"Medieval Skeletons" Topic

Skeleton reveals violent life and death of medieval knight:

telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/5687262/Skeleton-reveals-violent-life-and-death-of-medieval-knight.html

That's quite fascinating, thanks!

Not all knights were landed noblemen who lived a life of relative luxury, it seems. Some had to go around town with an arrowhead lodged in their chest.

Fascinating article, thanks. Just come back from the Bosworth visitor centre, fascinating, especially wearing a reinforced jack (same weight as modern body armour. They had a skull of a soldier who died at the battle from a hideous wound to the face, but on examnation found evidence that he had survived a previous wound to the face. This wound was a severe cut that started from his left ear all the way to his chin and had bitten deeply into the bone. The grave at Towton also shows soldiers surviving frightfull injuries, including depressed skull fractures, bisecting wounds to the skull and other hideousness. Tough is not the word!

Cracking article, it'll be interesting to see the results of the teeth analysis, and if he is who they think he is…

On Towton skeletons: I read yesterday that unexpectedly there are no chest wounds, and almost all the fatal wounds are to the head…. link

Was that because full-body plate armor was common at Towton?

Was that because full-body plate armor was common at Towton?

Well that's a possibility …

Poleaxes tend to drop straight down (it takes a *lot* of clearance to swing them another way). Head wounds would be pretty common from that. Looks like somebody may have been paying a bounty on ears.

Interesting.

Now I want a knight figure without teeth…lips puckered in and gumming it. In response to pre-joust taunts: "Mou thalking mo mea? Mou thalking mo mea?"

More here on Towton: barc.brad.ac.uk/Towton.php

For full detail see, 'Blood Red Roses: The Archaeology or a Mass Grave from the Battle of Towton AD 1461' (Oxford, 2000). A review is available here: link

A friend who understands these things suggested that , given that these chaps are quite heavily armoured, including the longbowmen, quit a lot of the face wounds are despatching blows on men who have been beaten down with pole weapons or knocked over in the press or murdered later. If someone is armoured then a stab to the face is more certain than tring to get through a Jack or breastplate to the vitals
Roy

Makes sense to me.

But the evidence of callous brutality in face to face contact is disturbing: I know that if I saw an opponent on the ground awaiting the coup de gras that I would feel strong compunction about hitting him in the head much less the face!…

I beleive that bones from Isby (Gotland Island off Sweden) were examined and showed a large majority (60%+) of lacerations were below the knee.

Having been 'attacked' by a group of bilmen, I can confidently say it's bloody terrifying. As they slash at you face they are also reaching down to hook you around the knee or ankle. Even with blunted weapons it hurts and you find yourself easily floored, as they advance they then casually butcher you.

The Medieval mindset, was very different to our own. Confronted by constant suffering and casual brutality, hacking someone in the face would have caused most soldiers, little reflection or hesitation. That is not to say they were not gripped by fear, latest evidence from Towton suggests some scared soldiers bit down so hard they cracked their own teeth!

Which reenactment group are/were you with Milites?

None, this was when the family went to our annual Kentwell Hall weekend, when the Tudor re-enactors populate the place, (wife is an autodidactic expert on all things Henrician). As she has just written an, at the moment unpublished, historical novel she loves the place and I trot along. I happened to get into conversation with some men at arms and after a few questions on their kit I let 'attack' me. They came as a three man group and showed why the Scots had no chance at Flodden (our topic of conversation previously). I gripped a pike and they.

a) Ran the blade down the shaft to go for my fingers
b) slashed at my face
c) hooked me down (not all the way, but my centre of balance was easily destroyed and I was on the way down)
d)Finished me off.

There was no BS H&S and if I'd have lost several teeth t'would have been my fault, but it was a truly memorable experience. Even as I type I can see the bill blade slicing toward me, I froze, rooted to the spot. I got my own back when I joined their group and easily hooked a 16 stone man and had him hopping on one foot. As they pointed out my strike would have cut the tendons, had it been real!

My only 'real'combat was LARPing in the days when you used weapons that were laughably called 'padded'. When fighting with a shield I always found most hits were on my lower left leg (right handed so the left leg led) and the Visby findings made sense.

I always fancied re-enacting but could never settle on the period (the Sealed Knot said I'd make a good pikeman being 6ft 3" but I never was an ECW fiend)) now family and work mean little time/money for such delights. So I vicariously sample the pleasures of re-enactments and have some replica wasters/swords which I 'train' with.

Is military's experience a fair test? Surely he'd have been surrounded by other Scots pikemen who would have combined to make a hedge of points and push off the bill men?
Also I'd like to agree with those who see the medieval and ancient attitude to hand to hand combat as different from that of XIXth century conscripts. In Napoleonic warfare close fighting is rare and men's main experience of the danger zone is taking cannon fire or musket volleys. One can see why the problem of suppressing the flesh or getting men to advance whilst suffering casualties looms large. In earlier times soldiers were more used to casual violence, life was more brutal and combat occurred surrounded by your friends and close to the enemy. Moreover you could both attack and defend yourself,, something that cannot
against musket balls and roundshot.. So I don't see that
had the same problems a Jomini describes in getting nits to overcome fear.

