I was looking for a tutorial on how to use the Jousting Lance in Mount & Blade Warband. This video just popped out in "recommended" section and i stayed until the end. Now i can use both, in the game and real life. Thanks.
I don't know much about horses, but I think Gossamer has a very striking and refined figure, her head in particular seems quite elegant. Though Warlord is a handsome horse as well!
@@jimlang7461 The bit is a bar of metal that goes in the horse's mouth and causes pain. It is used to control the horse's movements. There are bridle styles that do not use bits. You can see at 4:25 and on that the horse hates having this thing in its mouth.
Ah I was thinking about the same, that the horse doesnt seem fine with it. I really hope it doesnt bother her too much. Very very beautiful and "well mannered" horse!
@@Wenixi hm... I have been riding horses for ten years, and I've always been taught that when a horse "chews" the bit and foams slightly is a sign that the rider has a very soft hand with the reins. I don't know what kind of bit he's using, but there are bits with different strenghts- a straight bar is less strong than an articulated one. keep in mind also that the horse has no teeth where the bit goes. there are indeed bitless bridles, but you need to have a really, REALLY great sinergy with the horse to use them, because if the horse decides that hey, he doesn't care for your commands, then you can pull all you want, but the horse's neck muscles are far stronger than your arms.
First of all, awesome video. After that: It's about who you are up against. Spear vs enemy infantry and lance vs enemy cavalry, because your primary goal is to dismount your opponent. That goes along with the historical development because in the 11th century basically everybody was using cavalry.
If you can keep yourself on the horseback while lancing someone you're basically stabbing someone with the combined mass of you and the horse, i.e. extremely heavy impact. With a spear you're only getting the benefit of additional impact velocity but because the spear is quite light it doesn't add much to the impact energy (which is what does the damage). Here's some amateur math for you (with assumed weights and velocities): (Energy = 0.5 * mass * velocity^2 = 0.5 * m * v^2) *Spear:* _0.5 * 2 kg * (10 m/s + 20 m/s)^2 = 0.9 kJ_ (Horse velocity 10 m/s + spear strike velocity 20 m/s, spear weight 2 kg) *Lance:* _0.5 * 1000kg * (10 m/s)^2 = 50 kJ_ (Horse velocity 10 m/s, knight + horse + lance + armour mass 1000kg) So with this calculation you would get roughly 50 times stronger impact with the lance (assuming you don't fall off the horse due to the counter force if the lance doesn't impale the target). I am aware that this calculation isn't accurate because it assumes the spear is thrown at the target and that the knight with the lance doesn't move an inch backwards when hitting the target. It was mostly just for fun.
But surely if your weapon goes in too far, it won't come out again? Even if it snags just a little bit, your velocity will take you past the target - and yank the weapon out of your hand. This would be especially true if the shaft of the weapon is running with blood.
The use of the spear in the higher up position seems to me to be most useful in the kind of situation after the charge, or when charging cannot be used; it seems like it would be absolutely most useful for stabbing - as you say - over the tops of the shields, harrying and hurting the enemy foot; perhaps as a way of using mounted fighters to supplement pike men? Or in some kind of chaotic melee where the horse and foot troops are together - maybe as part of a failed maneuver, where you have to do your best to survive long enough to pull back and regroup? The lance, just as you point out, is kind of one shot - you can't really couch twice! Now my familiarity with lance is purely from fantasy works and RPGs such as tabletop D&D - hardly the most accurate of sources. But, in them, the lance as an attack is generally set up to be a single, potentially *devastating* attack, designed to strike terror into the enemy and obliterate the target. In a way similar to the science fictional concept of a "kinetic weapon" that uses the mass of the weapon combined with the momentum and speed of the thing carrying the weapon to the target.
Jason , Absolutely LOVE your Channel ! The Love you show all your horses is so very refreshing to watch , coming from someone who has had horses for most of my life! I know how that SPECIAL bond can be. PLEASE do a video on Warlord !! The Love and Trust is so obvious between the 2 of you ! Would be so AWESOME to know your twos story , from the first day you got him all the way threw his training and the shows you do together !
Very interesting indeed I learned a thing or two I do agree that the use of spear and lance is different, love the choice of music something about this song goes so well with medieval videos in my humble opinion.
My god that cocky rearing at 2:30, loved it. I have a question though, how hard is it to retrieve or keep your spear after the first target? Because flesh and clothe easily entangle a blade going through and you just can't put a foot on the poor sod's chest and wrench it out, or can you?
@@ModernKnight I've got a hunch that this is one of the reasons why they stabbed downward. In addition to avoiding shields, stabbing downward would change the angle of penetration. You would lose some of the force of your strike because your momentum isn't translating into your arm as well, but the angle of penetration becomes vertical instead of horizontal. The vertical angle allows the spear to slip out as you ride past. Add to this the change in grip (overhand for the vertical strike, underhand for the horizontal), and the spear becomes much easier to hold onto. You might've noticed when you struck horizontally that your arm had to bend backwards at a strange angle. When you struck vertically, your wrist does a sort of dumping motion and the spear ends up conveniently back where it started. That concept changes entirely in the couched position. When you're holding the spear un-couched, your arm moves just as much as the target would as you ride past, making the angle of the strike much more important for spear retrieval. But in the couched position, your arm doesn't move much, translating all the force of impact into your target. Instead of your arm having to move to ensure spear retrieval, the target moves, changing the angle of penetration to be vertical (your target rotates backwards with the strike). In the case of impalement, the spear's probably gone no matter what, but in a glancing blow or one into shallower flesh, it's likely that the rotation of your target from all that force lets you keep your spear.
So: "Spears are for stabbing" "Lances are for 'Ramming' with a weapon" The spear part is obvious, the lance part maybe slightly less; But since you are effectively (trying) to link; The lance, You Body & The Horse *together* by pouching the Lance, it really is more akin to a Ram than stabbing.
I always wondered how they withdrew the lance or spear after hitting a target, especially when it pierced shields, armor and bodies. I think it is very difficult to not loose grip of the lance and loosing the whole weapon in the process...
they didn't; it was a one-shot but devastating weapon and then they'd go to their mace/sword for the rest of the fight if they couldn't retire and re-arm
I have a theory based on local rural horse riding competitions in Pakistan (link to video below) and seeing my maternal grandfather's Lance. The lance head was very different from what I'd seen in classical art which show a flat wide head, similar to classical depictions of arrowheads, which are depicted with flat wide heads. In real life arrowheads are much narrower than the proportions you see in contemporary art from the period. The lance head was built like a very elongated pyramid, a longe sharp tip supported by a elongated square base. This shape of sturdy metallic lance head combined with a hardwood handle, made them unlikely to break or even bended on repeated impact's on mail or plate armour and they made great piercing/stabbing weapons. Now getting back to the horse riding competitions, one of the challenges is to stab and dislodge a hardwood peg from the ground and keeping it impaled on your lance, obviously without loosing your lance. You can watch the video below for the technique but the make two very quick underhanded stabbing actions followed by a pulling motion while twisting their wrists and arms to make a pulling action to dislodge the impaled peg from the ground. ua-cam.com/video/tgjAJoQO8ao/v-deo.html
Thanks so much for this series. I've been looking for something like this because I love horses and history and because I write medieval fantasies. It's so cool to finally see how and why things were done in the Middle Ages, especially with horses.
