"Italian Condotta Dismounted Knights armament" Topic

The DBM army list says that Condotta preferred not to dismount but can after a certain date, but they count as being armed with spears not blades. I'm assuming that these knights would be armed with their lances when dismounted, correct? If so are there any figures out there of knights specifically with lances (non-cutdown)?

You could mix some Perry foot knights with parts from their mounted knights. Some care will be needed as the left arm is cast on to the mounted knights. It would be cool to see that.

It's my understanding that lances were too unwieldy to fight with on foot. Dismounted knights would hack them off to a usable length. Please correct me if anyone can think of a contrary instance.

The background to the "dismounting as spears" idea is that at Arbedo in 1422 the Milanese dismounted men-at-arms defeated the Swiss, who were then mostly armed with halberds; the story is ("story" because I don't know the original source) that they did so partly because their lances outreached the Swiss halberds. This implies that the lances were not cut down.

As for cutting down lances, I've only ever read about this in Anglo-French battles in the 14th century, I think. And even then, the English at Boroughbridge (1322) dismounted in a schiltron in Scots style (scheltrum … secundum modum Scotorum) which probably implies long lances.

Interesting. Just wondering if I should go with Khurasan's cutdown lances for my 14thC Condotta dismounted knights.

I would.

And I believe in the later DBMM lists the dismounted Condotta knights are all Blades now anyway!

Cheers,
JohnG

Really? Thanks John!

This is slightly befor my period of interest and reading (I'm an Italian Wars gamer) but I seem to remember reading somewhere that the lances, on foot,were cut down or handled by two men, by the 'gentleman' and his 'squire'. I suppose it depends on the definition of blades.

The "lances handled by two men" comes from Azario's description of the White Company: "They had very large lances with very long iron tips. Mostly two, sometimes three of them, handled a single lance so heavy and big that there was nothing it would not penetrate." Although this comes from a contemporary source, I've never been quite sure whether to believe it completely. But it certainly doesn't seem to have been general practice.

I brought this up some time ago, it was apparently a bad translation of a Italian text.
TMP link

But the earlier thread didn't really convincingly establish that it was a mistranslation of Villani, that was merely somebody's "best guess" (to quote). And not, in my own opinion, a particularly convincing one: why should "i due", "the two", mean "the two hands" when hands hadn't been mentioned before?

I was citing not Villani but the _other_ contemporary text, the Milanese chronicler Azario. He says:

"et lanceis grandibus et cum longissimis ferris superapositis, rescistendo se opponere et ut plurimum duo utuntur una lancea et tres aliquando, quia tam gravis et tam grossa est quod nichil tangunt quin forent"

(Fortunately in Latin, not mediaeval Italian, so far easier to understand!) This is, as in my quote above from Caferro's translation: "Mostly two, sometimes three, handled one lance" – clearly not referring to two hands, but to two or three men. Which makes the "traditional" translation of Villani look correct, as well.

(Azario at link )

Which then leads back to my original question, what is the tactical utility of having up to three men handle one lance?

Absolutely no idea!