Submitted by QuantumHamster t3_yhq04c in explainlikeimfive
If movies have not lied to me (😜), knights' tournaments are involve hacking, slashing, and jousting each other. How did they not kill each other using such weapons or speed on horses? And if it was actually dangerous, why did they participate?
It's not like people don't take part in potential lethal sports now either. Plenty still do
See: the Isle of Man TT
>Since 1937, the only year in which races were held but no fatalities occurred was 1982.
There were 6 this year.
I really can't imagine the kind of mindset those guys have to have. I mean like... that is actively seeking out death and getting a glimpse of it at every damn corner.
For those unaware of what this entails
It amazes me they still let them run it.
200 mph down extremely long straights that are not maintained to a standard that most tracks are kept at.
One of the famous motorcycle medics was killed a few years ago too. It's shocking that the only way to have a reliable medic on the course involves them in either a high end 911 or a bike.
motorcycle enthusiasts wave from road
Waves with both hands while doing a wheelie
Football was a very deadly sport Who ever was carrying the ball got piled on. Broken bones and death were common, Things changed with protective gear and the forward pass.
It's still extremely dangerous, especially long-term. Brain injuries are pretty serious, and can be cumulative. Over the course of an entire career the trauma mounts up.
But you're not wrong; it definitely used to be more dangerous, especially outwardly.
Yes however if you look it up people died on the field of play.
which kind of football? gaelic?
American one. The one played with hands. The real football has been relatively safer for a long time.
I think most footballs use hands, soccer is the outlier, I think I should point this out more to troll everyone
Isn't Rugby technically "rugby football"?
yep.
as'soc'iation football
yeah i don't get why it's called Soccer not Sosha.
​
edit: ie association is pronounced asso-sia-tion or asso-shi-ation not assoc-iation so where does the hard C come from?
Because it's never been a rule that abbreviations have to inherit the pronunciation of their parent word. The Hard C probably comes from it sounding better.
English Oxford lang. Same reason a 10 pound note is a tenner.
Dunno, but at university the math society was abbreviated to math soc, with a hard c. So it was probably already a common abbreviation, and soccer came naturally later.
Because the Americans decided they would find an unnecessarily complicated name instead of going with the obvious one.
"What is this game"
"There's a ball, and you kick, dribble and shoot it with your feet"
"let's call it soccer"
"Why not football?"
"We already have football"
"Why is it called football"
"Because the ball is almost a foot long"
"Aren't balls supposed to be round?"
"..."
"..."
"SOCCER!"
"Soccer!"
nah the term soccer originates in the uk, it's an abbreviation of Association Football, hence my comment. Before soccer became the only "football" there are/were lots of games called it, notably Rugby Football
Except Americans did not name the sport soccer.
Garlic Football is also played using your hands, but, it is significantly safer than early 20th Century American Football or modern American football.
Except that one African team where everyone died from the lightning strike
Yea, like BASE jumping, why they do it, I can't comprehend. But plenty of them still chase it.
Boxing is worse imo. The whole point of boxing is to give a concussion to your opponent before he gives one to you.
Ironically, concussions in boxing has gone up significantly since boxing gloves got introduced.
Back in the bareknuckle boxing days, people would hit way softer because a 100% force punch to a skull would break your hands if you boxed daily, which many back in the day did.
Actually, boxing gloves allow for numerous concussions to occur prior to an actual victory.
In boxing they also have a 3 knockdown rule which is hilarious. Boxing gloves have so much padding and the boxers are so strong that the padding absorbs the blow but still knocks your head back.
It’s like minor whip lash in a car accident but over and over and over.
MMA or BKFC is truly the sport of administering a concussion before someone else does
Still, in boxing there's a lot of avoiding the opponents punches.
Slapping sport in the other hand is almost like if you had to stay still in boxing taking the punches.
The point of most sports where you can die is to avoid the dying part, not just boxing. Pretty much every sport has not doing the things that can cause dying as a pretty good strategy. The one you mentioned is actually an exception, where the thing is an integral and mandatory part of the sport. Even football, where you can get yourself rattled up pretty good by getting tackled, recommends you probably don't get tackled. It just so happens there's quite a bit of that.
It's the adrenaline rush, I bet. It feels like a drug. The recognition is probably nice too.
Men doing stupid things that might get them killed seems a pretty universal part of the human condition.
Formula 1 had three decades where someone would die every month on average. Heck, even worse than that.
From what I've read there was also a lot of resistance to every advancement in safety measures, the danger was seen as part of the prestige and thrill. Some of the big (deadly) accidents thatve happened in F1 are fucking horrifying
Moreso, advancements in safety make the car slower. And the drivers would rather risk death than risk loss.