Thanks for the explanation, sounds very plausible. As an architect (and someone who understands forces and impacts) your explanation and try-outs do actually raise more questions to me: What about the impact in your hand (with the stabbing technique) (that adds to the speed of the horse)? >> Is there a limit the hand can take? Won't the hand and arm not go backwards a little bit, so that you actually loose impact speed? (I don't think the hand is made to sustain such a blow, especially not on an angle of almost 90 degrees) How firm is the grip in one hand? What is the chance of losing the spear? Or burning your hand because of the friction? Some further thoughts: with a lance locked underneath ones arm, I would assume that it's easier to contain the full power of the speed of the horse and transfer all the energy into the blow (no way to retract backwards). Thus actually gaining more impact power instead of losing some of it (because of a restricted grip in the hand). With a lance a knight can also use more mass of his body to sustain the blow on top of the impact forces being aligned (and thus stronger) instead of a force going from tip (of the spear) to shoulder over two sides of a triangle (spear& arm). In other words: a lance converts the impact of the blow to one line with mass, instead of a kind of hook, with the hand most likely to be more of a hinge than a constraint (because of the distance from the shoulder and the grip). So from a scientific point of view, the lance makes a lot more sense to withstand high impact blows. The extra length of course gives a lethal advantage because one can hit the enemy before they can reach onself, but there seems also to be less risk involved of losing ones lance that way. Eventually, with a balanced lance (counterweight) , the knights pose seems a bit more rigid and contained, which also involves less risk of reaching out over the side of the horse. This also holds the energy of the blow better together and thus the impact can be higher before one falls of (or breaks an arm, dislocates one shoulder etc.)
Interesting seeing that comment from only half a year ago seeing his numbers are now at 310k so almost triple. Given the high quality and entertaining way of presenting the information I suspect it'll only go up steadily and then one day the youtube algorithm is like "oh this stuff is good" and keeps pushing it on everybody even vaguely interested in adjecent subject matters.
A similar thing happened in WW1. When tanks first were created the techniques that were used for horse cavalry were adopted to the tanks. they used the exact same tactics. as tank technology changed, techniques and tactics specifically for tanks were developed.
i read an account of an encounter, a skirmish between a small group of British cavalry and an equally small group of German lancers, at the very beginning of WWI. they actually had a melee, the British armed with sabres and pistols, the Germans armed with their lances and I presume pistols. The British cavalry whooped the lancers, but good, although the writer did say he thought the Germans were not very well trained. Oddly enough, none of them used their pistols in the short melee. So, it is a bad thing if your lance misses when charging a man with a sabre. It was a happy hurrah victory for the British cavalry, however, most of that unit were killed before the day was out when they attacked a a dug in enemy position that had a machine gun.
Thank you so much for all these videos, they are so informative and at the same time presented in an extremely natural and enjoyable way besides showing your huge appreciation and respect for animals. If only more people/you tube channels/television/films could follow your example! Working through all the playlists from the beginning.
Great Work and reproduction. I feel the shorter lighter lances would have been more effective against foot. When it came to opposing heavy cavalry a longer heavier Lance provided greater range and lethality or damage potential through blunt force trauma, which is critical to beating knights and men at arms in thick plate armour. The final technic is great for that as it makes full use of the galloping horses momentum.
love this channel... on topic - couching (I hope that is how it is spelled) seems to lock the target area - that is, the enemy must be or be going to be in a predictable spot (such as another rider charging). Spearing would seem to be more effective in combating a more agile enemy - say a foot soldier who would (I assume) be more of an unpredictable target for "location at time of strike" (I hope that makes sense)
This was lively. A FABULOUS Look AT Gossamer. The thing is......She is SO Strong And Muscled And you named her "Gossamer" ? Just oppisites:), the name and the steed. She 6 SOOOO LOVELY : )))
Great video, thanks! However, I was hoping to see technique how to release a lance after it stucks in the target. Are You considering making video about that or share some info about it?
Cool demonstration. I always wondered how the hand doesn't slide down or drop the spear upon impact or the couched lance doesn't push the lancer back violently. You're not even using gloves. Very interesting.
It's not the speed of the blow, it's the force of the blow. Because the spear is couched, you've got the weight of the rider + the horse (easily 1000+ lbs). Verses the un-chouched which is limited to what you can benchpress with one arm (no more than 150 lbs). A car hitting something at 70mph is going to do a lot less damage than a train hitting something at 45mph.
You're right that it's Newton's 3rd law that's making the difference here, not speed, but the train vs car example is very misleading, since it hides the relation between mass and velocity in an impact - the train is travelling at just over half the car's speed, but has a mass two orders of magnitude higher, so its energy and momentum are in a different league. Comparing the resulting impact of a train travelling at 45mph, vs the same train going at 70mph, makes it pretty clear that velocity does make a difference in an impact.
I generally call it a lance when couched & a spear when not couched, although of course both techniques are perfectly possible with the same weapon. From what I have heard in the middle ages a distinction was generally not made. The word "lance" is Romance while "spear" is Germanic so I expect it to be one of those things English has two words for because of its heterogeneity. Of the European languages with translations for both listed on Wiktionary, 14 have two separate words while 11 use the same word for both. The languages having 2 separate words are Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, Galician, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Romanian, Russian, Scots Gaelic and Turkish while those having only 1 are Asturian, Catalan, Estonian, French, Friulian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Sicilian, Spanish, Venetian and Welsh (a strong trend towards southern European languages having one word & northern ones having two). For this I have classified Georgian as an Asian language due to its relative isolation from linguistic influence from the rest of Europe. Greek is a complicated case & I'm not sure which category to place it in; Ancient Greek armies were largely infantry armed with spears & fighting in formation as the city-states' patriotism & the high ratio of population density to arable land meant men were in abundance while horse farms struggled to make a profit in peacetime.
When couching the lance, I believe you are lending some mass to the spear. The impact energy is greater when striking the target at the virtually the same speed. The spear is the same, the speed is the same. The only thing that is different appears to be the energy of the impact, so it seems that you have lent mass to the spear with that solid connection your body.
Have you done a segment on injuries as might be incurred in battle, or tournaments? We know a fair bit now on injuries from ACW, WWI ..due the weapons ...so much of medieval battle seems more bashing and slashing vs straight cuts..with dirt pressed into wounds
I so need to find a place around here(NY) that would do this kind of thing! I've never been much interested in horseback riding but I now realize, it is just the "modern" styles (English mainly) I'm not into.
It's an old video but i think can be usefull to point out that if you thrust with the lance from your charging horse you're simply adding to the power of your thrust the speed of the horse, but when you couch the lance, you're removing the power of your thrust, but you're adding the whole mass of you and your horse, at the blow,and the speed of the horse, and that's why the couching tecnique has way more impact.
Idea for a video, what sort of cav charges or tactic were there for assaulting other units? In games its generally the cycle charge, but after watching some historical battle simulation tactics, one tactic i noticed was the French cav kinda trotting into the enemy lines and using the weight of the horse flesh to just push through and open a gap & trampled anyone underneath at a walk under a brigade of horses. You then think about Police horses on crowds off people and how the weight of the horse is just used to push through crowds and disperse them. I know one battle the French used armoured cav in a frontal charge with unarmoured at the back, was seemed less of a charge and more about using the combined weight of horses to push through the English lines, but the English Longbows peeled around the sides and shot into the unarmoured horses that created chaos and dead horses that blocked in the armoured horse riders and the thing quickly went south for the French. So if there were ton of dead horse corpses laying about, does cycle charging really seem like a valid tactic, and would you not instead just engage the line and attempt to use the weight of the horse to push a flank or centre through to be exploited instead? atleast until such a formation broke from which a charge/riding down a foe would be more useful? I mean the Norman couch lance would be the exception of a pure sledge hammer at a charge, but seems to be the common go to tactic when representing in computer games?
