this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Maces tended to be lighter and shorter than equivalent swords.
Maces aren’t as good against unarmored opponents, because unarmored opponents bleed and get incapacitated from a few well placed cuts. Swords tend to balance their weight closer to the handle to offer precision to make those cuts.
Maces specialize in delivering nearly the entire energy behind a strike. They were balanced to the tip of the weapon for that reason. Which is great against cut resistant armor due to energy transfer. Note that this places maces utility well before invention of plate armor.
If it’s heavy and slow, it’s not a weapon. Slow weapons kill their weilders. Rare armor rendered the user so slow as to let you swing in a game-like “lumberjack dealing with a stubborn log” fashion. There are plenty demonstrations around that show how fast and deadly an armored swordsman is.
The statement about spears indoors is game logic. The variability in spears and swords designs is such that most swords and spears would be equally dogshit indoors, but those that wouldn’t would all work quite ok. In a narrow, defensibly built passageway, thrusting attacks are nearly the only attacks available to combatants. A short spear then can offer a good deal of utility that sword wouldn’t, and vise versa. Short maces are nowhere near being useless there either.
Couple points in there I could argue, but it's fair enough. Source for maces generally being lighter than equivalent swords? My experience has been very much to the contrary, though I've never held an actual historical artifact, only replicas.
For example, https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1916.1589
It being from 16th century, it’s likely the heavier variant for cavalrymen (which the description kinda confirms). Even then it weighs only 1.6kg.
Some sword examples:
Note the years and descriptions on the lighter swords. They are more of an everyday tool for civilians at that point. A regular club competed with those, probably very successfully.
I rather doubt a regular club competed with a fencing sword successfully, in hands of equal skill. That I'm afraid I will argue. It's a question of speed and weighting. That heavy weighting towards the top you were describing earlier in a mace, and also present in a typical club or baton, has far more effects than merely focusing force over a smaller surface area. You also have the basic physics of moving a lever through an arc, and overcoming the intertia of the end of it, if you desire to change its direction.
My own training is mostly in actually using weapons, not academic understanding of them, and you're entering my turf. lol
By compete I mean to compete in utility and general use, not in a duel. Fencing sword is of no use when you get whacked at the back of your head. It’s also relatively useless on a battlefield, from which I presume it occupied mostly the same space the clubs did - streets and roads.
I won’t argue on weight distribution influence. Sharp object balanced near the handle doesn’t need much of a swing to render my arms unusable. A mace simply cannot do that, its utility lies elsewhere.
PS: I would love to see a skilled fight using a thrusting sword and a mace. Thrusting swords don’t have a cutting edge, which makes it possible to grab and grapple them aside. I imagine the moment your opponent grabs your sword and swings their club presents quite a pickle.
I feel like it would be fairly easy to leap backwards so long as your back isn't to a wall. The force of the leap alongside you yanking your sword backward should free it from most grips, I'd think. I'm just spitballing though, I've never actually tried to seriously grab any kind of thin blade, much less a fencing sword of some sort. I guess you could torque it in your grip to improve your control, I don't know how much of an effect this could have. I doubt it'd go much like the (fantastic) finale scenes of Rob Roy though, just because your asking your forearm muscles to combat a pretty hefty amount of momentum via mostly friction, which just isn't very likely to work imo.
Unless you had an equivalent amount of forward momentum yourself, coming in with a massive lunge to maintain distance against the retreating opponent. That's pretty all-or-nothing though. If instead of leaping backwards he moves into you, you have no cover (both of your hands are in use at this moment) against a potential fist or elbow to your face from his free arm, with the extra momentum of the two of you approaching each other.
By the way, I never thanked you for the corrections to my understanding, so thank you. This is admittedly not the first time I've had to take my spankings from an educated academic, I am a bit of a poster child for replica weapons being frequently inaccurate and thus teaching mistaken impressions. I do try to remember this, but it isn't always easy. I do have a strong appreciation for accurate understanding of history though, so thank you for taking the time to write up corrections and provide sources.
Oh, I’m not an academic, just an ADHD poster child. Historic weapons keep appearing on my radar for the past few years and I repeatedly find myself spending time on researching what I’ll never practice.
I try to find and share sources for that reason - they allow others to skip incorrect assumptions I made along the way.
Still an educated academic, simply self-taught. If you do your due diligence appropriately, which your fluency with source material seems to demonstrate is so, that's good enough for me.
I'm reminded of Drachinifel on youtube, originally an engineer by trade, but now a well-regarded expert on naval historiography, specifically from the age of sail to the pre-modern era, with a particular focus on Spanish ships.
Dude just reads a lot, and has research skills, a good memory and a knack for history communication.