Gotta love head-brick
This, people did die, but they also wore full plate, and used blunted wooden lances designed to (hopefully) shatter instead of pierce, and there were rules about where you had to aim, usually the breastplate etc so that your hitting the strongest part of the armor. You were trying to knock the guy off his horse, not kill him.
That said, you still have two men on horses charging at each other with large wooden sticks that you were aiming the best you could amidst all the horses movement jostling you around. Accidents happened. Sometimes people died. But at the time, the fame and prestige you stood to earn was seen as worth that risk, especially if you were only minor nobility or a commonor, if you could make a name for yourself it could transform your life.
Also jousting had its own armor piece, a big wide shoulder sheild that the other knight was supposed to hit. If they missed and hit the body or worse, the horse, they'd be basically shamed and laughed out if the tourney entirely.
If you hit the sheild not only were you precise, but you were far less likely to seriously injure or kill your opponent.
>Accidents happened
"Accidents" as well
That were my thoughts. What stops me from putting my wooden stick to his head, killing him and claiming it was an accident
> What stops me from putting my wooden stick to his head, killing him and claiming it was an accident
His equally well-armed and armored friends, probably.
These were a bit of a rowdy bunch. Think biker gangs getting riled up and you can imagine how your "oops" is going to get you killed anyhow.
I'm sure that something like that could have happened, but is pretty hard to hide the fact that you are pointing your very lon sticks way too high in front of an hundred of people.
Jousting stick are long, you can't really change the direction at the last moment to be sneaky.
Depending on if you were a commoner or a noble? For a commoner, the fact that killing a noble for any reason was a death sentence. For a noble? Oh no, you damaged someone else's property, pay a fine.
Commoners didn't get to participate in the first place.
You didn't even need to unhorse the other guy (which would also be quite dangerous). Most of the time it was enough simply to properly break your lance upon their armor.
Modern jousting has a point system.
This year at the Ohio Renaissance festival I did not see a single participant unhorsed, but these are friends. But there are no points if you hit them anywhere other than the shoulder piece designed to take a blow, even if you break a lance or unhorse them.
Also, consider your chances of dying due to some plague or real military encounter or just "old age" starting at 40 instead of 70... It's not like jousting is gonna increase your chances to die that much (🤣)...
Common misconception. The life expectancy was so low because lack of vaccines and antibiotics meant most people didn’t survive childhood. Once you were 30 you had a pretty good shot of hitting 60 even before modern medicine.
Good point, but what I meant by "old age starting at 40" was more about an increased risk of cerebrovascular accidents, heart attacks, arthritis, gout, loosing your teeth... All those aches that nowadays start at 70.
Also I meant for it to be a funny silly comment, I don't really believe anyone is more willing to risk their life just because their average life expectancy is lower. My bad for not saying "/s" at the end of my comment I guess...
I mean alot of that stuff cardiovascular wise and losing your teeth didn't really become an issue until the 1500s. Gout was an issue for Nobles though
Henry the Eighth was injured during a joust, some say his behavior and health changed afterwards, never the same.
So this is unrelated but in Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon, the first episode features >!a jousting tourney and they showed it descend into everybody killing each other!<. Now I realize that was for dramatic effect, but even in GRRMs books he always breaks down jousts the way you just did. Participants compete for notoriety and rewards, not to kill each other, and there are rules and blunted lances. It really bothered me how the show just >!continued the Hollywood trope of medieval jousting being some sort of death sport where anything goes and riders can just randomly try to murder their opponent in hand-to-hand combat if they don't like them!<.
Henry VIII seems to have been deeply affected by a jousting accident when he was young.
Not nearly as much as jousting that chick with syphilis.
He didn't watch the documentary "A Knights Tale" Where Count Adhemar states that most kights move their head to avoid debris.
Ah the biographical documentary about the life and times of Sir Ulrich Von Liechtenstein.
Tournament armor was heavier than battle armor, and they were using blunted weapons. It was a sort of sport, modern boxers can get a concussion too, they still do it for fame and money, and so did the knights.
Some tournament armours were so heavy there would be often two people helping the rider get onto a poor horse.
That's a 19th century myth
From wikipedia:
> The Stechzeug in particular developed into extremely heavy armour which completely inhibited the movement of the rider, in its latest forms resembling an armour-shaped cabin integrated into the horse armour more than a functional suit of armour
So yes, late period jousting armour was heavy an impractical for anything other then jousting. It was heavy and stiff enough that either they had to be put onto the horse with help, or had special sets of stairs which they would climb before getting on a horse.
Just to be sure - this is just for a late period jousting armours. Regular armours were not like that.
Your first statement was too broad to be accurate. I tend to agree with the "impractical", yet it was specialized apparatus. As for the wiki quote, it doesn't prove the "set of stairs" and is only for a specific région and time.
