Medieval Flails

Medieval Flails

Building on the "nunchucks are stupid" this week I take a look at the "Medieval Flail", a weapon that has seen some controversy regarding it's historical accuracy, with some convinced it's nothing more than a Victorian fallacy, with the aim to "sex up" the Medieval ages with a strange and unusual weapon.

Essentially taking the premise of the mace, but separating the striking head from the shaft by way of a chain, this certainly looks a daunting weapon to be facing off against. While there is some examples of it being used in history in the late medieval period, with some artwork showing it's usage from around the end of the medieval period and the start of the early Renascence, there's little in the way of written accounts from the time, or surviving artefacts that haven't later been proven to be from later periods. Even the accuracy of the artwork has been called into question as the depictions don't tend to show a realistic usage of the weapon. Which just proves Hollywood aren't the only players with a hand in making the impossible acts seem, vaguely plausible, until you look at it in more detail. There are examples of similar weapons being used in other parts of the world, such as nunchucks in Japan, and even India has had similar weapons. In this video I take a look at how plausible it might be to use such a weapon. Lindybeige did a similar video on this a few years ago : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-y6oirEsZA