Re: (TFT) Re: TFT Digest V4 #348

[raito@raito.com]

> Neil Gilmore,
>
>
>
>  Maybe I was not being clear so let me try again.

You're being quite clear. And while I may agree with many of your factual
points, I just disagree with some of your conclusions.

> At man at arms only had his job so he could and would spend most everyday
> learning it, unlike a SCA or IJA person who can put in a weekend or a
> couple

That's again a rather broad generalization, especially for the IJA guys.
Every one of them that I know of is a professional horse person. They're
in the saddle hours a day. Sure, they do more of the grunt work than their
medieval counterparts (they tend to have fewer grooms, for example), but
their medieval counterparts also spent a lot of time dealing with their
rank, which was their business. I'd say that was a wash. The point is that
the IJA guys are about as professional a bunch of riders as you'll find
anywhere.

As for the average SCA guy, sure. But the exceptional ones spend a lot
more time than you allude to. When I was doing my most intensive training,
it was as much as having a second job. Even now, I can cite a lot of guys
who are in their armour for a few hours every day. And accounts of the
period (which is my generalization, seeing as we're discussing a few
hundred years) appear to show that the armoured nobles of the time didn't
spend all day every day in armour either. And the point there is that the
top SCA guys are spending probably as much time in their armour as their
medieval counterparts.

> of weeks here and there.  Six months of train would have been plenty for
> Lord
> or knight as they already could ride well learning the nuances of the
> lance
> and sword from horseback is what they would be training at.  So this is
> very
> much a professional soldier who spent his life in his craft anyone rich
> enough
> to own a horse and a suit of armor was of a higher class than an archer.

And here we disagree. The guys I know who do horseback combat who were
already good riders took a lot more than 6 months to be any good. Which is
rather another point, isn't it? I think we'd agree that not all medieval
knights were stone killers. Some were probably pretty bad, and a very few
really, really, good.

I'd say that the same was true for archers.

>  Next to you point of hitting a 10' area at 100 yards English archers were
> picking out individual targets man or horse at that range and dropping
> them.

I see that I've been the one who is unclear here. My assertion that with a
day's training I could hit 10' at 100 yards was meant as a data point for
training. If I'd trained every day for a year I'm pretty sure I'd improve.
:)

Neil Gilmore
raito@raito.com
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