connect our experience in sparring/tournaments/whatever to various types of other experiential and academic research to properly ground what we're doing in a context that we can better equitably speak to, and describe specifically, just how close we think we're coming to the lived reality of the thing we're attempting to emulate.
For academic looks, of course we start with the Fechtbuchs as the primary source -and seek to understand why they might say "do X" when our personal experience of "fighting" might lead to a different answer.
Secondarily, a lot of us do a LOT of outside reading - for many of us Tlustly's "Martial Ethic of Medieval Europe" and Kinsley's "Swordsmen of the British Empire" are starting points, and many go far deeper.
I'll point you to several (by now rather older) lectures and writings below; I'll say that our researchers have continued along the research lines of this, much further, since these were published.
Before I link those, I will also say that we work to also capture the lived experience of the members of our modern community to actively use martial arts as professionals. My club has several members who have deployed multiple times to active war-zones, as well as law enforcement officers, and they have collaborated at various events to present their experience of the active mind-set of modern soldiers, police, etc, in the interest that the HEMA community can better understand how that part of the experience might be similar (or different) from the historical analogues we seek to study.
As another aside, there are secondary experiential parts, that many of us consider intrinsic to the holistic study we follow. The prime example of that is the expectation that test-cutting with sharp swords (or axes, spears, etc) is a requisite piece to understand how the weapons themselves perform against tatami grass, clay, pool noodles, and animal meat (hung, or staked to ta pole)...
Point is, as I said at the top, a lot of us really do not only understand your prime point that we cannot truly capture the historical experience, but more - we have worked to capture an understanding of how close we can come, and we seek to be able to describe exactly how and we are doing things somewhat differently here, or there, or elsewhere...
So - some linked examples of research our community has done - these are mostly not primary research, though a few of our community are in fact historians with that level of access....
Some lectures from 10-15 years ago:
ua-cam.com/video/iQY2CLe4zwU/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/bwsUVaa9lKo/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/pFMw1wv5nQw/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/7bsV3NFtDzU/v-deo.html
HROARR was at one point the primary 'clearing-house' of our best academics, somewhat less at present I think...
hroarr.com/research/research-projects/
hroarr.com/author/jean-chandler/#
wait really? i thought you died and then just waited for the next respawn like blood and iron
So I can't expect you to go home after the war and engage in period correct work and leisure activities etc...
I have done MMA in heavy plate armor for several years and participated in several World Championships and as far as I know most of us know this ain't historical. Most of us also do not think it is reenactment as well. It is a sport in fancy armor with a special set of Rules.
To some degree it may be the closest thing you get to a medieval skirmish because you want to win and don't want to get hurt. But on the other Hand there are rules, blunt weapons, modern protection gear underneath the armor etc. But it still is and never will be the real medieval battle.
You may not have been shot but you may have been shot at 😏
...fair
Airsoft is a weird middle ground. On the one hand, half the players will go hail Mary, charge objectives to overwhelm the other team, rushing around, etc. Doing things that you definitely would not do in real life. Its incredible fun to watch and to do.
On the other hand you get some players that are genuinely afraid of the sting of a bb that they go completely in the other direction, being unrealistically cautious to avoid being shot. Doing things such as not leaving spawn, using teammates as human shields, etc, things that even the most frightened of soldiers wouldn't think to do (or be capable of doing).
Milsim airsoft is a lot closer to the "real deal" but because it is still a sport at its core, there are things that players can and will do that you wouldn't do in a real combat scenario because its too dangerous, that you can do in airsoft because the danger is gone. Milsim West is probably the closest to a realistic airsoft event and I would strongly recommend watching videos of people at those events if you want to see realistic airsoft content. They're usually multi day games where skirmishes can occur at any time even at night, there's people playing as civilians, police, government forces, different factions with different goals and what not, basically making it a massive roleplaying event with the added competition of airsoft, the event is managed by and both teams are usually led by veterans who will use and encourage somewhat realistic tactics to create more immersion. As I said though Milsim West is more of an outlier, and many other airsoft/milsim events don't have the same level of "realism", usually the difference between normal Airsoft and milsim is that milsim will have a story of some sort, or will feature a long drawn out game with multiple objectives, unlike airsoft which is usually multiple matches with different game modes.
Threat and fear for life is indeed a big factor. But another big one that reenactment and especially games entirely ignore is urgency. Or lack thereof as it often is in real life.
