Sword Sunday #31 The facts behind fiction.

Little has done more to warp the modern concept of swords than the creative licence of Hollywood. 

Ironically, that same force is also what has helped inspire people to ask about the visually stunning spectacles they see on the big screen, and some of those people go on to study Olympic fencing, HEMA, or to joins the SCA in the pursuit of some of the true techniques of swords fighters past. 

To be sure, the visual freedom of cinema, and ever advancing skills in fight choreography and video editing have added to the supernatural level of reverence we, as a culture bestow onto the sword. 

But in this spectacle, there is a truism, a set of lasting psychological facts that we can document as far back as a millennium or more.

The tale of the Sword in the Stone (Interesting fact: it did not start off as Excalibur when first told), part of the King Arthur legend is an good starting point to this example. No mater how much or little fact the story incorporates, we know as a point of fact that entertainers were telling audiences of young king Arthur's claim to the throne as early at 1000 BCE. From a military standpoint, every peasant knew that speaks and pikes were what won wars, they saw enough of it in their day, and many paid the ultimate price at the end of such pole-arms. Yet, the elite fighters of the day, be they called 'knights' or otherwise, were noted for their skill with the sword, even if it wasn't their primary weapon. a thousand years before video editing, computers, and flashy special effects, we can see that emotionally significant item in a story needed to establish the character as a leader, an authority figure, a king, is a sword. 

 

"The Sword in the Stone" (1963)

Come forward a thousand years, and the truth has changed little. From film versions of old King Arthur legends, to the cinema debut of Conan the Barbarian, movies didn't know how to tell a fantastical story without a sword.  

When Arnold Schwarzenegger put on the mantle of Conan in 1982, the sword-and-dandle fantasy battle epic was was a modest financial success,  but earned a cult following among movie goers, and is considered one of the stepping stones for Schwarzenegger's movie career as he progressed to larger and more profitable roles in the years to come. With special effects and fight choreography that even die-hard fans have to admit have aged poorly over the years, the movie is still widely considered by many to be 'good, fun' entertainment, even though the main character's three main attributes are his pectorals, his deep voice, and his huge sword. 

Unconfirmed legend in the entertainment industry tells us that the childrens' TV show "He-Man and the Masters of the universe" was born of a failed attempt to create an animated Conan the barbarian series.When the writers of the day decided that there was no way to effectively water down Conan enough to even come close to kid's-friendly TV, they re-branded the loincloth clad, muscle bound swordsman as "He-Man" and rewrote the world into fantastical sci-fi. Ironically, the concept was adapted to children's television in 1992 as "Conan the Adventurer". 

"Conan the Barbarian" (1982) 

He-Man and the masters of the universe (1983)

"Conan the Adventurer" (1992)

Despite the fact that the titular character in each of these is wearing less armor than most Olympic swimmers, and doesn't even wear a shield, the appeal and emotional legitimacy of of the sword-wielding strongman/barbarian has allowed both franchises to endure for over fifty years now in various incarnations. Each iteration of the massive, and unrealistically heavy looking sword has earned its place in the hearts of thousands of children, and the wall hangings of thousands of pop-culture enthusiasts. 

Even in the face of space ships and laser pistols, the sword was re-imagined  by George Lucas in 1977 as the "light saber" an energy-based bladed weapon capable of cleaving through anything, and deflecting blaster shots, thanks to the supernatural help of 'the force'. 

Star Wars (1977)

Two decades later, when the prequel story was told, real world technology had progressed enough to allow a new generation of crew under Lucas to showcase the light saber fight in all of its mind-boggling, laser-deflecting glory. 

Star Wars: Episode 1 (1999)

Even in a setting reminiscent of World War II engagements (Which Lucas openly admitted he based his battle scenes on), the visual allure, the emotional authority of 'the sword', no mater its incarnation, was what helped codify in the might of the audience the true authority of the central characters. 

As we recount the innumerable films that have embraced the sword, even in the face of superior weapons within its own story, we should ask ourselves why it is that humans are time and time again drawn to a weapon only slightly younger than civilization itself. With magic spells that can be shown to move mountains, and real life riffles that that kill at 3 miles, why it is that the sword still appeals to us as a people? Why is it that swords still, to this day show up in american, British, German, Chinese, and Japanese cinema, even in 2019, when computers can literally draw anything on our screens?

The answer, I would suggest, lies not in the sword itself. But in the fundamental recognition that the sword, unlike so many of its kin, was not derived from a farmers tool, or a walking stick, or a hunter's bow.

The sword was the first tool we know of crafted from the ground up for the art of conflict, for the sake of conflict itself.  

To put a sword in a man's hand is to put the oldest pure implement of war into the hands of your main character. It says something to the audience, even if they have never held the weapon themselves, and know nothing about it.

At an instinctive level, there are things they just know:

- A man can hunt animals with a bow

- A man can walk with a spear as a walking stick

- A man can fell trees and build with an ax. 

- But a man makes war with a sword, and nothing else. 

