
The curious case of the weapon that didn't exist - hendler
http://www.publicmedievalist.com/curious-case-weapon-didnt-exist/
======
dkbrk
This is examined in some detail by the Youtube creator "Lindybeige".

He talks about: the name of the weapon; how the weapon may have worked; the
veracity of the historical evidence for its existence; and its effectiveness,
based on historical evidence, speculation and live action role-playing
experience.

In particular, from his communications with the Metropolitan Museum it appears
the examples in their collection are likely forgeries from a later era.

His general conclusion is that it may have existed, but if it did it wasn't
very popular and almost certainly not very good.

Part One:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-y6oirEsZA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-y6oirEsZA)

Part Two:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjzE8YMkC5s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjzE8YMkC5s)

~~~
logicallee
I'm sorry, I glanced through the write-up and I just don't buy it. Who's going
to forge a flail?

This just screams "No true scotsman" to me. Give an example of a flail and,
well, it's not a TRUE flail because...

The paintings of flails aren't TRUE flails because...

The example of a physical flail isn't a TRUE flail because...

The last time I saw someone actually minutely go through all the evidence and
point by point address why it must be dismissed, it was in a flat-Earth video.
Seriously. "Where's there's smoke, there's fire" exists because if you can
show flails all over the historical record then there were probably flails.

Look at this quote from the article:

>“But wait,” you may ask, “what about those flails at the Met that you just
mentioned?” This is where the story gets interesting. My working hypothesis is
that all the flails at the Met, and those in similar collections occasionally
found elsewhere in the world, are, as Warner asserted so bluntly, fakes.

Well, actually this makes it really easy to be a flat-Earth apologist.

"What about the NASA missions, people going to orbit and seeing the Earth?
Faked, forgeries. Done in a studio. People have been painting for millennia,
it's just that now it's digital. What about the fact that you can talk to
someone in China or Australia and ask them about where the sun is? They're
lying or simply mistaken. How can they be mistaken about whether it's day or
night? Concussion, dementia, practical joke, etc. Point is it's fake. Okay
what about the fact that ships disappear hull-first as they recede into the
distance? Optical illusion or a trick of the eye. Not real. Okay, what about
satellites, GPS? Fake, a forgery. It's easy to come up with a fake system, you
could do it on your own computer, you could model a fake "planet" that is a
sphere a hundred times the size of earth and make a fake "GPS" system that
reports fake values. But why would anyone do that? I don't know, why would
anybody fake a flail."

\--

EDIT: I don't know why you guys are downvoting me. When authors write
provocative pieces purporting that something never existed at all, they're
almost always wrong. Example:
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/27/joe-goulds-
teet...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/27/joe-goulds-teeth)

[Here's Mitchell later on: "In 1964 Mitchell published the second of two
profiles of Gould for The New Yorker, later collected in the 1965 book Joe
Gould's Secret. Mitchell asserted that the Oral History never existed. Upon
the publication of Mitchell's "Joe Gould’s Secret," in September, 1964, people
began to write to him and send him notebook copies of the Oral History. "I
wish I had had this information when I wrote the second Profile," Mitchell
told people who wrote to him, "and if I ever write another article about Joe
Gould, which I may do, I’d like very much to have a talk with you.""]

Please see my reply below for where our author uses the same very extreme
viewpoint.

~~~
sgnelson
Just to note, you would be surprised how many "ancient" items are forgeries,
either from real items or made up items. Unfortunately I have no link to
evidence; but people have regularly (especially in the 18th/19th century)
created forgeries of so-called "ancient items".

~~~
DanBC
Chastity belts are one example, and they've been mentioned on HN before.

------
mcguire
This kind of thing is hardly unknown, particularly when discussing out-of-date
weaponry. A more recent example is cap-and-ball revolvers; the early designs
from Colt lacked a top-strap on the frame, making the frame weaker.
(Seriously; it at least some models, the only thing attaching the barrel and
the front of the frame to the grip, back, and bottom of the frame is the wedge
through the cylinder pin.)

The claimed advantage of this design is that it makes removing and replacing
the cylinder easier and a user could reload by removing the spent cylinder and
replacing it with a previously-loaded cylinder.

There are plenty of reasons why this seems unlikely in reality. It's faster
than reloading a cylinder, but it's still not all that fast. On some models,
at least, removing the cylinder requires hammering out the wedge from the
frame and cylinder pin---something you don't want loose while firing. Dropping
any of the parts would be a bad idea. But the major unfortunate problem with
the theory is that there is no record of Colt manufacturing large numbers of
spare cylinders. Nor, during the American Civil War, are there any records of
the United States government ordering any large numbers of spare cylinders.

This isn't to claim that no one ever did it. That would be ridiculous; someone
would certainly have thought about the idea anyway. But there's no evidence
that anyone was ever trained to do it, or that large numbers of anyones ever
had the materials necessary.