History tells a really linear tale with pacing added in after the fact. But really events happen randomly and no one is in a hurry to get roughed up. As such historical armies were often extremely content to stare at each other for hours, days, weeks, or even avoid battle entirely. They'd just wait and wait for an opportune moment. Battles only happened when at least one side could for the other or more weirdly they both felt that a win was possible or a fight unavoidable. And there was always the option to try again, assuming you planned well and called it off before your troops were ruined one way or another.
But but games treat every battle like a scheduled sporting event where both armies show up on time and fight to the very last, entirely ignoring human concerns, political ramifications, surrender terms, and broader strategic options. Whereas reenactors face the similar problem of being required to launch their attacks full force during park hours and before the crowd goes to the snack bar. This means that it's entirely impossible to model many of the most crucial military situations such as the overwhelmingly common but never exciting mutual stalemate.
Used to play airsoft, and I actually had a weird mindset early every game. It was life or death till my first hit. I treated it like the gun were firing live ammo. Just the way my brain worked. Then the first BB hit and I 1000% relaxed and would treat it as the game I was.
Besides just the lack of visceral confrontation with the risk of life and limb, and the unrealism required of ensuring the health and safety of the participants and spectators, there's also the truth that most reenactors are well-educated people immersed in literate study of their chosen era/faction/nation, and that most of the soldiers they're depicting would have been everymen for whom the army is just a job. Maybe it's a job they hate, or were forced into. Maybe they don't really care about what they're doing and just want to go home.
For the reenactor, portraying these historical figures is their passion, something they do because they love it. They WANT to get stuck in, to come at the battle with enthusiasm, put some panache into their performance. They're excited for it, and their contagious excitement is good because it rubs off on the audience. But no matter where (or I suspect when) you go, most soldiers are just trying to live to see tomorrow, and hate that they have to carry all this crap and get yelled at and walk so far and risk their necks and stand post for hours and wake up early and go to bed late and and and. They don't care about the fine details of their unit regalia and haven't the faintest clue why they're being ordered to do this thing or that thing. Their equipment doesn't always work the way it should and they might not have a chance to properly repair, replace, or maintain it. What they're doing - the war they're fighting - wouldn't be a priority for them if they didn't feel like they absolutely had to be there.
The reenactor's well-informed enthusiasm alone makes them a little alien to the historical people they're portraying, who had hobbies and interests and wants and needs apart and aside from this godawful mess they've found themselves in. I'm not suggesting reenactors start acting like bitter, apathetic cynics, but understanding that war sucks for almost anyone who fights it is important to an accurate portrayal and something that often gets lost as reenactors get caught up in enjoying doing what THEY love.
Ha! The one time me being a camp follower is actually to my benefit!!! It’s much more immersive for me because my job is the hobby and the hobby is my job. It is especially beneficial to my research and interpretation with my ability to do ethnoarchaeology (recreation)
A lot of “militia” members in the US should see this.
If you did a cursory amount of googling, you'd find out that HEMA is very aware of these problems and the discussions on them are... extensive. Couple of main points.
Medieval reenactment is not HEMA and should not be thought of as such. I would never in my life go after someone in early medieval chain shirt with the force and intent I'm willing to put into someone in modern protective gear or late medieval armor. You do have a fair amount of people doing both HEMA and reenactment - although not very many because the costs get... steep.
If you see someone count a light hit in a HEMA tournament and say 'oh, it is not damaging enough to kill' you need to flip the perspective. That light hit is not the absolute victory, it is the screwup of the person who was hit. If you want to recreate that feeling of not wanting to get hit at any cost because it could well mean an infection and a painful death, then you need to train to not let those hits through. It does open you up to a problem where two sides will mostly stay far apart and trade light hits instead of engaging (only closing when an overwhelming advantage is achieved), but a cursory look at footage of some modern day machete attacks will show that this isn't exactly wrong.
Tournaments usually see people going full force - or rather full speed. If you have managed to put your opponent in a bad situation where his head is uncovered, you will often deliver a light hit instead of hammering him down like a nail, because both the judges and your opponent are well aware that you could have messed him up if you wanted to. You can't always do this, but it explains why you don't see the large finishing blows that some sources (looking at you, Thibault) call for.
