Beating The Crap out of People HISTORICALLY (Tournaments)
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Hello, everyone.

LARP things go and launch like we were doing War of the Barons in this February and we have like one spot left for that. It's already almost sold out. We launched our Mongolia trip, which we're going on a yurt adventure into the steps of Mongolia. On that note, we only have like three or four early bird spots left for the hundred dollar discount for that.

And then when it comes to the other part, we launched merch on November 1st. So if you want to get your own kind of history of everything, merch like my personal favorite among all these varying things is when describing horrible things in history. But wait, it gets worse. And it always does. Which, yeah, when we're talking about history, usually how many times over the course of the show have I scarred you horribly with

with something that you're like, there's no way that is real or happened. People can't be that bad. But wait, I guess. And then I make you cry. I'm still having flashbacks to that elephant episode from the very beginning, which I will not go into detail on for obvious reasons. Either way, my friends, there's a lot of things to go on about. So make sure to go ahead and check out things down in the description to go to the varying links. And thank you all for your support.

For those of you who have been following us here on our social media for the last few months, which you definitely should, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, everything else, you might have noticed that we have talked about a number of different LARP events, Ren Fairs, or even practice, since I'm actually now part of a armored combat team. Gabby, how do you feel about this?

I like that you do that because I think it's the safest sport you've ever played because you're actually wearing like protective gear versus rugby or soccer where you just got concussions. So this is honestly the best you've ever been. You just never show up to practice because you're never in town. But this is true. Yeah. But also, she's not wrong about the whole thing with the protection. And guys, this is going to sound very weird from the very get go. But I want you to imagine this.

Bunch of guys being dudes in a field wearing protection, wearing 90 pounds worth of protection on them, beating the crap out of each other with real weapons. And that is that is actually something that we have done.

That is the sport of Boo Hurt. So we are actually wearing 90 pounds worth of armor and utilizing swords, spears, all different kinds of things. And from there, we are beating each other. But because the weapons are blunt and you are wearing extra thick, padded and protected armor, you barely feel any of this. Gabby, what was it like when I put that helmet on your head? Claustrophobic. Claustrophobic. Keep in mind, my wife...

This helmet was 30 pounds. It was basically a quarter of her entire body weight. So she just tipped over and I put it on her. That's pretty heavy, guys. Like it is not not easy to lift.

The short of it and the reason we're going on about all this here today, you can probably guess from the title. We're going to be talking about tournaments. We're going to be talking about all the really fun stuff of the training for medieval warfare this time. And without going into too much of the minutiae and rules and strategies, Buhurt is essentially the modern form of armored combat. What likely would have been seen in medieval tournaments, which, you know, it's fun.

We've covered a few historical sporting topics on this podcast, like the most recent one being back in August on the Olympics. And if you remember during that episode, we talked about the decline, but not outright disappearance of organized sporting events in Europe following the official end of the Olympics. The tournament is one of the strongest contenders for the continuation of that tradition that we have in Europe. And it's important to talk about that context of these gatherings, even as we talk about their historic development.

So, yes, we're going to be talking about things for tournaments and terrible violence in a safe, actually controlled, controlled, but also at the same time, no one can see me when I'm doing this since we were not actually filming this, even though there is a plan to bring back the whole thing with filming and put that on like a separate channel. But I am making air quotes right now. Safe air quotes when talking about the events that would take place these tournaments, because holy crap.

they could get very dangerous very quick. So is it like the tournaments from, what's the name of the movie with the guy and his actual knight died so he decides to be the knight? A Knight's Tale. Yeah. Yes. Yes, like that. And people actually died in those things. Oh.

That's not ideal. Okay. So just to give an example, even with the modern sport that we would talk about with Boohert, and she's already familiar with this because we discussed this in an event that took place like a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, one of our guys got part of his elbow cut off.

No, isn't it just he got it shattered because he blocked an act? Yeah, that's what it is. Not just cut off, but it's like it shattered the elbow there because he tried to... He wasn't wearing armor on his arms. But that wasn't at an event, though. I'm pretty sure they said that was at practice. Wait, that was practice? I thought that that specifically happened at one of the events. I don't know. You're the one they told about it.

