ARNE KOETS - What Mounted Fencing Teaches Us About Medieval Martial Arts

[@56Seeker]

Fascinating, as always. One question: if, as stated, the best attack quadrant is the front/right, why does one always joust to the front/left? That's something I've never really understood. And one observation: I've seen quite a few of you (Arne's) videos, and the horses are always well behaved. When I practice (at a very amateur level in a muddy field) with friends, horse aggression is a major factor, especially in turning fencing fights. My mare is usually very aggressive, and I spend almost as much effort stopping her from biting my opponent's horse hind quarters as I do in striking him. Simarlily, there are one or two horses she has respect for, and it can be very hard to keep her straight in the approach to the joust. ("Joust" may be a bit of an optiistic exaggeration here :) ). What do you do to combat this?

[@airnt]

two very good questions! The lance has less of a disadvantage tot he left due to the length of 360-476 cm. this means the angle is less. This allows you several potential advantages: 1- let's say 90% effective lance vs a 30% effective sword would mean the lance is much better on the left than a rider equipped with said shorter weapon, or equality against the opponent with another lance... 2-the lance on the left allows the presentation of a shield, potentially with a bouche, this means the tongue of the cutout protects your hand against the enemy lance slipping along the shaft of yours and hitting your hand, even if you control it, or if they avoid your control they cannot really hit much due to the coverage of the shield. 3-the left turn 'under the lance' is significantly easier, so a second approach after the merge is way quicker to the left, especially with longer, heavier lances. 4- without a shield the rein hand can be sued to deflect by letting go of the reins but 'waxing off' the opponents lance whilst hitting with your own. 5- you might just not have a choice, especially on the first charge 6- it allows for two riders to target one opponent, one passing on either side, because fair fights are for suckers. In jousting most of the time left-to-left is the convention, this is mostly a safety thing: best protection and hardest hits. Nevertheless we have plenty of exceptions to this, in Rennen there might be passes on either side, in fact on any type where there is no tilt 13th c jousting was often done haphazardly with passes on either side. (rarely is there a tilt in the 13th) even in the 15th the 'bohurt' was often started with lances and as the two teams charged you ended up on whatever side happend to be the case. This is particularly common in French tournaments. as to your second question: this is a really major deal, There are basically three things: -getting her used to the activity -keeping control with less effort -making your approach angle less of an issue to the animals let me elaborate: -first getting the upset horse to ride in between the other horses and those all leg yield or shoulder in away from yours, so your horse feels dominant. Do this at the beginng of every session for 5 mins. (like the other horses are a film of oil on a bucket of water and you are a drop of washing up liquid) - keeping the horse from biting and kicking is easier with a high head carriage and much hankenbiegung, this is also a lot to do with stepping the inside front leg past the opponents tail, not towards the opponents' horse. (use the forward to disallows the horse to reach with the mouth to bite) Choice of bit can be a major deal in case you need to tell her in the end, though, long story. The more the horse is trained for collection the less issues you will have.(i don't mean shortening, i mean collection in the terms the Old Masters used) - approaching in a half pass. this allows the two initial tracks of approach to be much broader and then narrow down to do the more close in techniques when the horses heads have already passed. The half pass is nowadays always considered on the diagonal, and you can just first both use said diagonal in practice, however, if you consider your opponents' current position to just be the letter you are riding at, then the arena doesn't matter anymore. The point is that the horses heads and chests pass much further apart, yet their croups are much closer than they realize. This means you get to fight, but they don't. Keeping the forward is the main issue here, as it is common for riders to tip forward in the saddle when fencing, this will incur a dropping on the forehand, and often awakens the dragon in a mare as well. this post is already so long, but i hope that this helps even though there is so much more to say. thanks for asking,, Cheers AK

[@56Seeker]

​@@airnt Thanks very much for the replies. I Have to admit, she's a lovely horse on her own, but she's always been a terror in company (unless she's allowed to lead). And of course that's to a large part down to the rider... our team work is a work in progress and always will be :) I read on FB that you're not holding the annual workshops this year - understandable but a shame - do you have any plans to hold any Danish clinics in the year following?

[@airnt]

@@56Seeker just the rossfechtensymposium, i will be holding clinics across the world still, but subject to regulations and restrictions, obviously, the Harnischfechtensymposium and Feldlager are still on at the moment

[@corrugatedcavalier5266]

Fascinating stuff, I've never really thought that much about mounted combat. Super informative, thank you!