If I am not mistaken, the switch to a heavy lance from a light spear occurred because of the stirrup. To couch a heavy lance, you need a platform to hold you in place instead of getting knocked off your mount. Light spears on horseback were used to chase down enemy soldiers after their formations broke, basically stab them in the back as they ran. With stirrups you can lean into your strike and create a far heavier impact. You also see this in the evolution of the saddle for horsemen. Light spears were fine for killing fleeing enemies, but the stirrup/saddle combination allowed the war horse to be used more like a tank to break enemy formations in the first place.
Maybe I got it from here. The stirrup was invented much earlier, but took time to filter through China, the Roman empire and Europe. "The best known usage of military lances was that of the full-gallop closed-ranks charge of a group of knights with underarm-couched lances, against lines of infantry, archery regiments, defensive embankments, and opposition cavalry. Two variants on the couched lance charge developed, the French method, en haie, with lancers in a double line and the German method, with lancers drawn up in a deeper formation which was often wedge-shaped. It is commonly believed that this became the dominant European cavalry tactic in the 11th century after the development of the cantled saddle and stirrups (the Great Stirrup Controversy), and of rowel spurs (which enabled better control of the mount)." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance "The stirrup appeared in China in the first few centuries AD and spread westward through the nomadic peoples of Central Eurasia.[3][4] The use of paired stirrups is credited to the Chinese Jin Dynasty and came to Europe during the Middle Ages. " en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup
I have some ideas about stirrups and saddles that I’ll explore in a video. Often commentators in this area have very little personal experience of the issues, and in my opinion come up with some odd ideas.
The sizes and speeds of horses must have played a huge role in this. As we always say, medieval people weren't stupid. If they were fighting with spear from horseback in the 11th century, somebody would pretty quickly work out to couch the spear and use the momentum of the animal rather than more conventional spear techniques. Obviously it became more feasible as the middle ages progressed, and while the obvious answer is that battlefield tactics and the role of cavalry developed, I feel pretty confident that the foundational reason why it was better to use the spear as a spear in the early middle ages was down to the size and speed of the horses they had available.
Just looking at it from basic (very basic) physics, when you thrust, you add your thrusting velocity to the horse/rider velocity. You are basically doubling, possibly tripling the polearm velocity. With the polearm couched, you are increasing the mass (and momentum) by two orders of magnitude. You are adding the weight of the horse/rider to the spear and the horse/rider is at hundreds of times heavier than a spear.
I loved this channel. Thank you very much for creating it! I'm in Gippsland Australia and I'd love to know if you're coming to the World Jousting Championship here in June.
The overarm technique will lead to defernders raising their shields (more) to protect their heads and therefore not see the attacker. So they probably won't hit the horse but the impact will still push them back. Interessting thought.
I've always wondered how medieval knights managed on Crusade in the middle East. I've grown up in South Africa with the summer temperatures regularly getting above 35 degrees C, so I'm about as accustomed to the heat as I can get (as someone of European ancestry who doesn't like the heat), and it's difficult enough to function out in the open in shorts and a T-shirt. How they fought in full armour in blazing sun with temperatures reaching 35 or even 40 degrees...even if the humidity was low, it must have been bloody crucifying. Particularly if water was in short supply. It makes me wonder if battles were ever called off because of the heat. Given that the commanders would often meet before battle commenced, I suppose it's plausible?
There are references that the buzantines and the persians used lances in this way, but with a major difference:the lance was tied to the horses ankles(front and back)with chains or leather rope to tranfer the force of the gallop into the lance and stab "with the horse"in a way.
The power is generated from resistance that you can put up. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to hit a target hard with a spear, that spear will also "bounce" back at you with an equal amount of force when it impacts. With just your arm and hand strength, a spear thrust goes forward, hits the target, but then when the spear bounces back, your grip strength + arm strength when extended out towards the target during the thrust motion isn't strong enough to withstand all that force. The spear hits the target, the force travels along the shaft of the spear, into your hand, then goes into your wrist and compresses the joint, then your forearm, then your elbow and compresses the joint, then your upper arm and finally its abosrbed into your shoulder and transferred to the rest of your body and the horse itself. You'll also flex the muscles in your arm to withstand more force that way too. The problem is by the time that impact force reaches your elbow, itll be too much for your body to handle and you'll intuitively feel it. You let the spear tip drop away and end the attack, otherwise you'll end up breaking your elbow or tearing a muscle in your shoulder. But when the spear is couched, all that force is directly and immediately transferred to your body and armpit through friction and the how tightly you couch the lance. Theres no energy travelling through your weak arm and joints, compressing and causing pain or the possibility of breaking bone. So you can hold it much firmer and "resist" the blowback from the impact. Because you can resist a greater amount of force, that also means you can put a greater amount of force into your target. Since the kinetic energy isn't being transferred through your arms. you can transfer more energy from the momentum of the horse into the target without breaking something. TLDR: If you can't withstand the blowback force, you'll get thrown off your horse. If you can't withstand the blowback, you can't make a strong strike. The change in holding the weapon allows you to transfer and "resist" the energy directly into your body rather than a weak and breakable arm which allows you to generate a stronger strike.
Nothing to do with history, but in the new game Mount & Blade II Bannerlord, I tend to like using couched when we do a first cav charge. After the infantry gets scared and starts running I pick them off using the overhead stab movement, it's a lot easier to control when your horse is going slower, trying to match the speed of people running on foot.
Great video! The spear seems like it would be ideal for lightly armored and/or fleeing infantry. The lance would be better for harder targets like heavy infantry or other horsemen.
I think you can still stab with the lance from couched position. You indeed do uncouch your lance but you add the power of your body to the stab rather than just the horse. Much like how you'd thrust a rapier. I think the only thing of concern would be accuracy loss, but because the stretch of the arm is so explosive the accuracy loss should be minimal.
When a Lance or Spear is couched, you are using the mass of the horse, rather than just their speed/momentum. An interesting experiment to try would be to look to the ancients (Sarmatians, Persians, and Romans) and compare couched lance against lance (Kontos) held underhand two-handed, and overhand two-handed, to compare relative impact energy. As for overhead one handed spear on horseback. Over a shield wall makes sense, but I believe its also been argued that on the Bayeux Tapestry, many but not all of these particular images are of warriors in various stages of throwing their spear (or javelin). Javelin from horseback was still a thing on the Continent in certain places at that time. Excellent series! SDLeary
Steven Leary There may be one difference between the medieval nights and their ability to cause injury and the entrance. As far as I know, the ancients did not use stirrups. At some point the stirrup was invented, but I’m not exactly sure when that was.
@@fleetskipper1810 Correct, differing saddle and lack of stirrups. It would still be an interesting test though. Reconstructed Roman saddles seem to have proven that they were very stable platforms, and saddles for other cultures that used this type of horseman must have been also; it seems the use of Kontos (or similar) long spears were used in a similar fashion back to the Sarmatians.
Interesting, I think Dan Jones in one of his History Extra talks mentions the theory that the evolution of a horse rider with a spear to a mounted lancer with a more supporting saddle and stirrups which was supposedly far more effective led to the rise of the knights and the feudal system. Since it was obviously expensive for the training, the horse and the equipment needed a certain amount of productive land had to pay for it. The knights in turn pledged fealty to a higher lord or king and thus were able to provide an army when it was needed.
There is also the Footman's Lance, which seems to be a large-bladed spear. As far as I can work out, the distinction is that a spear (technically) can be thrown, whereas throwing a lance is pointless. Lances tend to be heavier spears.
