Santaman the pole armed shiltron slaughtered armed knights.....the shilton and the Saxon shieldwall....the formations of the Flemish....they all were very, very good defence against a supposedly better armed superior force.
Do a search for shiltron, sheltron, shield wall and the list of battles won is more than impressive.
Pole arms are the 'flourish' of the farming implements attached to a long stick, and farmers by the very nature of their trade are more than familiar with their tools.
I cannot help but know this stuff, my degree profile is Archaeological Science, but in Scottish Universities one is expected to take a wide based approach, I widened mine by Geography and Scottish History. I'm not going to start quoting medieval English and Scots at you. Away and do some reading, there are ample pointers in the thread. Dark Ages has already been explained; the lights were still lit, just the writing wasn't in Latin or Greek. It's simply a catchy title from those early antiquarians who expected Latin and Greek to have all the answers.
"Death was the norm"
it's still normal, everyone born dies, it's just that in the West we're inclined to better medicine and dentistry these days.
Even the Viking stopped raiding to get the harvest in (see earlier post re Somerled) it was a crucial point in the year. Our seasonality means that there was one shot at it.
This thread was opened to ask advice on carrying sharps in Scotland, on public transport, now.
I have three times brought the thread back in line; it would be appreciated if the present could be the focus of our discussion as the thread tails off.
cheers,
M
p.s,. Richard is right; once they were confident in their drilling the only thing that took down the pole arms were archers. That's why Keith's Scottish cavalry took out the archers at Bannockburn.
M