So in the end, remember the thrill of watching your favor Jedi ignite his light saber, or watching Captain Jack Sparrow draw his rapier, or seeing Conan heft his barbarian's sword...

Remember those moments, and ask yourself what type of excitement people must have felt when bards, troubadours, and mistrals told of Arthur first putting his young hands on The sword in the Stone. 

Answer that for yourself, and you'll understand the facts behind the fiction about swords.

His Lordship Ivo Blackhawk

Kingdom of Ansteorra
"Long Live the King!"

Sword Sunday #30

This week, two stories came up in the news feed that needed to be talked about. 

The right place at the right time

This week saw the closing chapter of a dark drama that started in 2017 with a home invasion. In the morning hours of June 23th, 2017, a man broke into an apartment, his goal was to assault a guest sleeping at a friend's place for the night. 

Said friend, one Mac Dolan, 25, woke to hear the sounds of his guest screaming for help.

“I saw the guy standing over her, and she was kicking and screaming,” Dolan told the Chicago Sun-Times days after the attack. “And I just started yelling and running at the guy basically and grabbed the sword that we have on the wall and chased him toward the back stairs.” citation

The sword he is referring to is a $100 replica of the the 'greatsword' wielded by members of the Stark family from the HBO Series "Game of Thrones". Described in the article as being '44 inch long, 10 pounds', the weapon is most likely little more than a wall hanger, and would be close to useless in an actual sword fight. 

Mac Dolan outside his Wicker Park apartment 
Max Herman / Sun-Times file

But, in the panicked moments of that terrifying June morning, the sight of the massive weapon was enough to drive off the attacker.

“He didn’t really start running until he saw me grab the sword,” said Dolan, “Then, he went bug-eyed. When I got to the landing at the top of the stairs, I took one cut at him with the sword, but he ducked, and I missed and dented the wood railing.”

As chance would have it, the man's second mistake of the night became self-evident when Dolan found the attacker's wallet on the floor. 

Hours later, the suspect walked into the police station to report he had been mugged and lost his wallet. By then, law enforcement had already been contacted about the assault, and the wallet was in their custody. The man was arrested soon after filing his false report. 

Chavez'es victim, who has remained anonymous, has said through a written statement that even though the attacker was driven away and ultimately arrested, she had had to seek treatment for debilitating PTSD episodes that have impacted her life ever since the incident. 

This week, Francisco Chavez, 42, pleaded guilty to charges that included aggravated criminal sexual assault, assuring he will spend the rest of his life on the sex offender registry, and currently his sentence of 5 years in prison. 

ANOTHER cool sword found

So, imagine this; your out for a walk in the woods with your family and you decide to stop and sit by a small stream and enjoy the scenery. You decide to clear away the leaves and brush so that you can all sit comfortably. When, while you're doing that, you discover something most unexpected... a sword drive straight into the ground, with only its handle exposed. 

That's exactly what happened to Tomasz Wierzbicki, of  Świebodzice Poland. 

At first, the rusted and mostly destroyed weapon was thought to be a remnant of the Third Reich, an not uncommon source of such artifacts in Poland. But after turning it over to a historical society for inspection, he learned that it was, in fact, much older. 

The blade recovered by Tomasz Wierzbicki 

"“It’s a typical Prussian artillery sabre from the 19th-century that most officers would have carried at the time,” said Bogdan Mucha, from Żarowska Izba Historyczna, a local history association. Citation

Reproduction of the 1900M73 Prussian Artillery Sabre

Exactly how the weapon to there is still something of a mystery, as there are no Prussian artillery units ever garrisoned near the town. However, one working theory is that the 42nd Field Artillery Regiment was temporarily stationed there, and that the blade may have been lost during maneuvers at that time. 

His Lordship Ivo Blackhawk
Kingdom of Ansteorra
"Long Live the King!"

Sword Sunday #29 - the Shashka

There is something to be said for a weapon that come come a place that is punishing and cold, and no we're not talking about viking axes. The Caucasus mountains that form the border of modern day Georgia and Russia are wind swept, cold, and also home to tribes, towns, and even some nomadic people with roots as far away as the middle east. 

Reproduction of an 1881 pattern 'Cossack' shashka

In the late 17th century, a pattern of curved, saber like sword called the Shashka emerged from the region, and with it emerged a reputation for both the weapon itself, and the people who wielded them. The actual use of the weapon by its native makers is something that is lost to history, but when the Russian army faced it during the military conquest of the region (1817–1864), they were so impressed by the saber-like sword that they adopted it into their ranks.  Full-time cassock regimens were issued regulation Shashkas as part of their filed kit, starting in the early 1830s. The weapon was even issues under the soviet government in 1927, a design that continued until 1946, just after the end of the Great Patriotic War (WW II).

