This item has absolutely nothing to do with present-day political, economic, or cultural issues. It doesn’t mention Planned Parenthood, Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, Iran or ISIS. But it’s really cool, and most conservative people love history and many are nerds. So here is what fighting with armor was like in the fifteenth century, illustrated.

I’d always thought that the soldiers in armor were like human tanks, clumping slowly around and taking wide swings with a broadsword, and that when two of them met they used their swords more like clubs till one finally knocked down the other. They fought with force rather than technique. But no. The knight in his armor could run (or at least trot), climb ladders, and even do a forward roll if he had to. He had to learn the techniques of fighting in armor. See this:

Here are more items on the subject for the nerds among our readers:  Medieval Knights on a Treadmill Put Historical Myths to the Test, which shows that knights spent twice as much energy just walking around as they did without the armor, that the armor made breathing harder, and also that

Historians believe that full plate armor probably became popular to save reckless nobles from their own bad behavior as they challenged one another in peacetime tournaments. “The history of the tournament is a lovely contrast between nobility and royalty trying to do more and more dangerous deeds, and their courts and retainers trying to keep them from killing themselves,” Richardson  [Thom Richardson, the Keeper of Armour at the Royal Armories] says.

Lost Arts: The European Longsword Part II—Fighting Against Armor describes the nature of warfare at the time and the techniques the unarmored soldier would use against an armored one: mainly, get in close and try to stab through the chinks in the armor or bring him down, because otherwise you’ll lose. This page has lots of videos like the one above. The longsword has a surprising legacy: It

has had a cultural impact on the Western world as tales of knights wielding two handed swords is firmly ingrained into our culture. Looking at the development of western martial arts and the real legacy of armored fighting is the Ringen aspect of it. Wrestling was widely practiced, mostly as a jacketed wrestling similar to Judo, but in it you can see the foundations of the wrestling traditions that would come to form the basis of catch wrestling, Olympic Freestyle, or the regional styles that would be adsorbed into Greco-Roman Wrestling.

The article explains what “Ringen” means.

And, it turns out, some people fight in armor for real.

Thanks to Tom MacDonald’s God and the Machine blog for the lead.