As part of my day job, I once got to teach a course on the Archaeology of Warfare in the ancient Middle East. I really enjoyed it, since we got to talk about nerdy things that I don't usually have an excuse to discuss, and to even re-enact a battle!
One article that we read for class was Gabriel and Metz's chapter on "Weapons and Lethality" in From Sumer to Rome. They describe the development of different types of armor in the ancient world, then do the math to show you which weapons of the time could actually get through that armor.
Short version? If your enemy is wearing bronze armor and you've got a penetrating axe, you'll probably cut through. With any other weapon, you're out of luck (although you can still cause impact damage, of course; or simply aim for an unarmored area of the body or an unarmored person--most corvee soldiers can't afford armor on their own and aren't supplied with much by their kings). Medieval plate armor, as worn by the knights you see in movies, would also stop many weapons--including most bullets!
Now that I know this, whenever I watch a movie where the main character is going through armored enemies like a knife through butter, I tend to twitch a little. And then get up and pace around while I try to figure out how the main character could still survive if their enemies' armor held up in a more accurate way.
And this is why, in fight scenes from the Faerie Queen series, I am unlikely to give my heroes lots of armored enemies to face. It's just too hard to come up with a way for them to win!
So you're telling me if I went back in time and gave the King Richard the Lionheart a sizable cache of m16s he *still* wouldn't have retaken Jerusalem? -Zach
ReplyDeleteGiven how complicated the Third Crusade was, who knows? But he probably would have been quite successful against the more lightly armored members of Saladin's forces.
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