Dear Editor:
First, let me congratulate you on a great magazine; I love history, especially medieval history, and Military Heritage rarely fails to have much of interest. That said, I’m a little disappointed in the “Warfare in the Age of Chivalry” box in your “The King Fights Back” feature (June 2004). The main article was quite good, but there is a grievous error in said box: It is stated that a knights sword weighed “only” six to eight pounds. Now, I know that perhaps this is a minor point in the scheme of things, but you should be aware that a typical knightly sword weighed only 21/2 to 31/2 pounds. A hand-and- a-half “bastard” sword, a heavy one, would weigh maybe 41/2 pounds. Huge two-handed swords were not, strictly speaking, medieval, but rather Renaissance weapons and even those rarely weighed much more than six pounds. So where do you get such ridiculous figures? An eight-pound sword would be good for parade purposes only. The reason this matters is that only by understanding the true (relatively light) weight, razor shard edges, and perfect balance of a knightly sword can one have some idea of how it was used: Not as a cumbersome weapon of brute strength, but rather one of speed and sophistication of technique.
If you would like more information to back up what I’m saying, try the following Web site: www.thearma.org/essays/weights.htm
Otherwise, keep up the good work!
Peter Kincl, via e-mail
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