~~~
sandworm101
Perhaps the faster-loading of extra cylinders was just marketing, something
the salesman would say. You buy the gun thinking that one day you might
improve on the purchase by getting second cylinder, but it never happens once
you realize the issues. I'm thinking of those BMWs that were once "wired for a
CD changer" mounted in the trunk, but nobody who bought a car without the
changer ever installed one later.

------
saiya-jin
what a hyperbole. he picks pics of few flails made for hanging on the wall
(like many swords were made, some of them as pure decorations and would break
in real fight) and hence all in the world are probably fake.

I've visited countless museums/castles in western, central and eastern europe,
most of them if not all had some flails shown. no decorations on them, just
varied length of spikes and size of the head ball. chains looked rigid enough
to last many battles, probably much longer than bearer would survive.

somewhere I read that flail was very hard to block if used by skilled warrior
- the chain would go around any blades, axes and shields and just hit the
body. of course in unskilled hands, I can imagine it can easily harm/kill the
bearer, compared to say a plain good old sword.

~~~
Jetrel
Rather than reading about it, I've experienced this firsthand in martial arts,
and you're dead right - the purpose is to "lariat" around any obstructions in
front of the victim. They can hold up a shield, or a sword, and it won't help
them when used in the normal way - it'll either loop around the side and smash
their face, or more likely, wrench the sword/shield out of their hands -
either one gets the job done - and it can be done to multiple people at once.

The biggest point to the flail was to be a 'focused impact' weapon, and to
have much more heft than a person could manage with a mace. The primary weapon
used against people in plate armor was impact weapons like this - especially
with sharp studs on them, because - believe it or not, armor actually worked.
Swords couldn't cut through armor, and it was really hard to get around armor
- nobody went after a knight by hoping to slide a blade through joints in the
armor (as has been depicted in various films), because it's nearly impossible
to do - nobody's going to stand still and just let you do it, and even if they
did, it's surprisingly hard to control a sword like that (to illustrate this,
try flipping a light switch with the far end of a broom handle - that's a
still, unmoving target, and you might find it takes a rather surprising amount
of manual control).

If you wanted to take out a dismounted knight, you went after one by punching
a hole in his armor (or by hitting the armor with so much heft that it dents;
either one works). Swords aren't an option, and until the late period
crossbows/arbalests, very few arrows had the stopping power to punch through
it (english longbows being a noted exception). The best bet was a spike -
basically a large chisel on a stick. It needs to have a lot of momentum to
have a hope of punching through - unfortunately this usually means it has to
be extremely heavy. This usually results in a really unwieldy thing with the
heft of a sledgehammer, that's so slow you can't fight well with it and are
liable to be unable to dodge/block someone striking you with something much
faster.

A moving weight on a chain solves the momentum problem by moving in a circle -
it gives much more momentum than you could get in a single swing, since you
can accelerate over a few rotations and continue to swing the weapon. It also
is an inherently scary-looking thing, and has a powerful "crowd control"
effect in a melee - the big point of a commander fielding something like this
is to break up enemy cohesion/formations. A guy swinging a flail around repels
people like oil and water. A few of these who bum rush a shield line (along
with a general charge of their fellow fighters) are - more often than not,
going to make a hole in the shield line not from actually hitting anybody, but
from regular humans just getting the hell out of the way. Break up the enemy
line, and they lose all of the strengths of being in formation. This is what
"shock troops" are.

The flail is very similar to a number of asian designs (some of which are
fairly mundane western-looking things, and others which are pretty exotic like
the meteor-hammer/monkey's paw).

It's absolutely daft to dismiss a design like this, where not only do all of
the parts of its shape serve a very direct, functional purpose, but also which
has managed to "independently evolve" on multiple continents because it's just
the only reasonable solution to dealing with armored shield-bearers. It's
crazy.