You claimed that's a myth when there are clear historical examples.
But I've added qualifier to my original statement to make it clear that not all of them were like that.
Jousting armour is insanely protective.
In normal combat you have to balance manouvrability and visibility with protection (can't fight if you can't see) but in a jousting contest your only opponent is coming from straight ahead, and you never have to get off your horse.
So jousting armour gave you impenetrable protection at the expense of being basically immobile, if you look up a frogmouth helmet you'll see that you can barely see anything out of them, in fact you have to lean your head forwards to see out at all.
That helmet was also usually rivited to your chest plate so you couldn't turn your head either, your arms had nearly now movement (since all you had to do was hold a lance straight).
All that meant there were no gaps or weak points in your armour which meant there was no risk in being hit somewhere unarmoured.
Some later jousting armour was barely even armour it was more like a small shed on top of a horse that you sat in rather than something you wore.
On top of all that, your opponent also wasn't trying to kill you, jousting lances are blunt, and usually designed to be weaker than the armour they're aiming at, so it was common to see lances splinter on impact (which also had the benefit of looking cool).
And you had a shield attached to your shoulder that sat in front of your chest as another layer of armour, and that's where your opponent was aiming, the shield was the easiest place to hit (being a large flat surface, as opposed to the rest of your armour being angled and curved to deflect blows) and the aim was to dehorse your opponent, so hitting the shield was the best way to do so.
They actually had complex scoring systems where you got points for splintering your lance, or hitting certain body parts. obviously you got the most points for knocking your opponent off their horse. Each match usually consisted of four bouts, so even if you got un-horsed, you could potentially come back and win.
So, I guess the trope of two rival jousters going at each other, one unhorses the other, and both get on foot to duel, is probably quite impractical.
I think that's another type of event. I have zero medieval history knowledge but in books of fiction and such there is a thing where a lot of people fight with blunted weapons of all kinds, kind of like gladiators but non lethal
Oh yeah, that's called the melee, and is a big fight on foot between people, sometimes in teams.
There is a trope in some films/shows though, where two people are jousting each other. One gets dehorsed by the other, and out of anger, pulls the other off of their horse. The two then begin to fight each other on foot, while still in their jousting armour. This trope was most recently in House of the Dragon.
Do you have any examples of the shed style vs earlier?
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With the armor being so restrictive, how did the Jousters express their skill?
You had enough movement to aim your lance. There is also the skill in controlling your horse.
Professional football players and boxers have a 100% chance of suffering traumatic brain injury during their careers (literally--a study of the brains of deceased football players showed that all of them had CTE). They still do it. Money, fame, glory, the belief in young people in their immortality, are probably all contributing factors.
As in modern sports, medieval athletes took steps to protect themselves. The goal wasn't to kill each other. They wore special armor and used blunted weapons.
Of course, sometimes people died, but people die in modern sports, too. To say nothing of the severe and debilitating brain damage they suffer from repeated concussive injuries.
I’m glad to see someone talking about CTE. I’ve only just become aware of it from a Ted Talk and it’s horrible.
>Professional football players and boxers have a 100% chance of suffering traumatic brain injury during their careers (literally--a study of the brains of deceased football players showed that all of them had CTE).
We really can't consider this proven. (Admittedly this is a technical quibble.) The players who were studied had some reason to fear they they had CTE. The NFL has done a pretty remarkable job of deflecting both science and common sense from this issue. (Although it's common sense from their point of view to emulate the tobacco companies and try to avoid paying damages to the people they've injured. They apparently didn't look at the end game in the tobacco case.)
It's also hard, looking at the chain of causality, to figure out how the chance might be less than 100%. But we really haven't showed empirically, yet, that the probability is 100%.
Pre-broken and blunted lances designed to shatter on impact for jousting.
Blunted weapons and full plate armour for melees.
Death's weren't massively uncommon but prizes were good so people chanced it.
Besides, the participants were literally the warrior class, practicing for war was an important part of proving your value to your liege.
Jousting required specialized equipment.
Primarily, heavier armor. A full suit of normal plate weighed about sixty pounds. Hefty, but that's similar to what a modern soldier carries into battle, and knights were surprisingly mobile. Jousting armor was much heavier and thicker, especially in the torso, by comparison.
Also, the lances were designed to limit penetration, either by blunting it or other methods to spread out the point of impact.
However, fact is that jousting was very dangerous and there were several fatalities over the centuries.
Jousting sticks can't be worth more than $250 .. any more and they're dreamin' !
The thing is, at first they didn't bother trying not to kill each other. The earliest tournies were just a bunch of bored knights gathering on either side of a field and then going at it. Blunted swords were an innovation! In a weird way it was like auto racing. At first nobody gave a sh- about safety. Then people realized it was a way to make money, and they started making it safer. And each step was a real innovation. They had to think up blunting lances, making them frangible, if you're never getting off the horse make that armor as thick as you can, and so on.