[@airnt]

thanks i do my best

[@grailknight6794]

Damn we should bring back this fashion style, cavalrymen allways have swagger nice , love this so much!!!

[@Sk0lzky]

I'd be fine with more types of boots returning, it's really hard to get even simple jodhpurs for a reasonable price... WITHOUT IDIOTIC, EASILY BREAKING ZIPPERS

[@airnt]

@@Sk0lzky i just tore my favorite riding trousers... by having worn right through the cloth... :( I need to get new ones made somehow... they were bespoke... Riding clothes are an endless issue... nothing is ever made to last... and for men the offers are terrible

[@bloodwynn]

This is MILLION dollar content. Can't believe this has so little views. Thank you so much!

[@airnt]

thank you very much, i think it is a little too wordy, maybe? I think i should do a diferent intro and reupload it to my own channel , perhaps

[@rudolphfrancis]

Sir Arne Koets, thank you for this valuable mounted-information also mounted-demonstration, as a former military fencer now a teacher in fencing, it still shows that "the more simple actions are, the more beautiful touches" once again thank you for a well didactic lesson.

[@airnt]

thank you, i did my best. it is tricky to get good footage to show a point on horseback

[@TyLarson]

Great video on fighting on horses. I appreciated the insight.

[@dochteur1886]

Great demonstration to complement some rudimentary showcases, where it almost seems likeca lance armed horseman would be a complete nuissance to a man on foot - generally involving a horse walking and lance being just statically levelled down. At speed and shifting the position of a lance point, footman suddenly has exponentially harder time to riposte and counterattack without much concern, while basically standing still. Given the predominance of armour in the context of late medieval/rennaisance battlefield, it would really interesting to find out, if armoured riders would use techniques similar to modern self-defence techniques for dismount prevention and attacker pacification, like mounted policemen, by locking him in place, trapped by foot against a horse for example, to allow riders to strike at more vulnerable gaps, or visor slit of a fully armoured footman with a dagger, or having some space to remove his visor for an attack. (especially, as most lance tests against well tempered armor doesnt clearly show that such a strike, even in ideal conditions would actually have the capacity to wound a wearer inside by the mechanism of piercing armored plate and padding underneath all the way to produce deep enough wounds, of course ommiting posibly significant blunt trauma concusion effect.)

[@arnekoets3085]

Sorry, i didn't see your reply until now! (not my channel) I suppose this is a very varied topic. Mass fights are very different to 1 vs 1, in that sidestepping is not an option. Also simply slamming people underfoot by masses of horses is definitely a part of what was attempted, even if the lances were just used to deflect the enemy weapons together like mikado, the horses themselves can swim through masses of people. Compressing the line of horses from the side is explicitly mentioned so the horses in the middle can't stop and are pushed through. Attacking vulnerable parts of armour is definitely described in the treatises when attacking a mounted opponent, like the taschenhau leading to a thrust to the vision slit, but there are many others, like thrusting in the groin. I will need to reread your comment to find further points to answer, my phone does not allow me to scroll right now.

[@airnt]

to continue my answer (on a different account) Blunt trauma under armour is not a big deal in most circumstances, even though the lance impact (especially when two riders charge at each other) would constitute the highest energy levels of personal weapons on the medieval battlefield clearly above longbows (60-120 J 'muzzle energy) and guns of the time where the TRANSFERRED energy was measured well above 350J with a jousting lance or according to the Laandshut test apparently 4000 J. i have been hit multiple times with such forces in armour (jousting) and that has reaally not amounted to any problem. wrestling on horsebakc is explicitly mentioned, throwing the hrose over is, transferring to the warhammer is mentioned, so a bunch of options to offend a man in armour. moreover the armpits and vision slit are really explicitly targeted. (you also see the groin, but this is more later sources when the groin is a better target with rapiers/side swords) We see thrusts to the vision slit with swords, using a Taschenhau (left zwerch) that aalso lines up the edge alignment with the vision slit of a helmet.

[@danielantrobus7232]

This is incredible work. Thank you so much.

[@airnt]

thank you

[@SuperOtter13]

Wonderful and informative thank you again for sharing your knowledge with us!

[@airnt]

thank you very much

[@BoogeMinion]

I love your videos

[@airnt]

thank you, maybe we should post a sticky post here with a playlist or something

[@Ishpeck]

This video gets really good in the @18:09 area.

