Swords And Other Melee Weapons – The Allure Of Days Gone By

Guns, bombs, and nonlethal alternatives are the weapons of today, with melee weapons quickly becoming a thing of the past even in the poorest third world countries; where battles are fought now, it is at great range with weapons people couldn’t have even imagined centuries ago. But let us not forget the mlee weapons that shaped the world for over a thousand years.

It is the weapon of duelists, the sword, that has maintained the greatest popularity in the public eye. Every fantasy hero, every cartoon warrior, has a sword. Using a sword against gun-wielding opponents is particularly popular.

Be it gracefully curved katana from Japan, or brutally efficient zweihander’s from Germany, their is no denying that the sword is the single most dominant melee weapon in popular culture. Even in movies filled with firearms, it is never a surprise to see a suitably epic sword duel between the hero and the villain.

Still, lets not focus solely on the sword; there are other equally important weapons, albeit less popular. The spear is a great example. Almost universally regarded as superior to a sword, a spearman is said to be three times as dangerous as a swordsman of equal talent.

It is of course no surprise then that spears have served as the main weapons for armies since the dawn of human history. Almost every army has used spears as their main weapon of war, and for good reason: They are simple to produce, and have a brutal, simple efficiency that is almost impossible to match.

The last class of weapons, bludgeons, is overlooked even more often than polearms. But maces, warhammers, and flails all have their own uses, even if they aren’t as graceful or pretty as the other weapons; their brutal efficiency simply cannot be ignored.

And when facing a man wrapped head to toe in steel, a bashing weapon often serves better than any sword could hope to! For this reason, maces were often the preferred sidearm of western knights, overshadowing even the sword in certain time periods.

Finally, lets give a bit of recognition to shields. While not strictly speaking a weapon, a shield is almost unmatched for value in a melee fight, even if they aren’t particularly popular in modern movies and culture.

A skilled fighter can defeat almost any attack with a good shield in his hands, and the best can use them as a brutally effective bludgeon. Dual-wielding may be popular in movies and games, but I’ll take a shield for my off hand any day in real life.

I hope you’ve learned a little about melee weapons. While they are hardly practical in a world where gunpowder and more rule an ever more technological battlefield, we can’t forget the weapons that defined the world for centuries.