One thing that keeps HEMA honest is that it doesn't have a universal ruleset, so it is almost impossible to play to the rules - you have artifacts that still sneak in because of issues with equipment and lack of fear, but if you look at someone like Charnay, you will find out that people who fought fearlessly, or with fearless-like aggression were very real and even lauded for it.
And lastly an most importantly - people overstate shit way too much. Sure, your modern shoes give you a better grip on the floor than contemporary footing. Sharp swords bind a bit more than blunts. But guess what, we have people who did fencing in leather shoes and with sharp swords, and it turns out that while there is some difference, it isn't that big. The largest disconnect you find is usually at the tactical and strategic levels - there is no need to think of logistics or keeping your troops alive for the next day. As much as some people don't like hearing it, this is where LARP, of all things, is closer to reality than HEMA or reenactment.
And that last bit is the key, I'd think. All of these different fields (HEMA, reenactment, history, archaeology, LARP) give you a piece of the puzzle. None are real by themselves, but they all have bits and pieces that are real. LARP has people who want to run away to fight another day because creating a new character is a pain, reenactment builds the skill of situational awareness that duellists don't have, HEMA lets you go full force against someone in the way you can't in LARP if you don't want to send some kid straight to a hospital, history has accounts from people who were in real fights, archaeology can tell you that your sword doesn't clock in at twenty kilos. Put them together and you will get a fairly good picture.
Or it would if we could talk to each other instead of sneering from our ivory towers at the people who know nothing about really real fighting in da streetz.
Dude LARP is just hitting each other with foam swords. And don't tell me about "muh tacticz" in LARP like you are some sort of epic warlord bro stop saying such nonsense. LARP is just a for of roleplay, for them, the realism and nature of the "combat" they do is secondary.
@@aasdqwwcacfwavdsvwe6013 Case. In. Point.
11:41 the spaghetti wars have begun.
Brandon im to anxious to sleep tonight I have my math finals tomorrow please help me Brandon
You will do better than you expect!
people take re-enactment to different scales...
I mean, around 2012 there was a massive wave of Napoleonic re-enactments in Russia, and, many people did actually get fairly seriously injured when fighting with those swords and halberds... an experimental historian whose lectures I was listening to at the time actually got multiple bones broken in the Borodino re-enactment including three ribs...
for those guys, some of the fear surely must have been present to an extent it is not in western reenactment. though, to want to be involved in something so bloody and real also has been suggested to be a sign of certain psychological issues... I know a lot of psychopaths in Moscow did have a background in Napoleonic re-enactment groups in thesame way as there are certain types of confederate gun groups school-shooters tend to frequent in the US... seem to among others attract certain types of strangeness...
I train in HEMA saber. I can only speak for my weapon and my class but the historical limitations leads to some of the most interesting discussions. Some of the manual teach techniques that would get you knocked out in the first round of a tournament. But in actual combat? Maybe there simplicity and repetitiveness can tell us something about how people sort to deal with the stress of combat?
On the point of Historical Fencing/HEMA:
Fencing was a sport back then as well. Of course, it also had a "real world" application, but most people did it recreationally. Entire events were held with tournaments where the goal was not to cause harm, but to just fence cleanly. Of course, sometimes accidents happened, but grievous bodily harm on the opponent was not the main goal. AFAIK except for people saying "I did it", there is no historical account of duels with sharp longswords. Well, there is one, but that was two dudes messing around at a wedding. It wasn't meant to be serious until one guy got injured by accident.
You can see references to fencing being a sport in the manuals themselves. There is a clear distinction between "Ernst und Schimpf" (serious and not-serious). And while Schimpf trains you for Ernst there is no denying that for most people it would always stay at Schimpf.
I would go as far as saying that if they had had the PPE that we use nowadays, they would have used it during their fencing. Absolutely. Because fencing was, even then, a sport.
Fencers were children of the sun, not children of Mars.
We do have historical accounts of duels where both sides are shown. Fencers being super timid and super careful, but also fencers who just jumped in without any fear.
Even during fencing events back in those days (where the swords were blunt) we can see this. Timid fencers, but also fencers who were not careful and got injured. One report has a man dying because he skewered himself on his opponent's sword.
Now, do we fence completely like they did back then? Nope. But we also have hundreds of years of sports science, good PPE and overall better living standards backing us. Fencing is a breathing thing. It changes now and it changed back then. While we will never be able to 100% recreate how it MIGHT have looked like, there are really good fencers that are getting super close (not me lmao).
