Kaelith

I think Jessica has has found the main arguement here: that the european knight and the samuria are trained with different emphasis. The samuria specifically trains for speed and accuracy, whereas the european knight was more concerned with power and stamina, as well as ofcourse speed, but that wasn't their focus i don't think.

If the samuria and the knight are in their full battle gear I'd put my money on the knight, they could move pretty well in their plate armour and with their increased strength I think the samuria would end up retreating.

The Katana was a slashing weapon and wouldn't be much good against even heavy mail armour I wouldn't think, let alone plate. Where as the european longsword was a long, sharp, heavy metal bar and was as much a crushing weapon as it was a stabbing or cutting weapon.

I think Klion's also made a valid point about japanese warfare being inferior. I think this is apt because I don't think japan had much in the way of conflict with anyone but itself for most of its early history, thus, they only devised tactics suited for combating themselves. it the past couple of centuries, through greater contact with the outside world that their martial mentality really kicked in and they did develope ahead of most of the eastern world, where as china was more inclined to close it's borders and try and remain isolated.

I spose it comes down to where the best materials were and with large amounts of iron in europe it allowed us to develope heavy armour and weaponry. and in later times i think it also allowed us to develop ahead of china in the use of gunpowder as we had the resources to build large amounts of cannon and metal contraptions which developed our knowledge of gunpowder and eventually the idea of steam power etc.

and as someone has pointed out knights had been trained for early childhood in the arts of war and would have been extremely well developed and highly skilled. as the english longbowmen were brought up form an early age to shoot their bows, thus they developed into freakish physiques.


One point people have really missed about the devolution of the longbow was that it took a generation of training to develop a people strong enough to weild a longbow, where as the musket could be handed to anyone who had been talked through the basics of loading and firing, which is also why the crossbow stayed around through the period of longbow supremacy. And it the only reason england seemed to be the only place that was able to field large numbers of longbows was due to it becoming incredibly popular and then it becoming a LAW to shoot your longbow every sunday!

I think the crossbow and musket are better comparisons. i think it was the crossbow that really suffered because of the invention of the musket, due to both not needing a great deal of training, both having long load times and both being effective weapon fired. i think the longbow came about and died out more due to generational gaps and england hoping to advance with the times and encouraging the use of gunpowder, thus not encouraging the continual training of the longbow, and thus the peasants of england lost the ability to weild these weapons on mass in war over the period of probably only a couple of generations (as it was probably not that popular by this time either).

Duke Wellington at the battle of waterloo is supposed to have said that if he had but one regiment of longbowmen he'd have easily beaten the french, and when you think logically that makes a lot of sense! the longbowmen would have massacred the massed formations of unarmoured infantry and cavalry. but the people of england during the period would just not have been able to fire them.