news:D7PSc.100682$dP1.350069@newsc.telia.net...

    I did not discuss "wounding a muscle".  I discussed SEVERING a muscle -
which is what tends to happen if you pass a cutting plane perpendicular to a
limb.  When the majority of a bicep, deltoid, tricep, etc. is disconnected,
the limb is no longer useful for fighting and killing.

    There you go again, assuming that the tired soldier would just wave his
weapon feebly at his enemy.  If you are so weak that you literally can't
swing your weapon to any effect, why are you still there? Why *bother*? Die,
run, or surrender - there's no way you're going to win.

    <sigh>
    There is nothing useful to be learned from this magical subset of
force-marched, panicked, and desperate "professional soldiers" who forget
all the lessons of warfare they've trained in and can't move their weapons.
Congratulations - armor stops their attacks, and they die.

    And it is your contention that these tired men are somehow more likely
to break the armor, but "just barely", and do no serious harm in the
process, and that it is therefore important to be sure to be able to model
this "perfectly" tired man who can still *break steel* but exactly nothing
more?

    I feared you were about to repeat other mythologies on the matter.  The
mud was profoundly abusive to greaves and made crossing that field difficult
and time consuming - allowing everyone who wasn't in plate rigs to get
themselves feathered.  This includes the cavalry - which Wiki gets right but
does not mention the buggering of the fighting ranks their retreat caused.
However, given that the knight's armor was ostensibly arrow-proof, they
needn't hurry across the field!  The net effect of the narrowing passage and
the muddy interlude was that the heavy infantry elements arrived to meet the
English *in disorder* (and not en masse) - which allows mobbing tactics
which ordinarily wouldn't have been available, given their relative numbers.
Further, the French had to fight uphill to reach the English, and thus when
the archers famously joined their men at arms with mallets, the potential
for mayhem was nontrivial.
    However, suggesting that the French were "too tired to swing their
swords" or what not would be profoundly silly.
    So is wiki's assertion that shortswords and knives were the weapons that
defeated the French armor - those only do for coups on clobbered men (ie; ma
llet, topple, pounce, shiv the eye).

    All right. Let's just make sure you said what you think you said. In a
contest of fisticuffs, where one individual *cannot* pummel his opponent
successfully due to a carapace of steel, and the other has mailed fists ...
you are claiming that the unarmored individual has the advantage?
    You are beginning to trouble me with your foolish notions.

    But *we are not talking about those armors*.

    Chainmail and reinforced chainmail are compromise armor in every
respect - and they also don't stop many attacks with the mechanisms we've
been describing.

    Depends on the time and the place.

    Please. Stop being silly in public.

    Non sequitur.

    The pike's penetration benefits from running the knight into the thing
on the back of a horse.

    Yes. Some. Not enough to make a difference in killing wounds, presuming
you tipped your weapon sensibly. During impact, once you are tearing the
metal, the work to advance the weapon is essentially constant (b/c of the
stress concentration effect of the tips of the tears).

-Michael