Indian Mace

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

The main purpose of the mace as I understand it is to crush and compromise armour, either to render the wearer immobile or unable to defend himself, and often to break or open the armour to gain an opening for stabbing. Clearly this would apply to plate type armour, but in India, often we would be looking at mail or heavily padded cloth protection. With mail there would be a distinct threat of this becoming lodged, as well as with cloth.

A mace could also give you a concussion right through armor without having to damage the armor and in the case of mail and cloth armor bones could be broken. One of the reaons you see such a wide variety of weapons in India is the wide variety of armor that warriors would be facing depending on their opponent. From cloth based armor such as peti (quilted armor) and chilta hazar masha (coat of a thousand nails), mail armor, mail and plate armor and plate armor. Weapons had to be chosen based on what type of armor your enemy would be wearing, weapons were designed to circumvent the particular strength of each type of armor, it was a vicious circle.

[kronckew]

the vicious circle continues in military armoured vehicles and infantry anti-tank weapons. a never ending circle indeed.

the oddities are that occasionally the past comes back.

the last recorded instance of an english longbow killing an enemy during a declared war was in ww2. it was a german sergeant sentry, who may have been wearing a MP's steel gorget as a badge of office., which might count as an ancient anti-armour weapon defeating an ancient form of armour.

col. 'mad jack' churchill (apparently no relation to wsc) not only carried and effectively used his longbow (it was him above). but carried his claymore into battle. he was known to say that no officer should go into battle without his sword. he also had a playing piper accompany him as he charged into battle.

, “Mad Jack,” as he came to be known, survived multiple explosions, escaped a couple of POW camps, captured more than 40 Germans at sword point in just one raid, and in 1940 scored the last recorded longbow kill in history. he said after the war “If it wasn’t for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another ten years.”