~~~
douche
Except there is no real evidence of it existing... LARPers, D&D and Victorians
aside.

It's a profoundly stupid kind of weapon to use in any kind of medieval mass
battle, where quarters would be close and room to swing such a thing would be
at a premium. There's a reason the Roman gladius and the seax were short
little blades, designed for stabbing people in the groin underneath their
shields.

With bizarre Asian weaponry, I can't help but be skeptical about whether it is
real, or wildly over-inflated flights of whimsy designed to impress some
foolish Englishman.

~~~
PepeGomez
It was a weapon of rebels and revolting peasants who couldn't get proper
weapons (hence the associations) not the weapon of choice of the imperial
army.

~~~
sgnelson
forging a spiked ball would be much harder than forging a pointy head for a
pike. (even just in terms of material used. And forget about forging a real
chain to go with that spiky ball)

~~~
PepeGomez
I suppose they wouldn't be very useful against any decently armored opponent.

------
sandworm101
The OP makes no effort to address the class distinctions among weaponry.
Crushing weapons, heavy things either with or without chains/rope, were far
easier to make than cutting things. A stick, a bit of rope, and a lump of
iron. That's far easier for a village smith than a forged sword. So perhaps
the reason we see so few is that they weren't carried by the history writers.
And, i suspect, such a literally flexible device is far more likely to survive
that first impact without shattering than even a weighted club.

Note the LOTR clip where it was used as a left-hand weapon, essentially a
shield. It doesn't need to do any actual damage. It's all about keeping your
opponent at a distance and their eyes off of you. A lump of iron flailing
around almost uncontrollably does exactly that.

------
zipwitch
While it doesn't speak to the weapon's historical existence, fantasy author an
Society for Creative Anachronism founder Paul Edwin Zimmer wrote at length
about a 'war flail' consisting of a wooden handle attached by a very short
chain to a long, triangular metal bar that was used as the striking portion of
the weapon.

I can easily picture how a 3' metal bar, spun as fast as a strong and
practiced man could move it would be intimidating and deadly, shattering
swords and shields, and chopping through any possible armor with ease.

------
StanislavPetrov
Another article formed on a completely baseless assumption.

>as a weapon of war, the flail is not a good design.

The fact that its not a good design does not mean that it didn't exist. The
world is filled with things that actually exist, today, that are terribly
designed. A careful study of history will likely turn up more things that are
terribly designed then things that are well designed. Its amazing anyone would
contend, "it couldn't have existed, because it was a bad design". Just what
society did this author grow up in?

------
Isamu
What happened to the term "morning star"? I thought the term "flail" was used
for threshing flails, a peasant weapon along with scythes, sickles, etc.

That the spiked ball and chain was not a particularly good weapon, I'll grant,
and it represents a dead end. It just looks fierce, it always did.

But don't conflate that with "didn't exist".

~~~
mhd
In common parlance, "morning star" can mean both flail and (spiked) mace, so
it doesn't seem to be used as often these days (just like "longsword").

And dead end? How dare you! You can always put on more chains. Until you end
up with a cat-o-nine-balls.

------
failrate
The author complains that the chain would tangle with swords. In my mind, that
would be exactly the point. I know it's not a historically accurate film, but
The Messenger shows how a soldier could use one flail to snare his opponent's
weapon and another to kill the opponent with a strike to the head.

------
Gravityloss
You could also test if it works in the various historical battle groups,
instead of speculating?

For example, if the opponent is carrying a large shield or is lightly armored
on the back, the flail could be used in a wrap around hit.

Maybe it already has been done.

~~~
mhd
It's way easier to disprove something with the reenactment approach than to
prove it. A lot of things _could_ have worked (the Greeks inventing gun powder
or actually using glue for their linothorax), but that doesn't bring them in
existence retroactively.

Although in this case I'd probably go with the "it just was very rare" crowd.
We've got all kinds of weird weaponry: three section staves, dueling shields,
executioner swords, hunga mungas, mancatchers... People tried and still try a
lot to kill other people, but in the end it comes down to the basics most
often (like swords, spears and open office plans).

At least we'll always have enough evidence for all three squazillion variants
of polearms.

------
sklogic
I always thought that flails were designed for disarming.