@@wolfremus2521 OK, the short javelin associated with the vellites (who also had a longer javelin) used the Greek term, lonche (lancea to the Romans)... I had forgotten that. So we found the origin of the Old French and Anglo-Saxon term, but it's not really relevant since it went through three languages before arriving in English. By the post-Roman era, so far as I'm aware, the lance had come to mean what I described.
I could be totally wrong, but it looks like the downward stab with the spear might be better for weapon-retention (especially after penetrating an actual enemy person)
My theory (I've heard Lendybeige say this too) is that the people who made that tapestry weren't going for accurate and maybe didn't even know what a real battle looked like. It's like how modern war movies are mostly just hero poses and nothing like real combat. Who wouldn't, having messed around for an hour with horse and spear, figure out that holding it like a Lance worked way better? Stabbing underhand might be okay if you don't have stirrups? The underhand one looks like it's gonna break your shoulder
7:05 I feel like this position would make it harder to keep the spear in hand after the head penetrates its target and gets embedded in there. Were lances designed to break off at the tip like in jousting so you could keep riding through?
Question. I have had this discussion many times. Jousting as a sport.The lances look very long and heavy. I understand they were all right handed. So would your lance and shield be on the right, or just the lance. If the lance is much bigger and heavier would the horse head be in the way? So would you joust on the right or left? We drive on the left. But Hollywood always show jousting on the right.
all jousting in tournaments is with the competitors passing left side to left side. shield on the left, lance on the right and over the horse's neck. some jousts of war or open field tournaments might differ. the lances are heavy but the difficulty is in the balance as they are held at one end and are very long.
Are couch lance suppose to break in war? Could you use multiple times? If penetrating the target on full gallop and doesn’t break, do you let go or pull out of the target
Thats very interesting. I knew that lance has greater impat when couched and would be great at knocking people of their feet and horses. But could the stab actually be better at piercing armor? Thengthrand tested the spear with one and two handed, and he found out that two handed full body push doesn't pierce the armor as far as a stap with one hand sliding on the shaft, aiming the spear and the back hand doing the stabbing, that way the spear tip was travelling faster but had no body weight behind it and it was more succesfull in penetrating armor, where the slover full body weight stab only pushed the target. I wonder could the same thing happen here? The stabbing motion and horses speed are faster than the horses speed alone when the lance is couched. The couched spear pushed more but when having sharp spear against armor, could the stab actually penetrate more? This test left out the most important thing of the spear, the spearhead, so no penetration was tested. Skallagrim has a video where he shoots medieval repro helmets with modern guns, and the 45 caliber (12mm) 1911 colt pistol only hugely dented it, but the 7,62mm tokarev did go right trough, despite beeing much lighter than the 45 caliber bullet, but having higher speed. I would like to see you do the same test with real spear against a breastplate (or atleast 2mm thick piece of steel) on similar target.
I see a difference in target, one for heavily armoured bodies where you want to knock them over and allow ground troups to overtake them and one where theyre troups en masse and you are riding in to make multiple hits on relatively un armoured targets
Thanks. She's wonderful. I've never found it hard to extract the lance/spear as I go past, but I suppose it depends on what it sticks into and how that moves too. I imagine if I hit a tree, the lance might snap.
I reckon the couched technique would be much more effective against a mounted enemy but the stabbing technique better for killing Foot soldiers+if you charged a formation of foot soldiers(once in the melee) it would be very difficult to attack/defend yourself with a couched weapon.
Suspect that the difference between lance impact and spear impact, the act of impact is more consequential to the former. The impact of the lance on the human defender would be the same as the dummy. To be bowled over, and driven back into your comrades. This disruption of the opposing ranks can be exploited by the lancer, by first dropping his probably damaged lance and then taking his sword to hack away at the opposing line before it can reform. The danger point would be the exchange of the lancer's weaponry, and probably accounts for the need for a squire/other horseman to defend the lancer while he rearms.
I see a problem with trying to hold onto the spear when engaging a ground opponent, being that as the horse continues forward, the mounted spearman could be pulled off the horse… I think it’s better to treat it as a “fire and forgot” weapon.
Jason Love this series!I have a question for you that I hope you can address. I am a Law enforcement officer in the U.S. and due to the possibly of being severely injured in the field we go through a lot of medical training to enhance our Survivability. What kind of medical assistance did the Medieval Knight have available to him? I do understand that the obvious lance through the chest would result in death, however what about broken bones, severe lacerations etc? I do understand it would be primitive compared to modern times, however I assume some sort of measures may have been in place. Am I wrong in this assumption? Thanks again for a fantastic look at the Medieval Knight!
From my research it varied across the period and place. There were very good Muslim and Jewish medics in western Europe, but if you were of modest financial means or had no connections, my guess is that wounds often became septic and you died. Henry2 of France in the 16th C died of a head injury after a joust. Henry VIII of England had a long standing leg injury. Battlefields were filthy places.
King Arthur preferred the spear I heard, he didn’t like Lancelot.
nice
Lmfbooooo
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Ironically if you follow Welsh folklore, Arthur is said to have use a spear named Rhongomyniad
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
The horse is like, "I prepared my entire life for this moment."
I was looking for a tutorial on how to use the Jousting Lance in Mount & Blade Warband. This video just popped out in "recommended" section and i stayed until the end. Now i can use both, in the game and real life. Thanks.
I don't know much about horses, but I think Gossamer has a very striking and refined figure, her head in particular seems quite elegant. Though Warlord is a handsome horse as well!
Her rider is abusing her with that bitted bridle, and she makes it clear she hates it.
@@bayoucity1 what is a bitted bridle, and when in the video can i observe what you are referring to?
@@jimlang7461 The bit is a bar of metal that goes in the horse's mouth and causes pain. It is used to control the horse's movements. There are bridle styles that do not use bits. You can see at 4:25 and on that the horse hates having this thing in its mouth.
Ah I was thinking about the same, that the horse doesnt seem fine with it. I really hope it doesnt bother her too much. Very very beautiful and "well mannered" horse!
@@Wenixi hm... I have been riding horses for ten years, and I've always been taught that when a horse "chews" the bit and foams slightly is a sign that the rider has a very soft hand with the reins. I don't know what kind of bit he's using, but there are bits with different strenghts- a straight bar is less strong than an articulated one. keep in mind also that the horse has no teeth where the bit goes. there are indeed bitless bridles, but you need to have a really, REALLY great sinergy with the horse to use them, because if the horse decides that hey, he doesn't care for your commands, then you can pull all you want, but the horse's neck muscles are far stronger than your arms.
I hope the developers of the new Mount and Blade game are watching this series.
now that its out I can say I think they did
The couched lance mechanic has always been in warband, tho. Hence I hate hilly battles where I can't deliver 569 damage to enemy cavalrymen lol.
oh i thought i was the only one thinking about this
LMFAOOO FOR REALL
This is pretty much how it always worked in Warband except for no overhand.
This has become one of my favourite channels. Great work you're doing!
Glad you enjoy it!
First of all, awesome video. After that: It's about who you are up against. Spear vs enemy infantry and lance vs enemy cavalry, because your primary goal is to dismount your opponent.
That goes along with the historical development because in the 11th century basically everybody was using cavalry.
Thanks, I enjoy trying things out like this.
If you can keep yourself on the horseback while lancing someone you're basically stabbing someone with the combined mass of you and the horse, i.e. extremely heavy impact.
With a spear you're only getting the benefit of additional impact velocity but because the spear is quite light it doesn't add much to the impact energy (which is what does the damage).