Either way, this there is a real chance that accidents can happen and they do regularly throughout history. So keep that in mind with anything that we discuss that you make sure that you are properly protected with anything that you do.

So first, we're going to be talking about tournaments, and there's going to be a degree of estimation made on how ubiquitous a practice was. Medieval Europe is a very fragmented place politically, economically, and culturally. So just because we're going to be talking about something that could have been practiced in southeastern France, that does not necessarily mean that it was the same in northwest England or even northwest France for that matter.

Now, while I'm confident in my sources and arguments here, perhaps it would be helpful for you to think about a medieval tournament like a cheeseburger. Right. Yes. Look, I'm serious. It's actually a good metaphor. All right. A lot of you are going to know about them. And there are some things that we agree have to be there in order for it to be a cheeseburger. But different places approach it differently. Cook it for different lengths of time. They'll have extra ingredients or anything else that can be a part of it. And.

It varies. OK, it's one of those things. Local tournaments could have individual roles, special conditions of entry or even restrictive lists which make them distinctly regional events. Secondly, is a note on pronunciation. As this is a podcast episode on chivalry, there is going to be a lot of French pronunciation in this episode. I know you're looking at me so well for him because you guys know how good he is at French, right?

Yes, as such, there will be differences in pronunciation or I might just at different points default to the English standard or my own standard, depending on the relevance. Listen.

I was recording a video here just the other day. And when trying to say this, the Treaty of Versailles, my inner Kentuckian came out and I said the Treaty of Versailles. That hurt my heart because I cannot stand that you guys call it Versailles. Like, what is that? Well, it's Louisville and Versailles in Kentucky, not Louisville, Louisville. I hate it. All right. That's that's how it works.

In most instances, I have opted for English standard, but in some instances, it may be more important to keep to the original French. I will try my best, but please wish me, you know, good luck as I embark on this trip back to the world of Chivalry. You wouldn't even try to say it. No, I'm not. Bonne chance. Bonne chance. Bonne chance. OK, let's just continue on. Yeah, let's go. Let's forget that happened. I know.

So look, as we've discussed on our other episodes of sports, there's an interesting intersection between athleticism, nationalism, and militarism when talking about things in the pre-modern world. In the oldest games in history, the Olympics, there was a great deal of pride that was attached to the winner that would hail from one city state or another. It was a really big deal when a person from a particular place won. And the events had a distinctly martial element, even with the notable, or at least publicly

lack of antagonism between the competing polities later in the roman period there was a distinct level of martial prowess for fighters and racers in amphitheaters and hippodromes while it was not their main aim hundreds if not thousands of people entrance would die on the sands in roman arenas in north america games like uh begataway or it's either begataway or begataway it's

This is one of those things again that I told you from the very beginning that I was going to start screwing up. This served as a dual function, both a rite of passage for young men, but also a way to practice war. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps to find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions to monitor your spending, and it helps to lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. It has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when they use all the app's features.

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In modern athletics, we might hear militaristic euphemism when describing teams like a battle on the gridiron or dueling for the coveted gold medal in curling. In either case, there must be some form of medieval bridge between ancient and modern athletic contest, which brings us back to the tournament. I must say, when I listen to modern sports, it just sounds very homoerotic. The things they yell that they're doing to each other. Give me an example.

Hold on. I have to pull. Can I pull up a tick tock? Pull up a tick tock. Sure. Sure. Why not? Well, I'm going into this. You pull up a tick tock and we're going to play the audio and I'm sure it's not going to be a problem whatsoever in this. Of course. Well, she goes and finds that I'll explain this whole thing because we're talking about tournaments and it brings up the question then of what exactly was a tournament.

So I'm sure when I mentioned the word that there are some images that come to your mind, like you're probably thinking of a knight in very or neat, fancy armor, jousting, chivalry. And if you are a person at a Ren Faire, massive turkey legs that you can just completely chow down on. I mean, weirdly enough, we've been to a lot of Ren Faires. I've never once had a turkey leg at a Ren Faire, mostly because you don't eat turkey. So that's not something that we would do. But yeah, that's something I will eventually probably try.

