Anon

Sir, who ever stopped the Mongols the first time round?

The Mongols would've kicked the snot out of Euro knights too.

Anon

"But the crusadors were victorious!"

Ummm, no they weren't.

blackhole

Mongols invaded in about 1250 Russia , E.Europe but then Khan died and retreated back to the far east.
I agree Mongols defeated Polish, Silesian,Moravian armees but mainly in my view by the sheer numbers of their soldiers and in fact they had good tactic "Mongol Blitz" I would call.
But that happened in early 12-century,later on European metallurgy surpassed and weaponry was simply the best in the world.Knights were just unbeaten in the field,they conquered whole of Iberian peninsula from lightly armoured and fast Arabs.
Look at the Teutonic order in early 15-century with their couple of thousand heavy cavalry.They blackmailed and defeated many times powerfull Kings of Poland and Lithauenia.
Teutonic order was mainly German and as I mentioned before German armour was the best and also discipline and tactics.Knights rule!

Anon

The Scots under Wallace trashed a huge British heavy armored cavalry charge at the battle of Falkirk, and the Moors cleaned the crusaders clocks on many occasions, knights are hardly invincible.

blackhole

That must have been suprisse to the English .Scotts did not have any cavallry but only peasants with swords.Wow.!
It happened many times when for example Swiss Pikemen won on many ocassions against Much bigger Austrians or Burgundians armies.But those victories were exceptions to the rule.
I have read that Crusaders had only few hundred Knights and the rest consistet of lightly armed peasants when they took Jerusalem-impresive when you consider how far they were from the home base and supplies were very sporadic.

Anon

And how long did the Crusaders hold Jeruselum against the Muslims?

Not very long.

Officer of Engineers

The problem with the Samuari against the Knights is that the Japanese had no experience with formation warfare until the Mongols. Formation warfare is the one element in which you can use less skilled warriors against more skilled ones. I cannot picture individual Samuari warriors being able to withstand a mounted calvary charge in which the mounted knight doesn't need skill - just be able to hold the lance right.

The Samauri never discovered the pike formation which again doesn't require skill, just be able to anchor the pike properly.

I can see the first line of the knight charge being cut down but after that, the Samuari are meat.

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Anon

The Samurai used a long spear with a sword blade affixed to the end of it that would've been quite suitable for unseating mounted warriors. That's what they designed it for in the first place.

Lunatock

Forgot about the Naginata. And if it had been Ninja vs 15th century Knight, who knows how many weapons the Ninja would utilise, and how dirty they'd fight. They certainly wouldn't resort to a Braveheart battle.

Ironduke

Nearly a century.

roshan

Lunatock, what would the Knight be using? The Katana was quite a heavy sword. In fact the katana was in fact slightly heavier then your typical european swords, assuming the blade lenght was the same.


M21 I really doubt that most of the moors were unarmored. Chain mail was quite common in arabia/india/persia, and sometimes plate was also used.

Slashing and piercing weapons were quite ineffective against plate armor. If you are going up against plate armor it would make much more sense to have a mace or even an axe rather then a katana. In this situation a Knight would have a MUCH larger advantage over the samurai because medieval europe had a much larger variety of maces. clubs and axes and the samurais had little training in the use of such weapons.

During the time that plate armor was common in Europe, most swords had very thin tips for piercing through armor, and the most common swords were 2 handed and bastard swords which were the most suited to fighting other plate wearing opponents.

The Katana was basically a slashing weapon, its tip could be used for thrusting by modifying your thrusts to account for the curve, but it was by no means a great thruster. The best thrusting tips would be those of rapiers. European cut and thrust swords could also thrust better then the katana.

roshan

I would argue that the best weaponry in the world was Indian and Persian weaponry. This is because they were made of the best steel in the world - wootz(damascus)! Wootz was some of the best steel because it was largely mined in places like India which has great deposits of pure steel. During the making of the steel ingots, wood was used to insert carbon into the blades. The carbon made the steel unusually strong and sharp amongst giving it other properties. Wootz had around 2% carbon, sometimes even higher, while carbon content in steels from other parts of the world was nowhere even near 1%.

Yes, but Europeans also had pikes, halberds, lucern hammers and all sorts of other polearms that they could use.

Hawk_eye

There is no doubt that a knight has a certian disadvantage against a samuari, however the plate on some of the later armours was greatly improved and the later knights espically from middle europe were very well trained at atacking ground untis espically the broadswordsmen and hence it is difficult to determine, besides the kind of attack depolyed by knights would be overwhealming for anyone if they were on ground.

Have you vere seen a riot police officers horse? A pure war horse is twice as large and almost just as fast, they dominated the field they rode on, not forgetting armoured horses were also a norm in those days.

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roshan

True, the Japanese may have been able to dismount people from their horses, but that was only against local horses which were extremely small. How they would fair against european war horses is a differrent story.

One problem with the samurai was that they were great fighters but all their weapons and armor and also their skills and training were only for fighting against each other. In europe, the warriors fought a myriad of opponents including huns, mongols, turks, arabs as well as fighting between all the differrent nations of europe. Thus european warriors and soldiers were very versatile and could adapt much more than the samurai. An example is that a knight would be able to use a mace against a samurai to get through the samurais plate armor very easily, but the samurai would be stuch using katanas and other edged weapons which would be nowhere near as effective. The lack of adaptability of the samurai is probably why they disappeared so fast after Japans conact with Europe began.

The problem with talking about this subject is that there is so much misinformation about the subject due to the portrayal of the katana in movies and anime, which is mostly garbage. For example a lot of people think that the katana was really light and flexible but the fact is that a katana was heavier then a european bastard sword and also less flexible(it can be easily bent if you parry with the blade due to the lack of flexibility). Of course, the katana is an EXCELLENT weapon, but NOT because of lightness and flexibility!

Lunatock

That was the appearence of the rifle an the gatling gun. Knights disappeared from European warfare after the introduction of the Musket and the Cannon.

Personal experience, I've handled a replica of Mel Gibson's sword from Braveheart, and a Katana. In that case the Katana was lighter than that beefed up Scottish Claymore.