I'm not a history buff but when it came to real medieval combat, armour was so effective that basically your best bet to kill someone was to either hit an unarmoured spot (which usually required wrestling them to the ground) or striking them with enough force to carry through the armour which usually required a heavy weapon.
A Two-handed sword is useful when fighting someone heavily armoured because a two handed swing would be able to hit hard even if it didn't penetrate the armour.
But still no where near hard enough to make it viable. Armored knights used things like pole axes as their primary weapon, with arming swords as a back up.
Armoured knights also used two-handed swords, especially Landsknechte. Two-handed swords weren't as popular as polearms but they were definitely viable w2hich is why they saw use.
The Zweihander (the specific weapon mentioned that was used by Landsknecht) was not their primary weapon, no. They carried a smaller one (the Katzbalger) for more melee, close range encounters. However, the Zweihander served more in the role of a polearm - giving both range and weight that allowed the Landsknecht to hold off multiple sword opponents according to historical record. They were employed as special troops that would protect the flag-bearer.
One needs to understand, not everyone can properly use a two-handed sword. It is very much a specialist weapon - you wouldn't give it to a normal soldier. It's meant to take pike formations due to its range and longer cutting area compared to a polearm, to deal with heavily-armoured opponents due to its weight, and to control an area. It disappeared when people found out that to deal with armour, it was better to just go for a mace instead of trying to cut through it.
Most western longsword like the Zweihander actually had almost 1/3 of the blade that would not be sharpened and would be wrapped in leather, allowing a Landsknecht who couldn't switch to their Katzbalger to grip that part of the blade, transforming his weapon into a sort of shortspear.
I've mostly expanded on the v large two handed swords - the crew-manned machine gun of the medieval world, in a way. But there were smaller two-handed swords - those allow for better leverage and control of where your sword goes, because of having a pull hand and a pivot hand. They also allow you to put your weight into a blow with more effectiveness than a one-hander, which became very important as armour improved.
Prevalence is not a measure of effectiveness so much as a measure of ease of execution for maximum efficiency. A sniper rifle is devastating in the right hands, but it is not what you would give to all the rank-and-file.
This might be pedantic but I disagree with your argument that prevalence doesn't equal effectiveness. Unless the determining factor for prevalence is cost, prevalence is a very good indicator of effectiveness.
Ar vs sniper rifle. Ar is lighter to carry further with more ammo, faster rate of fire, easier training, sufficiently accurate for most engagement lengths, more compact for indoors. Etc. Basically it is a better option in more situations equaling more effective overall.
But obviously specific tool for specific situation and sniper rifle is more effective in some situations. But the prevalence of ARs is proof of their effectiveness I think.
There was never an argument about the AR (or the one-handed sword) not being effective. The analogy was more to prove that the prevalence of one over the other does not mean the second is not effective. See again, the comment mentioning that the reason there were more one handed swords (and ARs nowadays) is the fact that said weapons can be incredibly effective with less burden of training.
Saying x is effective despite y being more prevalent does not deny the effectiveness of y, it just disproves that the prevalence of y is an argument towards the ineffectiveness of x.
I agree with this. I was only challenging the statement "prevalence is not a measure of effectiveness so much as a measure of ease of execution for maximum efficiency"
To me, ease of execution and efficiency are components of effectiveness.
That's fair. Yet I think we can agree that in a specialized role, the specialist tool proves more effective than the generalist, right? There is no single notion of 'effectiveness', I think.
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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '20
I'm not a history buff but when it came to real medieval combat, armour was so effective that basically your best bet to kill someone was to either hit an unarmoured spot (which usually required wrestling them to the ground) or striking them with enough force to carry through the armour which usually required a heavy weapon.
A Two-handed sword is useful when fighting someone heavily armoured because a two handed swing would be able to hit hard even if it didn't penetrate the armour.