Here's some amateur math for you (with assumed weights and velocities):
(Energy = 0.5 * mass * velocity^2 = 0.5 * m * v^2)
*Spear:*
_0.5 * 2 kg * (10 m/s + 20 m/s)^2 = 0.9 kJ_
(Horse velocity 10 m/s + spear strike velocity 20 m/s, spear weight 2 kg)
*Lance:*
_0.5 * 1000kg * (10 m/s)^2 = 50 kJ_
(Horse velocity 10 m/s, knight + horse + lance + armour mass 1000kg)
So with this calculation you would get roughly 50 times stronger impact with the lance (assuming you don't fall off the horse due to the counter force if the lance doesn't impale the target).
I am aware that this calculation isn't accurate because it assumes the spear is thrown at the target and that the knight with the lance doesn't move an inch backwards when hitting the target. It was mostly just for fun.
But surely if your weapon goes in too far, it won't come out again? Even if it snags just a little bit, your velocity will take you past the target - and yank the weapon out of your hand. This would be especially true if the shaft of the weapon is running with blood.
The use of the spear in the higher up position seems to me to be most useful in the kind of situation after the charge, or when charging cannot be used; it seems like it would be absolutely most useful for stabbing - as you say - over the tops of the shields, harrying and hurting the enemy foot; perhaps as a way of using mounted fighters to supplement pike men? Or in some kind of chaotic melee where the horse and foot troops are together - maybe as part of a failed maneuver, where you have to do your best to survive long enough to pull back and regroup?
The lance, just as you point out, is kind of one shot - you can't really couch twice! Now my familiarity with lance is purely from fantasy works and RPGs such as tabletop D&D - hardly the most accurate of sources. But, in them, the lance as an attack is generally set up to be a single, potentially *devastating* attack, designed to strike terror into the enemy and obliterate the target. In a way similar to the science fictional concept of a "kinetic weapon" that uses the mass of the weapon combined with the momentum and speed of the thing carrying the weapon to the target.
Love this channel. Came across it a few days ago with the peasant diet vid!
Same :D
I`m gonna re-create that Peasant Dish(growing Sorrel in the garden) as it looked blooming lovely.lol
Jason & Co. unfailingly make this material interesting and informative
Same.
This is a television show broken down in parts isn’t it? It’s got to be, it’s way to well made. I love it!
ieat caribou Until I heard him ask me to like and subscribe I thought it was snippets from the History Channel.
@Liz Lee He's the co founder and ceo of Rebellion, a video game developer company. They made the Sniper Elite games ...
Felipe Frota funny to hear a billionaire ask you to like and subscribe like he’d ever need ad revenue. 😂
Denethor shows his skill with the lance xD
Jason , Absolutely LOVE your Channel ! The Love you show all your horses is so very refreshing to watch , coming from someone who has had horses for most of my life! I know how that SPECIAL bond can be. PLEASE do a video on Warlord !! The Love and Trust is so obvious between the 2 of you ! Would be so AWESOME to know your twos story , from the first day you got him all the way threw his training and the shows you do together !
What a good horse ❤️ you trained her well!
Very interesting indeed I learned a thing or two I do agree that the use of spear and lance is different, love the choice of music something about this song goes so well with medieval videos in my humble opinion.
Yes, but it's not a song. No one sings in this piece of music.
I really love your channel unlike those other meddival historical channels who just talks and talks...
My god that cocky rearing at 2:30, loved it.
I have a question though, how hard is it to retrieve or keep your spear after the first target? Because flesh and clothe easily entangle a blade going through and you just can't put a foot on the poor sod's chest and wrench it out, or can you?
It depends on how deep the spear penetrates and what the target does, but I think loosing your spear was a possibility.
@@ModernKnight I've got a hunch that this is one of the reasons why they stabbed downward. In addition to avoiding shields, stabbing downward would change the angle of penetration. You would lose some of the force of your strike because your momentum isn't translating into your arm as well, but the angle of penetration becomes vertical instead of horizontal. The vertical angle allows the spear to slip out as you ride past.
Add to this the change in grip (overhand for the vertical strike, underhand for the horizontal), and the spear becomes much easier to hold onto. You might've noticed when you struck horizontally that your arm had to bend backwards at a strange angle. When you struck vertically, your wrist does a sort of dumping motion and the spear ends up conveniently back where it started.
That concept changes entirely in the couched position. When you're holding the spear un-couched, your arm moves just as much as the target would as you ride past, making the angle of the strike much more important for spear retrieval. But in the couched position, your arm doesn't move much, translating all the force of impact into your target. Instead of your arm having to move to ensure spear retrieval, the target moves, changing the angle of penetration to be vertical (your target rotates backwards with the strike). In the case of impalement, the spear's probably gone no matter what, but in a glancing blow or one into shallower flesh, it's likely that the rotation of your target from all that force lets you keep your spear.
So:
"Spears are for stabbing" "Lances are for 'Ramming' with a weapon"
The spear part is obvious, the lance part maybe slightly less;
But since you are effectively (trying) to link; The lance, You Body & The Horse *together* by pouching the Lance, it really is more akin to a Ram than stabbing.
I always wondered how they withdrew the lance or spear after hitting a target, especially when it pierced shields, armor and bodies. I think it is very difficult to not loose grip of the lance and loosing the whole weapon in the process...
From paintings it seems that lances broke or were dropped then replaced.
they didn't; it was a one-shot but devastating weapon and then they'd go to their mace/sword for the rest of the fight if they couldn't retire and re-arm
I have a theory based on local rural horse riding competitions in Pakistan (link to video below) and seeing my maternal grandfather's Lance. The lance head was very different from what I'd seen in classical art which show a flat wide head, similar to classical depictions of arrowheads, which are depicted with flat wide heads. In real life arrowheads are much narrower than the proportions you see in contemporary art from the period. The lance head was built like a very elongated pyramid, a longe sharp tip supported by a elongated square base. This shape of sturdy metallic lance head combined with a hardwood handle, made them unlikely to break or even bended on repeated impact's on mail or plate armour and they made great piercing/stabbing weapons. Now getting back to the horse riding competitions, one of the challenges is to stab and dislodge a hardwood peg from the ground and keeping it impaled on your lance, obviously without loosing your lance. You can watch the video below for the technique but the make two very quick underhanded stabbing actions followed by a pulling motion while twisting their wrists and arms to make a pulling action to dislodge the impaled peg from the ground. ua-cam.com/video/tgjAJoQO8ao/v-deo.html
Love it when he keep saying I'll show you in a moment. His horses probably saying "show it to them already";
2:32 Love that, the horse was ready to charge into the battlefield.
Thanks so much for this series. I've been looking for something like this because I love horses and history and because I write medieval fantasies. It's so cool to finally see how and why things were done in the Middle Ages, especially with horses.
Thanks for the explanation, sounds very plausible.
As an architect (and someone who understands forces and impacts) your explanation and try-outs do actually raise more questions to me:
What about the impact in your hand (with the stabbing technique) (that adds to the speed of the horse)? >>
Is there a limit the hand can take? Won't the hand and arm not go backwards a little bit, so that you actually loose impact speed? (I don't think the hand is made to sustain such a blow, especially not on an angle of almost 90 degrees) How firm is the grip in one hand? What is the chance of losing the spear? Or burning your hand because of the friction?