Lange Rede kurzer Sinn: Fencing is a sport now as it was back then. Fencers were careful and also not careful now as they were back then. A 100% recreation is impossible and it is a relative minority of fencers that claim that they could now whoop as if it was "serious". But I am a fencer, not a martial LARPer, so those thoughts do not enter my mind.
I think it's a definite gradient, I'm not entirely sure about the rest of my group, but I always treat the weapons as if they're sharp. It's one of the things that really annoys me when I see different clubs, especially over in Europe (I'm Australian) covering their body with the shield and holding their arms out in front to "game" the combat system, which is one of the reasons why I have a certain disdain for entirely combat orientated "reenactment" groups instead of living history reenactment groups, as you see decisions in their kit to recognise this, like the use of anachronistic armour choices for face protection (looking at you lam'lar & rugfur worshipers) etc. some we can't get away from like protective gauntlets be it padded or armoured (especially in the early medieval period) due to insurance reasons.
Ain’t that deep
We can always go deeper. Overanalyse is my middle name.
As a military historian, I think we glorify war far too much. Reenactments are fine, but it's play acting. Still, living history is important. The ultimate double edged sword.
30 years of re-enactment, you are spot on with this. It is a "game" and a fun one, but not actual combat. 20+ years of martial arts and as a 1st responder, I have had people actualy try to kill me on a number of occasions (with and without weapons). It sucked. Still have nightmares about parts of it. But when someone is actually attacking you with intent, it is an entirely different situation, and it is not fun. Now the important question: WHERE IS TIMMY???!!! I WANT TO PLAY WARTHUNDER WITH TIMMY!
.grin.
As a competitive HEMA longsword player, I've come to a similar conclusion. Firstly, historical accounts of sword duels to the death almost always involve both combatants being injured.
Also, a friend of mine from my old club was very good technically, but also hit like a freight train. He's had to calm down over time, but if he hit you, it was going to hurt very badly, and maybe break a bone (which has happened) or get a concussion. It's not the same as a sharp sword, of course, but blunt steel is absolutely still a serious weapon.
I noticed that clean fencing went out the window when I fought him. I would attack into attacks, leading to what's called a "double" in scored matches, but with him I found myself making a completely different risk/reward calculation. But what's interesting is that we found ourselves performing techniques from an earlier Italian manual to the popularly practiced German school of Meyer in the 16th Century, when the Longsword was largely a sport weapon.
I cannot believe it , all these years you LIED to me , i THOUGHT YOU DIED !!!
HOW COULD YOU DO THIS MR F , HOW !!!
I recently saw a sentiment that I think would appall the reenacting community.
Quote: "World War 2 re-enactments should just be everyone committing pranks against the Axis re-enactors.
Stealing their flags, throwing eggs, spitballs. The works."
I guess some people don't realize it's acting. I'd be curious to hear your opinion on this.
Update: another person said that to portray an axis you should be required to be a starving, drug addled youth soldier.
Lots of good points here, but one of the most glaring inaccuracies I’ve noticed with reenactors is the fact that MANY of them are middle-aged and overweight…certainly not the demographic of fighting men throughout history. When you consider that soldiers of the Napoleonic wars (for example) marched all over Europe…contrasted with many reenactors difficulty in “marching” across a 100 yard “battlefield”.
I practice HEMA, but not like a lot of the footage in the video these types of mock battles. What I do is unarmored fencing with the longsword. But we are also very different from reenactment. For us this is actually a sport. We use old guides like Liechtenauer but we implement more modern fighting techniques as well.
Our trainer always says: When you're fighting for your life, you don't care about technique or honour. So this includes a lot of kickboxing, judo, etc. to be as effective as possible.
But I also have experience LARPing and while that is most definitely not reenactment, it might get a bit closer to this armored battle HEMA, you showed. Of course nobody there will get seriously hurt, as well. We're using foam weapons after all. But at some point when fighting huge battles you get very immersed. So immersed that you actually start to fear blows and become more cautious, etc. I can only imagine that it is similar for these larger HEMA battles. So of course it will never be the same as if you could actually get hurt. But if you actually fight and not just follow show patterns, I think you can get very immersed.
