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Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

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eins. It is clear that it is intended that the lance be used to lend off blows in much the<br />

same way as a sword blade or spear might be used on foot, <strong>and</strong> this should caution<br />

us against assuming that couching lhe lance was the only tactic that might be used<br />

after 1066.<br />

<strong>The</strong> powerful impact of a lance strike could easily rip the lance from a rider's h<strong>and</strong>,<br />

throw him, as well as his opponent, from the saddle or even bring both him <strong>and</strong> his<br />

mount to a dead stop. A successful charge with couched lance required the ability<br />

to time the lowering of the lance, the aiming of the point <strong>and</strong> the angle of the strike to<br />

perfection, all coordinated with getting an extra burst of speed from the mount<br />

to carry the rider past his foe, all the while trying to counter the animal's (<strong>and</strong> indeed<br />

rider's own) natural tendency to shy away from the oncoming target <strong>and</strong> seemingly<br />

inevitable collision. Trying to judge all of this from behind a helmet which limited his<br />

view <strong>and</strong> upset his balance took considerable skill <strong>and</strong> daring.<br />

Whilst the lance-armed charge was not the sole tactic used by the knight, after 1066<br />

his equipment <strong>and</strong> mount were increasingly geared towards this specialist form of<br />

combat, <strong>and</strong> it dominates the descriptions of combat in the period, especially the<br />

idealized fictions of romance <strong>and</strong> epic. <strong>The</strong>re was clearly something about this form of<br />

combat that appealed to the knightly class psychologically. Perhaps it was a sense<br />

of the raw power of the collision, the drama of the thunderous charge, or the purity of<br />

the strike. It was a one-on-one encounter that tested courage, skill <strong>and</strong> physical<br />

strength in equal measure. It was not, however, the only option available to the knight<br />

on the field. If the lance was dropped or when it inevitably shattered, the knight would<br />

then turn to his other weapons.<br />

According to his biographer, one of William Marshal's favourite tactics on the<br />

tournament field was to subdue an enemy by wrestling with him, getting him into<br />

a headlock <strong>and</strong> tearing off his helmet. This dramatic approach is illustrated in a<br />

tournament scene from the 13th-century German Manedde Codex, <strong>and</strong> the ways in<br />

which this might be done were also recorded by Talhoffer, who shows plates of<br />

horsemen catching their opponents' lances under their arms, grabbing the opponents'<br />

reins at the gallop to overthrow both horse <strong>and</strong> rider, <strong>and</strong> employing various wrestling<br />

techniques including arm- <strong>and</strong> headlocks.<br />

Whilst such grappling might be a reasonably safe proposition at a tournament where<br />

there was rarely any desire to do permanent injury to an opponent, on the battlefield it<br />

was more normal to reach for one's sword, axe or mace. It has been argued that the<br />

charge with the lance was of little danger to an opponent, being far more likely to knock<br />

him out of the saddle, <strong>and</strong> that its use was symptomatic of the chivalric desire to capture<br />

rather than kill an opponent. Whilst there is little hard evidence to support such a<br />

proposition, which indeed seems counterintuitive given the physics behind it, it does

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