Some further thoughts: with a lance locked underneath ones arm, I would assume that it's easier to contain the full power of the speed of the horse and transfer all the energy into the blow (no way to retract backwards). Thus actually gaining more impact power instead of losing some of it (because of a restricted grip in the hand). With a lance a knight can also use more mass of his body to sustain the blow on top of the impact forces being aligned (and thus stronger) instead of a force going from tip (of the spear) to shoulder over two sides of a triangle (spear& arm). In other words: a lance converts the impact of the blow to one line with mass, instead of a kind of hook, with the hand most likely to be more of a hinge than a constraint (because of the distance from the shoulder and the grip). So from a scientific point of view, the lance makes a lot more sense to withstand high impact blows.
The extra length of course gives a lethal advantage because one can hit the enemy before they can reach onself, but there seems also to be less risk involved of losing ones lance that way. Eventually, with a balanced lance (counterweight) , the knights pose seems a bit more rigid and contained, which also involves less risk of reaching out over the side of the horse. This also holds the energy of the blow better together and thus the impact can be higher before one falls of (or breaks an arm, dislocates one shoulder etc.)
Why do you only have 110K subscribers?! This is awesome!
Interesting seeing that comment from only half a year ago seeing his numbers are now at 310k so almost triple. Given the high quality and entertaining way of presenting the information I suspect it'll only go up steadily and then one day the youtube algorithm is like "oh this stuff is good" and keeps pushing it on everybody even vaguely interested in adjecent subject matters.
641K now!
727K
764k
776k
I like that you credit the horse
A similar thing happened in WW1. When tanks first were created the techniques that were used for horse cavalry were adopted to the tanks. they used the exact same tactics. as tank technology changed, techniques and tactics specifically for tanks were developed.
What a great topic. Thanks for this.
Thanks, I enjoy making the ones with horses in them in particular!
Jason Kingsley I would think you so. I would love to see how much damage you could do to a dead pig or a man in maille.
I'll save up for a ballistic gel model and try that out one day!
Jason Kingsley would love to see that. Keep up the videos. I look forward to them every Friday.
Your love of animals is quite apparent in the horse you're riding. He loves you and working with you. You are a special person sir.
I love your channel. We see more technics in real life what we have shown in books. Massive thank you! 👍
thanks for watching.
i read an account of an encounter, a skirmish between a small group of British cavalry and an equally small group of German lancers, at the very beginning of WWI. they actually had a melee, the British armed with sabres and pistols, the Germans armed with their lances and I presume pistols.
The British cavalry whooped the lancers, but good, although the writer did say he thought the Germans were not very well trained. Oddly enough, none of them used their pistols in the short melee.
So, it is a bad thing if your lance misses when charging a man with a sabre.
It was a happy hurrah victory for the British cavalry, however, most of that unit were killed before the day was out when they attacked a a dug in enemy position that had a machine gun.
Miss Gossamer is most lovely.
Watching closely the techniques using the lance I really didn't realize how much physics and engineering (developing weapons) were involved.😲😁
Thank you so much for all these videos, they are so informative and at the same time presented in an extremely natural and enjoyable way besides showing your huge appreciation and respect for animals. If only more people/you tube channels/television/films could follow your example! Working through all the playlists from the beginning.
Great Work and reproduction. I feel the shorter lighter lances would have been more effective against foot. When it came to opposing heavy cavalry a longer heavier Lance provided greater range and lethality or damage potential through blunt force trauma, which is critical to beating knights and men at arms in thick plate armour. The final technic is great for that as it makes full use of the galloping horses momentum.
love this channel... on topic - couching (I hope that is how it is spelled) seems to lock the target area - that is, the enemy must be or be going to be in a predictable spot (such as another rider charging). Spearing would seem to be more effective in combating a more agile enemy - say a foot soldier who would (I assume) be more of an unpredictable target for "location at time of strike" (I hope that makes sense)
Okay well I already thought this man is charming and handsome, and now he is here being a knight and riding on a horse. Oh my god.
This was lively.
A FABULOUS Look AT Gossamer.
The thing is......She is SO Strong And Muscled
And you named her "Gossamer" ?
Just oppisites:), the name and the steed.
She 6 SOOOO LOVELY : )))
This is like experimental archaeology. 👍
I am a huge fan of Polish Winged Hussars. Great feats of badassery no doubt. I am all on board for long pokey stabby things from horseback :)
Awwwwwww, what a cute horsie! Yet another one of his I didn't see before.
this is a excellent series
Jason, when are you going to get your company, Rebellion, to make a medieval sword fighting game? It would be awesome!
Great video, thanks! However, I was hoping to see technique how to release a lance after it stucks in the target. Are You considering making video about that or share some info about it?
Cool demonstration. I always wondered how the hand doesn't slide down or drop the spear upon impact or the couched lance doesn't push the lancer back violently. You're not even using gloves. Very interesting.
It's not the speed of the blow, it's the force of the blow. Because the spear is couched, you've got the weight of the rider + the horse (easily 1000+ lbs). Verses the un-chouched which is limited to what you can benchpress with one arm (no more than 150 lbs). A car hitting something at 70mph is going to do a lot less damage than a train hitting something at 45mph.
You're right that it's Newton's 3rd law that's making the difference here, not speed, but the train vs car example is very misleading, since it hides the relation between mass and velocity in an impact - the train is travelling at just over half the car's speed, but has a mass two orders of magnitude higher, so its energy and momentum are in a different league. Comparing the resulting impact of a train travelling at 45mph, vs the same train going at 70mph, makes it pretty clear that velocity does make a difference in an impact.
@@SmevMev +
Gossamer is gorgeous. I also want to see more of Mr Dibbs
I generally call it a lance when couched & a spear when not couched, although of course both techniques are perfectly possible with the same weapon. From what I have heard in the middle ages a distinction was generally not made. The word "lance" is Romance while "spear" is Germanic so I expect it to be one of those things English has two words for because of its heterogeneity. Of the European languages with translations for both listed on Wiktionary, 14 have two separate words while 11 use the same word for both. The languages having 2 separate words are Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, Galician, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Romanian, Russian, Scots Gaelic and Turkish while those having only 1 are Asturian, Catalan, Estonian, French, Friulian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Sicilian, Spanish, Venetian and Welsh (a strong trend towards southern European languages having one word & northern ones having two). For this I have classified Georgian as an Asian language due to its relative isolation from linguistic influence from the rest of Europe. Greek is a complicated case & I'm not sure which category to place it in; Ancient Greek armies were largely infantry armed with spears & fighting in formation as the city-states' patriotism & the high ratio of population density to arable land meant men were in abundance while horse farms struggled to make a profit in peacetime.
When couching the lance, I believe you are lending some mass to the spear. The impact energy is greater when striking the target at the virtually the same speed. The spear is the same, the speed is the same. The only thing that is different appears to be the energy of the impact, so it seems that you have lent mass to the spear with that solid connection your body.
Have you done a segment on injuries as might be incurred in battle, or tournaments? We know a fair bit now on injuries from ACW, WWI ..due the weapons ...so much of medieval battle seems more bashing and slashing vs straight cuts..with dirt pressed into wounds
John Aitken I would very much like to see an episode on this topic.
I so need to find a place around here(NY) that would do this kind of thing! I've never been much interested in horseback riding but I now realize, it is just the "modern" styles (English mainly) I'm not into.
The SCA might be a good place to start looking? There are mounted groups of a variety of quaities and historical themes.
So lances are a very well further developed spear, but single use.
Very well demonstrated again!
It's an old video but i think can be usefull to point out that if you thrust with the lance from your charging horse you're simply adding to the power of your thrust the speed of the horse, but when you couch the lance, you're removing the power of your thrust, but you're adding the whole mass of you and your horse, at the blow,and the speed of the horse, and that's why the couching tecnique has way more impact.
Yes, agreed, that's probably why it developed as a technique.