WAIT! So you're saying that howitzer wasn't actually firing canister at me last weekend? 😮
Have you thought about teaming up with Todd's Workshop or Skallagram to see how this might pan out?
I also have to wonder if the armor is enough. More career and life altering injuries occured when boxing gloves were added to boxing, and the shoulder pads and helmets have lead to more concussions and brain damage. Why? Without it you can only hit your for in certain ways without also injuring yourself. I wonder if some of the same rules apply here speaking as someone that hasn't LARPer or taken up hema
Yeah, this is why I dislike when people view modern fencing through a historical lens. It’s not because I don’t value the historical origins-in fact, that’s why I got into it-it’s that you fundamentally cannot make any comparisons there. Most of the time they occur in the opposite direction, in a way-people complaining about how, in a real fight, having fencing training wouldn’t save your life. When, like… yeah. It’s a sport. With historical origins. You’re ascribing it more real-life significance than it actually has. Modern fencers are well aware of the fact that their skillset is quite limited to modern fencing.
I used to fight in armored tournaments (in my 1420 Burgundian recreated armor). It was fun, but the rules were made for unarmored people. We had swords and you got points for hits, but they were all strikes on armor and we couldn't thrust into gaps in the armor. With my German (well Liechtenstein) unarmored Judaical Combat group the tournaments made more sense, but still every little hit would stop the fight and reset. We did start to do non-stop and judges would count the hits for us until the time limit ended. Still wasn't accurate, since a strikes back then (mostly hand hits) would have had a different effect. I mean if people got stabbed they wouldn't just fall down dead. I liked the German system because the manuals said keep striking till the opponent was on the ground, and then hit them a couple of more times to make sure they were truly incapacitated. That made more sense than some of the flourishes where you block one srike and then hit with another, and that was the end of the fight. I have studied a lot of medical articles with first hand accounts of what people did when they were stabbed or shot and applied that to my HEMA fighting. every hit I thought about if that would have made me drop my sword, or I would rage and keep slashing with a sword stuck in my arm.
I apologize for this Long comment. I'll add another comment with my Rev. War experience.
10:22 Here you are mistaken twice, firstly, in thinking, that fencing, as well as the entire mechanics behind bladed, blunt or polearm weapons, requires the constant use of the user's full strength to do ,,killing" damage (this is an idea on a similar level to the idea that a sword must be heavy, i.e. absurd), and secondly, in thinking that the more hotheaded HEMA fencers will not use all their strength, regardless whether it is profitable for a given motion or not xd.
But rest is quite right thats for sure.
Yeah. I choose not to fence them. I wanna go to the pub afterwards not A&E.
I'm a HEMA practitioner of various different disiplines, and as in any martial art, you are preparing for a fight, not actually fighting. So of course its not going to be the same. But it is indeed a much better aproximation of a violent encounter with weapons than just wacking away without training. Muscle memory is helpful in a fight, and HEMA tries to replicate it as much as posible. Also, getting struck in the thigh with a scottish basket hilt or an infantry officer's saber is going to hurt like a bitch, no matter the protective equipment which is why we either; use lighter weapons and/or strike with caution.
Compare this to boxing. If you knew you where to get into a bar fight, would you like to learn how to box, or would you just not learn anything because its never going to be a perfect simulation of a violent encounter?
Part two. For my rev War reenacting I did find a difference to my actions for a battle reenactment and tactical war games. Like at the Winter Tactical at the Greene Homestead. There was a lot of arguing of if someone got hit or not. I fired upon a guy at a stone wall maybe 4 times at maybe 30 feet and he refused to die, but that wasn't one of the thinking about real battle situations. The one that got to me was when we were in the woods and I saw red coats and automatically hit behind Steve Gardner's box of beer (in a wood box, we had no clue there was real beer in it, probably would have cracked one open and watched the line of soldiers walk by), and I stayed there for far longer than I would have if it was just a reenactment. I was actually scared. My partner didn't want to carry it so I was dragging it by myself and jumping behind trees and brush . Any sight of red and I was on the ground. Of course later we made it to the filed and another LI guy came and we ran across the field to the pine trees. Of course later when I didn't know how many were left I ran to the well and started chatting with you. I might have something stupid like "hey your that famous You-tuber guy" Anyway, good video!
1:23 No! Say it ain't so, Brandon! I thought that you had been shot more than the terminator and certainly had a higher body count than one as well. You're dead to me....
