haha, yes, i suppose you are right

well, thank you!

@@airnt Hey…don’t want to be a pest, but when ya get a chance, I’d like to get yer opinion on a somewhat related matter. As I’ve said, I don’t joust, I’m a rodeo cowboy. I recently did have the opportunity to wear two ( forgive me here if I don’t get the names of the pieces of armour correct) cuirasses when some jousters showed up unexpectedly at our roping arena. One cuirass was solid front and back. The other was in four sections, a breast plate, back plate, front plackart, and a back plackart, all connecting up with buckle straps. One of the jousters was pretty much my size and weight, and he let me ride a little with these cuirasses on. The solid one felt fine until I mounted up. Right away I felt if I got bucked off I had a real chance of a severe neck or hip injury. I dismounted immediately. Reluctantly I mounted with the plackart one. It felt very safe, cantered around in comfort. I mentioned all this to the jouster and he said that his solid cuirass was “painstakingly fitted” and was expensive. The plackart cuirass cost much less. Even I figured out that armour must be tailor made to a guy for it to be safe to ride in. Here finally is what I’ve been wondering about. Armour was very expensive. And to have it be custom made had to have increased the expense tremendously. Rich kings and lords could afford it, but what about the lower ranking guys who did all the fighting and were not as well off financially? Was there like adjustable armour like that plackart cuirass? Did guys get by with looser fitting armour, or perhaps did guys just wear fewer pieces to be safe while riding? Seems to me wearing armour afoot is one thing, but wearing it in the saddle is completely different. Thanks….I’m really fascinated with all this

@@joanofarc1338 interesting question! historically 'off the shelf' armour was definitely a thing and potentially 2/3rds of all 'guys in armour on horses' aka 'men-at-arms' had armour not make bespoke for them also not all fully armoured soldiers aare knights or even squires, a significant portion were their associates, but not of noble birth. so the fit really does make a difference to the function, and some designs are a little more finnicky with fit than others, it could be the one cuirass was just more your shape and size than the other. i have, over the laast 20 years, been binned by horses, jumped off rearing horses, been in cartwheels with horses, had a horse roll over on my leg, and had two fighting stallions jump up and down on me as they fought.... in armour.... (mostly at the beginning of my career when i was an atrocious horseman, who didn't manage to prevent these occurances) the armour really works. falling off in armour is usually completely painless and a well maade armour stands up really well to horse kicks and even rearing horses slamming down on top of you. fit issues can be dangerous indeed, like helmets pushing on your neckspine if ou would push your head forcibly back, like falling on your face, for instance. most armourers do a pretty good job, these days, and you can get a pretty good armour for about 10k$ upwards. Some features and elements of exchange tend to raise that price and most jousters spend a little more, at 16-25k$ (then there is mail, armoing clothes and flights for getting measured up, so there is other costs) in comparison to horses.... it is cheap... horses eat every day, and an armour is a one off expense. riding in armour taakes some getting used to due to higher centre of gravity, limited vision, rein use with gauntlets, and interaction with saddle and armour, so a specifically designed saddle for the armour is nice, as it makes you stand so nicely on your horse. one of the most underrated issues is that the extra weight of the armour on your rein arm, means you need to learn to give the bit pro actively, carrying the weight from clunking onto the rein. This really makes you learn 'nachgeben auf Ehrenwort' (yield the rein on word of honour) where you carry the bit a little aheaad of the tongue in 4d. ubt with soem practice, you can ride pretty much as you did without. The style does make a little bit of a difference, where modern competition dressage styles tend to do worst, and california western does really well, and obviously 'true classical' as in historical dressage is meant to be tailoured for it. pulling and kicking get less effective (of always rubbish for the animal) as you put more armour on.

@@airnt I sure appreciate ya making the effort to get back to me, very classy! One thing ya said that really hit me, and yet it should have been obvious, “the armour works”. I never would have thought to apply its protection regards horse wrecks. Much obliged !

Oh, this phrase slips from video to video from the author. I'm pretty sure it's about Saint George's dragons, they're kinda small. This is a fairly common theme in art, and in later European paintings attak of dragon are more often affected in the lance position for jousting. Although, of course, in my country I am more used to the canonical image when it is done with an overhand grip of the spear.

takk

much appreciated that you do so

i think many medieval people agreed with you. Rondels are happily put almost everwhere!

ah , good question.. the answer is no. the video was already pretty long.... so i left the comment out. the distance to the graper and thereby the arrêt is the exact same, you do turn your shoulders a bit weirdly so you lose a bit of reach that way.