Idea for a video, what sort of cav charges or tactic were there for assaulting other units? In games its generally the cycle charge, but after watching some historical battle simulation tactics, one tactic i noticed was the French cav kinda trotting into the enemy lines and using the weight of the horse flesh to just push through and open a gap & trampled anyone underneath at a walk under a brigade of horses. You then think about Police horses on crowds off people and how the weight of the horse is just used to push through crowds and disperse them. I know one battle the French used armoured cav in a frontal charge with unarmoured at the back, was seemed less of a charge and more about using the combined weight of horses to push through the English lines, but the English Longbows peeled around the sides and shot into the unarmoured horses that created chaos and dead horses that blocked in the armoured horse riders and the thing quickly went south for the French. So if there were ton of dead horse corpses laying about, does cycle charging really seem like a valid tactic, and would you not instead just engage the line and attempt to use the weight of the horse to push a flank or centre through to be exploited instead? atleast until such a formation broke from which a charge/riding down a foe would be more useful? I mean the Norman couch lance would be the exception of a pure sledge hammer at a charge, but seems to be the common go to tactic when representing in computer games?
If I am not mistaken, the switch to a heavy lance from a light spear occurred because of the stirrup. To couch a heavy lance, you need a platform to hold you in place instead of getting knocked off your mount. Light spears on horseback were used to chase down enemy soldiers after their formations broke, basically stab them in the back as they ran. With stirrups you can lean into your strike and create a far heavier impact. You also see this in the evolution of the saddle for horsemen. Light spears were fine for killing fleeing enemies, but the stirrup/saddle combination allowed the war horse to be used more like a tank to break enemy formations in the first place.
Maybe I got it from here. The stirrup was invented much earlier, but took time to filter through China, the Roman empire and Europe.
"The best known usage of military lances was that of the full-gallop closed-ranks charge of a group of knights with underarm-couched lances, against lines of infantry, archery regiments, defensive embankments, and opposition cavalry. Two variants on the couched lance charge developed, the French method, en haie, with lancers in a double line and the German method, with lancers drawn up in a deeper formation which was often wedge-shaped. It is commonly believed that this became the dominant European cavalry tactic in the 11th century after the development of the cantled saddle and stirrups (the Great Stirrup Controversy), and of rowel spurs (which enabled better control of the mount)."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance
"The stirrup appeared in China in the first few centuries AD and spread westward through the nomadic peoples of Central Eurasia.[3][4] The use of paired stirrups is credited to the Chinese Jin Dynasty and came to Europe during the Middle Ages. "
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup
I have some ideas about stirrups and saddles that I’ll explore in a video. Often commentators in this area have very little personal experience of the issues, and in my opinion come up with some odd ideas.
The sizes and speeds of horses must have played a huge role in this. As we always say, medieval people weren't stupid. If they were fighting with spear from horseback in the 11th century, somebody would pretty quickly work out to couch the spear and use the momentum of the animal rather than more conventional spear techniques. Obviously it became more feasible as the middle ages progressed, and while the obvious answer is that battlefield tactics and the role of cavalry developed, I feel pretty confident that the foundational reason why it was better to use the spear as a spear in the early middle ages was down to the size and speed of the horses they had available.
Gossamer is beautiful. I think I have a favourite. Is Kasumi the same person that helped you put your armour on?
Gossemer is so beautiful I just love that aquiline profile,
Just looking at it from basic (very basic) physics, when you thrust, you add your thrusting velocity to the horse/rider velocity. You are basically doubling, possibly tripling the polearm velocity. With the polearm couched, you are increasing the mass (and momentum) by two orders of magnitude. You are adding the weight of the horse/rider to the spear and the horse/rider is at hundreds of times heavier than a spear.
I loved this channel. Thank you very much for creating it! I'm in Gippsland Australia and I'd love to know if you're coming to the World Jousting Championship here in June.
The overarm technique will lead to defernders raising their shields (more) to protect their heads and therefore not see the attacker. So they probably won't hit the horse but the impact will still push them back. Interessting thought.
I've always wondered how medieval knights managed on Crusade in the middle East. I've grown up in South Africa with the summer temperatures regularly getting above 35 degrees C, so I'm about as accustomed to the heat as I can get (as someone of European ancestry who doesn't like the heat), and it's difficult enough to function out in the open in shorts and a T-shirt. How they fought in full armour in blazing sun with temperatures reaching 35 or even 40 degrees...even if the humidity was low, it must have been bloody crucifying. Particularly if water was in short supply.
It makes me wonder if battles were ever called off because of the heat. Given that the commanders would often meet before battle commenced, I suppose it's plausible?
There are references that the buzantines and the persians used lances in this way, but with a major difference:the lance was tied to the horses ankles(front and back)with chains or leather rope to tranfer the force of the gallop into the lance and stab "with the horse"in a way.
Great video, as always. Thank you!
Do have to say couching a lance looks really cool
It's a bit like the variation between a shotgun and an assault rifle, both useful in their own right, but the shotgun has a much heavier impact
The power is generated from resistance that you can put up. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to hit a target hard with a spear, that spear will also "bounce" back at you with an equal amount of force when it impacts.
With just your arm and hand strength, a spear thrust goes forward, hits the target, but then when the spear bounces back, your grip strength + arm strength when extended out towards the target during the thrust motion isn't strong enough to withstand all that force. The spear hits the target, the force travels along the shaft of the spear, into your hand, then goes into your wrist and compresses the joint, then your forearm, then your elbow and compresses the joint, then your upper arm and finally its abosrbed into your shoulder and transferred to the rest of your body and the horse itself. You'll also flex the muscles in your arm to withstand more force that way too. The problem is by the time that impact force reaches your elbow, itll be too much for your body to handle and you'll intuitively feel it. You let the spear tip drop away and end the attack, otherwise you'll end up breaking your elbow or tearing a muscle in your shoulder.
But when the spear is couched, all that force is directly and immediately transferred to your body and armpit through friction and the how tightly you couch the lance. Theres no energy travelling through your weak arm and joints, compressing and causing pain or the possibility of breaking bone. So you can hold it much firmer and "resist" the blowback from the impact. Because you can resist a greater amount of force, that also means you can put a greater amount of force into your target. Since the kinetic energy isn't being transferred through your arms. you can transfer more energy from the momentum of the horse into the target without breaking something.
TLDR: If you can't withstand the blowback force, you'll get thrown off your horse. If you can't withstand the blowback, you can't make a strong strike. The change in holding the weapon allows you to transfer and "resist" the energy directly into your body rather than a weak and breakable arm which allows you to generate a stronger strike.
Awesome explanation.
_"just go grab another lance"_ ohhh that makes so much more sense. thank you!
Nothing to do with history, but in the new game Mount & Blade II Bannerlord, I tend to like using couched when we do a first cav charge. After the infantry gets scared and starts running I pick them off using the overhead stab movement, it's a lot easier to control when your horse is going slower, trying to match the speed of people running on foot.
Great video! The spear seems like it would be ideal for lightly armored and/or fleeing infantry. The lance would be better for harder targets like heavy infantry or other horsemen.
I think you can still stab with the lance from couched position. You indeed do uncouch your lance but you add the power of your body to the stab rather than just the horse. Much like how you'd thrust a rapier. I think the only thing of concern would be accuracy loss, but because the stretch of the arm is so explosive the accuracy loss should be minimal.
You can indeed, in jousting it's called 'fishing' and reduces the impact of the lance strike qute a lot. As you suggest it also reduces accuracy.
Wonderful videos. Could the over head stab be an effective throw with a javelin?