Lewisgunner, the Scots pike were butchered (rather like my experience) because they had little training in the unweildy pike and were scrambling out of a hidden boggy stream. As cohesion disintegrated the billmen closed and cut them down, and it was a billman who killed the Scottish king, albeit with a little help from an archer. Even the elite Swiss were taken apart when their defensive schiltrons were penetrated.

Of course my 'experiment' was part of an enjoyable day out, but it reinforced how utterly terrifying such combat must have been for the PBI. In seconds I'd have had most of the left hand fingers severed, a smashed lower jaw, cut tendons and then mercifully, my brains smashed out. Or a more lingering and agonising death, suffocating in my own blood, watching my comrades fall around me. I always tell my students an ancient/medieval battle must have been like hell on earth.

I read Milites' dit more as an insight than to stand as a credible test.

It's many years since I taught close quarter battle techniques, but a strike to the face (especially the eyes), was more likely to cause an opponent to flinch away, leaving them open to further attacks at a reduced risk to the attacker.

Unfortunately, the injuries sustained by troops in modern combat (such as Afghanistan) are no less horrendous than in previous wars, but of course, more (western soldiers at least) survive to live with the consequences of their service. There is also still casual brutality, but I would not argue that it was directly comparable in form or extent as the cultural basis is clearly different.

I see modern military experience as also providing no more than an insight, and in a different manner to reenactments with similar weapons to the period in question. Of course the first lacks the common cultural and military technological foundation and the latter also misses cultural factors, but also the nasty reality of close quarter battle.

Regards,

Taught a student whose dad left the army after a nasty CQB incident, shook him up badly being wounded and having to take the attackers life with the knife he'd just been stabbed with. There is though a very good part of Boardman's 'The Medieval Soldier' that suggests a medieval battlefield would have been a paradise for sociopaths. Able to kill brutally, at close range with no sanctions, they must have revelled in the slaughter and their lack of any restraint would have made then dangerous opponents and highly prized combatants.

I often wonder if full helms or sallet/bevor combis reduced that protective blink/flinch reaction, or not. I used to fence and having a protective mask certainly reduced the reaction, even when the blow landed on the mask with considerable force, if you were fighting in competitions, using steel buttoned foils.

A drive for the eyes not only cause flinching and pullback but in most an involuntary, hindbrain induced, movement to protect (similar to curling the arms over the head when being beaten on the ground). This left even shielded opponents vulnerable to lower leg strikes, (the largest distance between the feint and the real target) and therefore hard to counter effectively, unless your opponent is skilled enough to feint the reaction or is countering as your weapon begins its real attack.

So few skirmish rules I saw, or played, reflected this paradox, that in hand to hand combat you are at your most vulnerable when you launch an attack. The CRT in Cry Havoc was excellent though, attack a serious warrior and you had a far greater chance of taking damage than inflicting it. You feared those guys and either mobbed them, countered with your own heavy-hitter, or shot them from a distance. Fantastic set of rules, though that should have had a react/interupt rule for movement. I digress, although fencing is an effete and pale shadow of a Middle Ages, 'fangs out, hair on fire' melee we were trained to always have a number of counters planned before we launched the attack. If you fought a lesser trained opponent you could win quickly by goading them to attack, or quickly countering as they attacked, the epee final in this years Olympics showed that to perfection.

This is one of the reasons I am designing my own melee rules, which seem to now have gone in a circular development path! Opposed rolls that can be modified by skil,armour and other factors and a system of bidding up for each strike/counter.

Congleton Town hall has a picture of the 'local hero' VC winner taking out 3 German machine-gun nests one after the other in spite of wounds in Holland. The old caretaker assured me he was the local 'devil' before he turned his sociopathic tendencies on the Hun & became celebrated.

Just read the OP link, & than was when they were 'playing'!

'that'

Ah, another old fencer – not that I was very good :-)

I'm not so sure about someone with a disorder being so popular back then either. They might be good for raiding or individual acts of valour, but in CQB I suspect that teamwork was as much as force multiplier then as it was in my day – pulls up a sandbag, sits down and swings lantern ;-)

But I digress (again)…

I was ok at fencing until my knees voted for strike action! I think the disorders mentioned are all ones that allow the individual to function in society 'normally', but when in combat they would relish the opportunity to inflict as much pain and suffering. Imagine Dahmer or Reggie Cray with a poleaxe!

Mike Loades, amongst others, has made some interesting observations regarding teamwork, suggesting that men drilled and fought in small groups to reduce the problems of reduced SA. These groups would be part of larger groups who would fight in rotation, to prevent exhaustion.

'I think the disorders mentioned are all ones that allow the individual to function in society 'normally', but when in combat they would relish the opportunity to inflict as much pain and suffering.'

Other posts not available in Europe today include torturers, executioners, inquisitors, slave traders… (well the latter not legally anyway, enough trafficking going on unfortunately)

Here is a later article on same skeleton. Now they think knight was Sir John, a lord of Buckingham. Article with facial reconstruction. A woman with a smashed in head was buried with him.

bbc.co.uk/news/10138060

Nice update – thanks

Usual flashy, appeal to yoof production values, but when the frenetic editing and mindless music end, there are some interesting details about this knight

YouTube link