[@SuperOtter13]

So glad you shared this with us , thank you very much. Is it just me or does that golden horse 20min in have Ahkal-tepe in its bloodline? Beautiful horse

[@peterspatling3151]

He is a PSL, his name is Sultan :)

[@airnt]

@@peterspatling3151 he is not pure bred Pura Sangue Lusitano, but he is a Luso in general. The colour is called Dunnalino, and there are a whole bunch of specific colours of horses that look really similar. nearly no colours are specific to one breed only, and are usually seen in multiple breeds

[@Sk0lzky]

I guess it's time to add fencing to my mounted archery... It's a shame I don't know anybody who does that within a couple hundreds of kms from where I live

[@peterspatling3151]

there is a facebook group called "Horsy HEMA" maybe ask there

[@Sk0lzky]

@@peterspatling3151 Thanks, I'll check it out once I reactivate my facebook! :)

[@benbuchanan1200]

Wow...

[@joeyripcho6424]

but how do the horses not get dizzy?

[@airnt]

note that it is a little edited, so there are straights in between. Both riders and horses usually do not get dizzy as the angular speed of the turn is too low to really induce it. the so called 'spin' in reining (a specific discipline in western riding) can be fast enough to get quite dizzy. usually the faster turns on a very collected horse (sitting down a lot) are not done more than 2 full rotations in a row, even if done as exhibition, and in practical application usually 1/2 to a full rotation is usually the end of it. So dizzyness tends to not really ever be a problem.

[@allengordon6929]

The horses are cute

[@airnt]

and they like their cookies

[@t_rex7324]

I really like armour, knights and medieval martial arts from a scientific point of view (also I see mediaval armour as an aesthetical work of art). Thus I really like videos like these. But: This creepy painting in the background with the heap of skulls is really awful ! - sorry, I have to say this. It reminds me how many militaristic freaks there are in the reenactment scene. Cheers!

[@airnt]

it was actually the request/suggestion of the artist who painted the portrait of the horse. When i commissioned it i just told her the size it needed to be, the background and surroundings were her design. A metal/goth aesthetic does not in any way show a political or ethical ideology (in fact, most of it as i knew metal was rather left wing and pacifistic) I suppose art can portray thoughts and feelings that can be seen in different ways. I don't quite know what her thoughts were when she painted it, but it is not really anything to do with militarism. Obviously the depicted skulls are old, so there is some history to the site of the image that is tragic and dark implied. Perhaps the philosophical bent of the piece is quite different to what you assume. Discussing or contemplating a subject does not necessarily glorify it in any way. I see it as a memento mori.

[@airnt]

in case you are not familiar with the stoic philosophical concepts, memento mori is 'remember your death' or 'make the best of your contribution to life as this might be the end.' It is a very long standing thing to have in a house, having random skulls propping up, the skull being the go to image. I am not a very hard core stoic, but it is really my personal philisophical bent. I am quite used to people noticing this as how i, at least, see the skulls here, and several have mentioned memento mori in conjunction. I suppose i thought it would be obvious to my audience that it had such a cultural background. (cultural known symbolism for a philosophical concept and aid in meditation). These concepts have remained popular form classical times all the way through the medieval period into the renaissance. in this video the 7th he mentions. kzbin.info/www/bejne/nWHPnoaIeLh6f7c It is also strangely inconsistent to 'like' arms and armour and fighting and knights but askew people who like uniforms or something. Medieval warfare was brutal and very cruel. We should not glorify this at all (no different to other forms of violence). BUt this really depends on what you mean with 'militarism'. Art is in the eye of the beholder, and certain forms of art might be more obviously controversial than others. Can you blame the artist for using such imagery? i don't think so. Your association with militarism i cannot follow from long decayed skulls in a painting, at all, really. I just don't understand the logic of that association. Hence, since this genuinely was not in the minds of both the artist or myself as the patron, i think this lies more in your head than anyone elses.

[@t_rex7324]

​@@airnt I am glad to hear something about the background of the image. I am somewhat astonished that it was painted by a woman. Maybe my word were a bit harsh.... From various epochs of the history of art I am familiar with the topos of memento mori. But the painting in the video to me does not evoke the same impression as for example "Knight, Death and Devil" by Dürer which captures the ideal of stoicism of knighthood perfectly. It might be different if there were not that many skulls.Anyhow, I didt not want to be offensive. When you like I am fine with that. All the best!