When a Lance or Spear is couched, you are using the mass of the horse, rather than just their speed/momentum. An interesting experiment to try would be to look to the ancients (Sarmatians, Persians, and Romans) and compare couched lance against lance (Kontos) held underhand two-handed, and overhand two-handed, to compare relative impact energy.
As for overhead one handed spear on horseback. Over a shield wall makes sense, but I believe its also been argued that on the Bayeux Tapestry, many but not all of these particular images are of warriors in various stages of throwing their spear (or javelin). Javelin from horseback was still a thing on the Continent in certain places at that time.
Excellent series!
SDLeary
Steven Leary There may be one difference between the medieval nights and their ability to cause injury and the entrance. As far as I know, the ancients did not use stirrups. At some point the stirrup was invented, but I’m not exactly sure when that was.
@@fleetskipper1810 Correct, differing saddle and lack of stirrups. It would still be an interesting test though. Reconstructed Roman saddles seem to have proven that they were very stable platforms, and saddles for other cultures that used this type of horseman must have been also; it seems the use of Kontos (or similar) long spears were used in a similar fashion back to the Sarmatians.
This horse is so handsome.
You should try using a long spear two handed, eastern tradition in particular classical Persians and romans used this technique.
thank you for another great and insightful video! :D
Interesting, I think Dan Jones in one of his History Extra talks mentions the theory that the evolution of a horse rider with a spear to a mounted lancer with a more supporting saddle and stirrups which was supposedly far more effective led to the rise of the knights and the feudal system. Since it was obviously expensive for the training, the horse and the equipment needed a certain amount of productive land had to pay for it. The knights in turn pledged fealty to a higher lord or king and thus were able to provide an army when it was needed.
There is also the Footman's Lance, which seems to be a large-bladed spear. As far as I can work out, the distinction is that a spear (technically) can be thrown, whereas throwing a lance is pointless. Lances tend to be heavier spears.
Lance is originally a throwing weapon in late Roman army.
@@wolfremus2521 OK, the short javelin associated with the vellites (who also had a longer javelin) used the Greek term, lonche (lancea to the Romans)... I had forgotten that. So we found the origin of the Old French and Anglo-Saxon term, but it's not really relevant since it went through three languages before arriving in English. By the post-Roman era, so far as I'm aware, the lance had come to mean what I described.
I could be totally wrong, but it looks like the downward stab with the spear might be better for weapon-retention (especially after penetrating an actual enemy person)
You are incredibly majestic.
You never really comprehend how large horses are
I'm very used to it, but visitors who are not can genuinely be very intimidated by them.
My theory (I've heard Lendybeige say this too) is that the people who made that tapestry weren't going for accurate and maybe didn't even know what a real battle looked like. It's like how modern war movies are mostly just hero poses and nothing like real combat. Who wouldn't, having messed around for an hour with horse and spear, figure out that holding it like a Lance worked way better? Stabbing underhand might be okay if you don't have stirrups? The underhand one looks like it's gonna break your shoulder
Can you do one on cataphracts? Using a Lance in antiquity...
Did they couch their lances?
I think overhand spears were often thrown, but at a really short distance.
7:05 I feel like this position would make it harder to keep the spear in hand after the head penetrates its target and gets embedded in there. Were lances designed to break off at the tip like in jousting so you could keep riding through?
Question. I have had this discussion many times. Jousting as a sport.The lances look very long and heavy. I understand they were all right handed. So would your lance and shield be on the right, or just the lance. If the lance is much bigger and heavier would the horse head be in the way? So would you joust on the right or left? We drive on the left. But Hollywood always show jousting on the right.
all jousting in tournaments is with the competitors passing left side to left side. shield on the left, lance on the right and over the horse's neck. some jousts of war or open field tournaments might differ. the lances are heavy but the difficulty is in the balance as they are held at one end and are very long.
Are couch lance suppose to break in war? Could you use multiple times? If penetrating the target on full gallop and doesn’t break, do you let go or pull out of the target
Thats very interesting. I knew that lance has greater impat when couched and would be great at knocking people of their feet and horses. But could the stab actually be better at piercing armor? Thengthrand tested the spear with one and two handed, and he found out that two handed full body push doesn't pierce the armor as far as a stap with one hand sliding on the shaft, aiming the spear and the back hand doing the stabbing, that way the spear tip was travelling faster but had no body weight behind it and it was more succesfull in penetrating armor, where the slover full body weight stab only pushed the target. I wonder could the same thing happen here? The stabbing motion and horses speed are faster than the horses speed alone when the lance is couched. The couched spear pushed more but when having sharp spear against armor, could the stab actually penetrate more? This test left out the most important thing of the spear, the spearhead, so no penetration was tested. Skallagrim has a video where he shoots medieval repro helmets with modern guns, and the 45 caliber (12mm) 1911 colt pistol only hugely dented it, but the 7,62mm tokarev did go right trough, despite beeing much lighter than the 45 caliber bullet, but having higher speed. I would like to see you do the same test with real spear against a breastplate (or atleast 2mm thick piece of steel) on similar target.
That would be an interesting experiment to try. I’ll see what I can arrange.
@@ModernKnight Awesome!
What about wielding with two hands on the horse back?
I see a difference in target, one for heavily armoured bodies where you want to knock them over and allow ground troups to overtake them and one where theyre troups en masse and you are riding in to make multiple hits on relatively un armoured targets
That horse is BEAUTIFUL.
When you strike and impact a large target, how hard is it to free the lance?
Thanks. She's wonderful. I've never found it hard to extract the lance/spear as I go past, but I suppose it depends on what it sticks into and how that moves too. I imagine if I hit a tree, the lance might snap.
Wow that's one dignified looking steed! What breed is it?
Such great videos!!
I reckon the couched technique would be much more effective against a mounted enemy but the stabbing technique better for killing Foot soldiers+if you charged a formation of foot soldiers(once in the melee) it would be very difficult to attack/defend yourself with a couched weapon.
This horse is a true beauty....
Gossamer is developing really well, she's athletic and strong.
Suspect that the difference between lance impact and spear impact, the act of impact is more consequential to the former. The impact of the lance on the human defender would be the same as the dummy. To be bowled over, and driven back into your comrades. This disruption of the opposing ranks can be exploited by the lancer, by first dropping his probably damaged lance and then taking his sword to hack away at the opposing line before it can reform. The danger point would be the exchange of the lancer's weaponry, and probably accounts for the need for a squire/other horseman to defend the lancer while he rearms.
I see a problem with trying to hold onto the spear when engaging a ground opponent, being that as the horse continues forward, the mounted spearman could be pulled off the horse… I think it’s better to treat it as a “fire and forgot” weapon.
I mean essentially you put the impact of a horse running into someone into a fine point with couching while with stabbing it remains a separate force
Good video
Glad you enjoyed
Jason Love this series!I have a question for you that I hope you can address. I am a Law enforcement officer in the U.S. and due to the possibly of being severely injured in the field we go through a lot of medical training to enhance our Survivability. What kind of medical assistance did the Medieval Knight have available to him? I do understand that the obvious lance through the chest would result in death, however what about broken bones, severe lacerations etc? I do understand it would be primitive compared to modern times, however I assume some sort of measures may have been in place. Am I wrong in this assumption? Thanks again for a fantastic look at the Medieval Knight!
From my research it varied across the period and place. There were very good Muslim and Jewish medics in western Europe, but if you were of modest financial means or had no connections, my guess is that wounds often became septic and you died. Henry2 of France in the 16th C died of a head injury after a joust. Henry VIII of England had a long standing leg injury. Battlefields were filthy places.
Just as I had feared..Thank for the response.