@@airnt thank you :)

several interesting questions. To start with the last one; fencing with the lances can be done equally well in a skirmish or duel as in line formations, even with pikes. It is quite easy and doable for cavalry to fence with multiple pikes at the same time, and this makes it quite easy for two riders to peel open a pikeformation with just two lances, even if the pikes are targeting the horses. The lnaces can reach well in front of the chest of the horse and make a small circle parry to flip the pikes out of the way. we did it dozens of times and the cavalry has more strnegth to displace due to forward movement. there are a lot of techniques depicted in the fencing manuscripts. I have several videos showing some of these. The most recent is not on this channel, though, it is on the dreyenevent playlist. there are also lances tied to the back of the saddle with a rope to the more extended butt end. this is also seen in fiore, already, but from what i have heard, i think the winged hussars might have done the same, but that is hearsay on my part. this would eyplain their lances being so long, as the held them a little further from the back end. Napoleonic lances are generally lighter and shorter at about 10 foot (3 meters) this makes it easier to use them as a spear when required. Medieval lances seem to mostly range from 12 to 16 foot. Wallhausen mentions a lance up to 21 foot.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Y9JypM5-l8_Jcp8.html some lance work in here, if you are interested

​@@airnt Well thanks, that is very very interesting. I think it shows how the pike and horseman conflict had to have worked historically, given that we know that heavy cavalry could occasionally break big battlefield pike blocks, but that it was hard (and expensive to do so). It seems like, based on the video and your comment (and please correct me if you think I'm wrong) that a mounted person (or several mounted people) have a strong advantage against even somewhat more than their numbers of trained pike wielders. But, they have to slow down to fence, which minimizes their mobility advantage, and makes it easier for shot/fire or multiple people to surround and capture/kill the very expensive horse and rider. I specifically remember several times that Alexander the Great was almost gotten, and it sort of makes this seem less foolish on his part (well, not much, but at least it is logical why he had to slow down so much). Also, the lance fencing was very exciting to see in action. I wish that this was more widely known, as it seems like something very useful for historians to know as a practical process (given how many significant persons fought as lancers), but also just for entertainment media.

Bear in mind the absolutely huge size of pike formations, routinely more than 3-5000 men in a single square. also for hundreds of years they were almost invariably combined arms formations, supported by gunners, or crossbowmen, a core of halbardiers and/or Twohanded swordsmen, and often even cavalry formations inside the pike square. (especially cavalry support is often completely underreported even if the original sources do mention it) Machiavelli even talks about multiple ranks of various arms. the compagnies d'ordonnance of Charles the Bold in 1470s specifically talk about archers behind a single rank of pikemen kneeling to let the archers shoot. (3 archers to one pikemen) this also goes to show that not always would the infantry necessarily invest in putting all their infantry in a deep square, as it can be very immobile, especially as the various arms involved need to coordinate with one another. so building the size and complexity of such a formation surely makes a charge ever more difficult and costly, to the point of impossibility.... but the NEED to even attack the formation at all becomes ever less pressing as such a formation can do ever less active attacks, they become a passive roadblock, like a living castle. they can also be herded in their place by the mere presence of cavalry to then have artillery brought to bear to blast them apart. early artillery is remarkably inaccurate, but a large stationary target should be just the ticket. usually a infantry formation of 3 times the number to the cavalry attack is easy pickings for the cavalry, 5:1 is doable but risky and often pirric, larger odds are folly. medieval armies often have about 1/§ to 1/4 in actual cavalry available. The burgundian companies d'ordonnance had about 1/3 cav, 1/3 mounted infantry and 1/3 regular infantry, by and large. There are several important examples where wholesale large charges left every other consideration behind and just won the battle. like Patay, the battle of Neuß, Gavere, there are many. Often the cavalry have an opportunity to charge before the full deployment of the enemy is complete, thereby negating many of the more intricate mutual support mechanisms of the infantry. Also it is extremely commonplace to read of dug defenses (trip pits, caltrops, ditches, stakes) that can be prepared. a charge before these preparations are done can be more effective than one that waits politely. but even as far back as Bouvines, the infantry in a circular deep formation of pikes supported by cavalry was attacked frontally with lance-armed cavalry and just wiped off the field. (any attack angle would be frontal to a circle, of course) although they say the intial attempt was not succesful as those riders had already expended their lances, the second group was lance equipped and could break the formation. This lance factor might explain a lot about later assertions that cavalry cannot break formations (with the absence of couched lances altogether) Fredrick the victorious routinely moved ahead with his cavalry leaving wagons and infatry lagging days behind to attack many an opposing force, including even fortresses. Having said that, his force was specifically equipped with this idea in mind, liek a good mix of mounted crossbowmen and men-at-arms. it is just not that simple.

