Medieval Weapons and Protection essays

Medieval Weapons and Protection essays The Middle Ages hold many of the worlds most curious weapons. Knights used many different types of weapons. These included swords, daggers and lances. Some were for long-range, such as the longbow, short bow and cross bow and some were for close encounters. They protected themselves with suits of armor (closely woven metal, and metal sheets) and shields. There were also gigantic weapons used to tear down whole castles. Swords, daggers and lances were very good for fighting battles that were up close and very dangerous. There were different kinds of swords like the thrusting sword (14th century), the falchion sword (13th century), and the hand-and-a-half-sword (14th century). At the end of the 13th century, swords were more pointed and the section of the blade was diamond-shaped rather than flat. That made the sword stronger. There was even ones that were serrated to cut wooden axe handles and one called the two-handed sword; it could cut through bone. These are used by knights on foot and is longer and heavier than other swords. (Knight-Meyr) A knights sword was his most important weapon. There were two different types of daggers. They were the 15th century bullock dagger, and the 14th century rondel dagger. Sometimes, people could hide daggers in walking sticks. Lances were for knights on horseback to knock off the enemy knight. They used the lance for battles and jousting. The jousting knight us es a lance to knock his opponent from the horse. It is second only to the sword as a knights weapon, and is used in battle or tournaments. (Knight-Meyr) A very unusual weapon was the bola. It was a spiked ball on a short chain that is attached to a wooden handle. The ball reached high speeds when swung and delivered forceful, crushing blows. Long-rang weapons were used in battle, but were more discreet and could be used from a distance. The long-range weapons are the crossbow, longbow ...