The Shashkas blade is usually between 30 and 40 inches long, and is regarded as a fast, light weapon capable of quick movements and deep cuts. The tip is pointed, but the thrust is generally considered a secondary attack. The design is characterized by a fuller running the length of the weapon that both strengthens it, and allows for lighter construction. Usually the lower two thirds of the back half of the blade are flat to facilitate gripping or holding in defensive maneuvers. Handles included round with no hilt, but also electorate baskets in some examples. The majority of weapons surviving today are military issue types made under contract by the Russian military before the fall of the Tsar. 

                                   A Caucasian/Circassian shashka (below)

His Lordship Ivo Blackhawk
Kingdom of Ansteorra
"Long Live the King!"

Sword Sunday #28: The knightly sword; A sword that helped win independence!

Of course, when Americans thinks of independence, there is a not unjustified assumption that we are talking about the American revolution, and the beginning of the fall of the British empire. Considering how monumental the american breakaway from from the empire at the time, the presumptions is not unfounded. However, the truth of the mater is that nations, and kingdoms have fought for, and won their independence a great many times before across history. 

When King Alexander III of Scotland died towards the end of the 13th century, he left a 3 year old daughter as the next monarch, a situation that required the creation of the  Guardians of Scotland, a council of statesmen and regrets intended to rule in the young princess'es place until she came of age. When the daughter passed before reaching majority, the rivals for he throne announced themselves, and the two top contenders were Robert Bruce (Grandfather of the future king Robert the Bruce) and John Balliol. The Guardians of Scotland of feared that a war between the two factions would bleed the country out and lead to ruin for the nation. They asked England, their powerful neighbor to the south, to decide the succession, and Edward I named John the king. 

For Edward, the price of this decision was a commitment from the Scots to send troops to the mainland to fight the French and reinforce English claims to land on the continent. The order were followed, and soon the English army marched into Scotland, an occupational force, to control and tax the country that Edward now considered his own. 

These were the precursor steps  to a bloody, and violent half century long conflict between England and Scotland, marked by places such as Sterling, Falkirk, and Bannockburn, and names like Wallace, Lamberton, and Bruce.

To be sure, the true killing arms of either army were their infantry, armed with pike, spear, cavalryman's lance. But this summary glances over an important aspect of both the political, social, and military makeup of Scotland in this time. 

Stepped in ceremony, with the majority of its population claiming faith in the church while also clinging to pagan traditions in the same breath, the royals, nobles and commoners of the country also shared an ingrained understanding of the importance of the sword, and the people who wielded it. While much could be said for the massive, six and a half foot tall great-swords that would later be called Claymores, and tradition also ran as thick as blood around the roman-inspired 14th century sword, with its wider guard and squared, longer pommel, through it all, there was a common class of blade that all sides knew about, all made, and all used to one extent or another. 

Today it is called the knightly sword, a long, balanced, one-handed weapon made to be used by a skilled practitioner and able to both strike at range, with the tip of its 3 foot blade honed to a sharp point, and the full length of it no less deadly. 

Replica of the Sword of Saint Maurice,
one of the best-preserved 13th-century swords, now kept in Turin.
This sword is considered typical of the "knightly sword". 

Sword making of the day had found what would be the optimum types of metal and forging for the blade, and the best ratios of weight to length for the European wartime environment. The 'knightly sword' was between 29 and 25 inches long, and maintained its strength by using layered and hardened steel, and matched that with speed and accuracy not typically not weighing in much over two and a half pounds. In technical terms the weapon by the time of the Scottish war or independence was a type XIII in the Oakeshott typology of sword. Knights and footmen on both sides would wield weapons like this for the duration of the war, itself a small chapter in the swords half-millennium long story across the European military history. 

Neither flashy, nor massive, and not able to cleave rocks with a single hit, or punch armor with a single blow, the knightly sword was, however, the weapon of a class of men who made warfare their profession, a violent tool for a violent trade.

In 1357, the war finally came to an inauspicious end when the last of the belligerents viewing for control of the throne (in one capacity or another) died. John Balliol had reigned 4 short years before the throne was claimed by Robert I, who reigned for 23 years before passing. His on, David II floundered in his attempts to militarily take control of Scotland from the English. He was ultimately captured, and ransomed back to Scotland for a sum that was never paid, and would have likely bankrupted the country if it had been.

England, for its part, had been during the same war the indomitable military and political prowess of Edward I, only to be followed by breathtaking incompetence of his son, Edward II. The third generation of monarchs to carry the name Edward would spend almost half of  his reign attempting to remedy most of what his father had let come undone, and then leading a nation with its own problems both foreign and domestic. With his dead, only a few years removed from his opposite, David II of Scotland, came the effective end of the war. 

Robert II would assume the throne of an independent Scotland in 1371, beginning a term of over 300 years of independence for the nation before it was diplomatically include into the founding of great Britain in  1707, per the Treaty of Union. 

Coins, paintings, and funeral effigies contemporary to each play shows them with knightly swords on their person.  

Robert Brus/Bruce - (1306 to 1329) - State Seal

Funeral effigy of Robert the Bruce

Edward III - contemporary painting

His Lordship Ivo Blackhawk
Kingdom of Ansteorra
"Long Live the King!"