@@airnt please write a book. I think it is somewhat wasted in long comments, lol.

you mean the arrêt de curass? that particular one has been used in historical solid lance jousting for 11 years now, and has seen at least 500 impacts so far and has not broken. (thereby it definitely did not break at the first impact) the thickes lance break surface on that particular arrêt was 78 mm thick piece of pine. I never had that much issues with the purchase with the steel grapers or the leather ones, unlike some of my collegues also some arrets have been sheared off or the attachement lugs ripped out of the breastplate in some other cases, but usually along weld lines, i think Breaking the arrêt is pretty well established as an actual historical problem, in itself anyway. when you mean gusset, do you mean a wooden block? there is a decorative plate rivetted to it, if that is meant by a gusset. This particular piece is a one piece forging from a thick piece of steel, but it does hav an L-shaped profile and te hoizontal part attaches to the base plate that is on the breastplate, thereby giving a 3-d ridgidity. the Arrêt has also not taken a set in all that abuse, there is a minor amount of peening on the edge, where you can see the use, but since the Arrêt is hardened and tempered 1050 steel and the grapers are milled mild, the arrêt doesn't get too bad peening all told.

A gusset plate is a triangular sheet of steel welded into the inside corners of L-shaped steel to give it extra support and rigidity. Obviously you have to place it in a position whereby it will not interfere with the lance functionality. If the Arrêt/Arrest bends at point of impact then there is a higher chance the lance will deflect the target

@@Ken-nv2hl well the L shape and its attachement to the base plate section do that job to prevent bending inlays are seen for other reasons, but such a gusset is not historical anyway, the necessity is really quite clearly not there, it would really overengineer the piece. we have bent some other ones, which still broke the lance we have broken some off, still broke the lance we have bent the breastplate underneath, still broke the lance all of which were different examples, though, this one stood up pretty well.. ther eis noticable but ver minor deformation of the breastplate under the arrêt bu that is it.

i have used overhand quite a lot, and we use it quite extensively in sparring. also in Normal cavalry stuff we have done we have played a lot with overhand grip at large re-enactments like battle of hastings 2006 re-enactment. Various middle of the lance grips and techniques we do have some videos on already, there is some things that come up in the fiore mounted techniques video on this channel. So Yes i do have a lot of experience. so... this position is done with a massive bias towards the butt of the lance. so an overhand grip would need to be at the very end of the lance. This could perhaps be thought of to attack low targets, much like a bullfighter delivers the coup de gras, however, these lances are simply too long for that, they cannot be held by the end and thrusting straight down. at any rate, the final position depicted is consistently with the thumb to the tip in the end. so the basic premise, if i understand correctly, is that you hold it a little more towards the middle, overhand, and then lay it in the arrêt, and from there regrip is behind whilst also turning your hand over to point the thumb towards the tip. This would require a large cartwheel maneuvre, which is not impossible, but awkward in close formation, or to flip the lance in your hand before you bring it down. (this is risky that you lose the lance). There is evidence of such moves in talhoffer, so not all that daft an idea. the issue is still the sheer weight and moment of a lance like this. it also all takes time. The final position is obviously the same, and that final position is the thing that makes it really awkward.

@@airnt Thank you very much for your answer. Sorry I wasn't specific enough, but indeed I did mean an overhand grip at the butt (already behind the arret), not a more regular grip in the middle of the shaft. I can think of a few depictions of overhand happening pretty low on the butt but admittedly all with straight lances - without carved grip/vamplate/arret - off the top my head. I guess you saying that your lances are too heavy to be comfortably handled at the butt answers my question in a definitive manner. It seemed to me it would make getting in the position more straightforward, but I don't have any of the relevant hardware to test that, so I trust the expert here :P There is a thing you didn't discuss in this video, about the mentions of Italian lances being made particularly massive-looking and decorated, but in reality hollow and light. If these mentions hold any truth, wouldn't there be some extra considerations to add to the equation? Thanks for your time!