I suspect this is probably true in combat flight simulators as well. Tactics that just wouldn't happen in real life, like sitting on a bomber's tail trading hits or taking full commit head ons with other fighters does happen in simulators.
I have always felt that the most realistic parts of our acting, as it were, are actually the non-battle related ones, as the reality of war is that it is largely waiting around vs actual combat. In someways, we seem to get that right. The lack of discipline... less so. We can at least stand on the fact that nobody was perfect back in the day, but it does get frustrating for me as a re-enactor when the guys aren't very good at their drill, and mores that the reason is because they never practice it! As someone who started out in the SCA but wound up doing Civil War artillery for the most part, I have been continually frustrated not only with how difficult I find it to "shake the rust off", but also how little drill and commitment to drill people in the hobby can have. It's like being in the play with a bunch of guys who never can remember their own lines, but will also taunt you if you mess your own up.
In the end I rather prefer the description of "historical actor" to anything else, because it seems to me the least haughty and most truthful description of what we do. I used to like "living historian" but now am not so much a fan, as it seems an oversell and not what we in actuality do... and no-one outside of a very niche group of people know what it means anyways. "Reenactor" has alot of baggage as a term now, sadly, and I also like the idea of emphasizing the acting aspect of the hobby and reminding people that it is all an act (some reenactors and especially snooty historians forget this).
That said, as someone with a degree in history, and to play devils advice to Brandon F. here, I absolutely despise lunkheaded veterans who pretend they know everything about war and history because they were once in the same province as man with a gun . Thier whole view of events is totally myopic and frequently at odds with the facts... because they aren't trained historians or intellectuals, and because they think knowledge can only be gained through direct experience. Which begs the question how they think they ever got trained in the first place...
As an airsoft player of ten years without military background: we for sure often act with a lot less care (also a lot less training and drill than in the military), thpugh i think there's a massive difference between the types of games.
At a regular open day game, im far less risk averse than at a multi day event.
Where at the day game, i might have to walk 50-100m back to respawn, wait 5 minutes and then i can try again. At a milsim, i might have walked an hour or more to my objective and if i get hit there, i need to walk back all that distance, wait an hour and walk out again. So suddenly i am far more careful and do not just try stuff for the lolz. Tactics matter, because theres an actual punishment for being hit. Thats what i enjoy so much about these longer form events. Its far less predictable and the stakes are higher. At a regular day game, you know roughly how many players there are, which place they start the round and the field is usually small enough to calculate where people go.
At those big events woth hundreds of players and multiple square kilometres of area, there could be no opponents at your objective, there could be a small group, that you can win against, there could be a full platoon or even company.
This is something you can find in almost any sports, because there are rules. If you take a look at Olympic fencing, it doesn't look like a realistic duel, even with épées. Because there are rules to follow, and the champions are often the ones who know the rules precisely, and how to bend them without breaking them in order to make the best score.
Realistic duels were (more often than not) disloyal, because the main goal is to survive. So you can easily forgive yourself for breaking the rules, if you win at the end.
So if your enemy is waiting for you with his rapier already drawn, prepare a dagger in your boot and some pocket sand, because it will be useful.
Ironically, having reenactors simulate battles in which the soldiers were historically drunk beforehand (like many naval battles with "dutch courage") would better simulate the behavior of real soldiers of the time better than sober.
As someone who likes to do HEMA stuff, I personally like to wear as minimal safety equipment as possible to ensure that I am always scared of getting hit. I'm not even trying to seem cool, I will obviously wear a helmet and gloves to avoid breaking bones or losing an eye, but since getting my arms or legs hurt is not really permanent and but also painful, I think it provides a sense of alertness you might miss with large jackets. I have also come to greatly appreciate how far clothing technology has come. And I have to say that medieval clothing has a vast amount of flaws that I think most people do not realize.
Agree, but would emphasise a second factor you touched on: consent. For the vast majority of history, once you were in uniform your life was not yours. Incredibly stressful. From your boots to your haircut. Often even your thoights and prayers and letters.
The whole purpose of military drilling was that the soldiers would act as automatons when under stress - not think, just do what they had been drilled to do (OK, it didn't always work, such as the US civil war soldier who loaded his rifle 20 times but forgot to fire it, but that was the principle)