I just watched a trial at arms with a jousting match yesterday.
Yes, it can be dangerous. But far less than movies show. They wear specialized armor (wealthy knights owned parade armor, jousting armor, and battle armor). Weapons were not the same as they used in battle: not so sharp, lances of softer wood without metal tips, etc.
Another thing that is different from movies is that swords used by knights were not nearly as sharp as you think. If you and your opponent were wearing plate armor, the goal was to knock them over and then use the sharp tip to slide between plates (or use a dagger instead of the sword). That's why hammers, flails, maces, and axes were popular weapons. Not as aristocratic as a sword, but the blunt weapon with a larger contact area had a better chance of unbalancing an armored opponent and hurting them from impact damage.
Knights were at least in theory soldiers. Most of the activities in a tournament were part of their training routines. They participated because they gained status and were able to show off their prowess, and they were doing most of the same things as regular drills anyway.
eta: The typical format does not start with knights jousting at each other. In the skills course before the ORF jousts, for example, one challenge is to hit a shield on a stand with a sandbag as a counterweight. Miss the shield or ride too slow and get hit by the sandbag, and you get no points. The next challenge is to hit a small round target that is approximately the size of the tip of a lance hard enough to make it spin. If a rider misses these two challenges, they will not have enough points to advance to facing a live opponent. Warm-up games would weed out people unable to control their horse and hit a target, making sure those who did get to joust were prepared at least to a degree.
If you were rich and could afford heavy armor, you were ok. If you were poorer and had cheap armor, you might get injured. Freak accidents did happen that would cause death, but unlike GOT would have you believe, most Knights went uninjured. Just like modern-day Bull Riders, you can make the sport safer, but there is always risk involved.
Tournaments were dangerous, though the equipment limited this, however there was a lot to be gained from them in terms of honour, reputation, status and hard cash. William Marshall became wealthy from his success in tournaments and attracted the attention of the royal family, he went from penniless second son and knight-errant to the right hand man to 5 kings, regent of England and Earl of Pembroke.
Battle lances had a spear end, but tournament lances were very blunt and relatively large (the aim being to unseat your opponent from his horse, not kill him).
once one of the pair was inseated, usually the 'battle' would continue on foot, with blunted swords.
The aim was to get your opponent to submit, either by disarming him or just plain tiring him out. It didnt usually end in a simulated kill, like the movies show.
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They do real jousting at the tournament of kings in Las Vegas it's a dinner show once a week. The winning knight from last week gets to sit it out and be the "king" that presides over the event.
They wear full plate and armor pads and the bout is won whe you unseat the opponent. Lances for jousting are blunted and sometimes have something on the end like a fist or square end to give you more force but less pierce. The lances are also designed to break at a certain pressure to also not dismount yourself like you would if it was like a pole vaulting implement.
This, but with combat sports, american football, etc.
The answer is they do die: normally slowly and painfully, out of sight and sometimes much after the not-apparently-lethal injury.
Why, apart from their job was fighting in wars and jousts was good training but it was also a way to make a lot of money! many jousts with big melees or massed fights in teams allowed opponents to be captured and ransomed. Even if that was not allowed there were often valuable prizes and for unknown knights and those without a holding it was a good way to show good you were making it possible to gain a position in great lords household. So knights went from poor landless knights to in one case the Marshall of England, based mainly on his fame and wealth from jousting.
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> And if it was actually dangerous, why did they participate?
I dunno where in the world you are but in the US there is this massive sport called football that permanently injures thousands of children who play, and the best case scenario for most players is massive, permanent brain damage. xD
So. It's not that strange for people to play dangerous sports.
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They were heavy armored and the jousting lance were of a soft wood. They would break very easily and the one who broke his lance on the opponent was awarded the winner.
Source: I read this in a museum in germany were many armors and tournament weapons were on display.
You could probably ask the same about boxing, UFC, freeclimbing, rugby, Formula 1, etc..
If there's a dangerous sport then some people will want to do it. And if jousting was still a thing then people would probably be lining up to participate.
For jousting: heavier armour than what would be used in normal battle & jousting lances for these tournaments were designed to break instead of pierce.
Shadowcat514 t1_iuf4u3v wrote
Oh, they did die. Henry II of France famously died due to an eye and brain injury sustained during a jousting bout. Wood splinter got in his eye.
>And if it was actually dangerous, why did they participate?
The recognition they would get was often worth the risk to them. The sport was dangerous, and people did die, but it was a relatively uncommon occurrence and they felt it would show their bravery and honor to everyone else.