These are all images that work well for the tournament. In short, a tournament is a medieval event akin to a fair in which mock combat serves as the main form of entertainment for the public. The Ren Faire of today isn't an entirely unfair comparison to the late tournament, but it's too opulent for earlier events, though perhaps it may be better to think of these as carnivals for the upper classes.

Now, I know this might appear as an odd comparison to make, but we'll come back to the notion later. And you can tell me in the comments below if you believe my analogy or not. It's whatever. While the events of the tournament were largely combat focused and for the upper classes, over time, more stuff just got added into the mix.

Like there might be tournaments for wrestling and archery or, you know, thriving markets that would often spring up during the tourney itself. Where merchants, vendors and all different kinds of trade people would flock to the grounds because, well, here you got a bunch of potentially wealthy people that have gathered in one area to entertain themselves and they probably are willing to spend a bunch of money.

So the view we have of a rent fair being a shopping destination isn't entirely misapplied to the whole medieval tournament, though likely with a more functional aim towards the sale of goods in comparison to more oftentimes going to watch people beat the crap out of each other. Unless it's Boohert and you go and watch me beat the crap out of people and also get the crap beaten out of me at a field at a rent fair, because that has actually happened multiple times.

While this presents the tournament as a lively, almost contemporary city in the medieval calendar, there were two main draws, which is to say two main events for these gatherings. The first of these is my personal favorite among all of them, and that is the melee, or what we would consider to be a mock battle. Gabby, you have seen what happens when I'm involved in the melees. Do you want to describe for people what this whole thing kind of looks like?

Yes. Okay. So it's a bunch of men hitting each other with their poles, just like really grinding on each other with their metal armor. You know, they're like humping, they're grabbing. Why do you just use the term humping? No, like you're grappling. I don't know. You're doing some stuff. Grappling is probably a more accurate term.

Come on. There's a lot of there's a lot going on there and they're clanging the whole time together, like just repeatedly banging each other. It's crazy. Yeah, there's there's a lot of banging metal on metal action. And they keep on going until the one guy remains standing. So, yes, yes, she's not wrong.

The whole rule of what happens with each other, like they keep going at it until no one can go any longer. It is physically exhausting and draining. Yes, that is. That is indeed true.

I did find a TikTok. So I told James to insert the audio. He's just going to go ahead and insert it. Okay. I could play it here, but it won't pick it up. Well, it probably won't pick it up very well. You know, you're right. We'll go ahead and have our editor go. There's just a lot of coming and pulling out because they're trying to score touchdowns. They're trying to get it in to the end zone. Uh-huh. Starts to come and then he pulls out. You have to like when there's a guy coming right in your face and he just sits in there and delivers it. Yeah, guys.

Coming down his face. Feeling is the Cowboys probably coming right down their throats. Tyrell Williams. He beats. Needed two thrusts to get it in. Bynes has been coming all night long, but then he pulls out and it's just hard. It's been a while since he's seen a hole that big. He almost didn't know what to do. Got five inches on him, but.

Talking about guys trying to go score. Anyway.

Yeah, the melee. Oh, God, we went off topic here for this. The whole center point of the early tournament was the melee. Like we think of stuff with being the joust. No, a lot of the early days for this is the melee. And this consisted of combined arms mock battle taking place across a large area of land, oftentimes being set aside from the hosting town.

These were the earliest and most practical application of the tournament, and these battles provided the opportunity for the rulers of the region to see just how their troops might perform in a mock combat together, which might be staged to have one side appear as a specific enemy, like the English, the Normans, or the Germans. Think of it in a similar way, I guess you could say, as to what the Romans did when in the arena they would recreate historical battles.

And they would have one side represent one group or another that is then fighting. And in those types of battles, of course, they would be completely staged for one side to just win. But in this case, it's it's it's more like an actual fight to not the death, but definitely in a competition where the pride of one's.

Culture is on the line, I guess you could say. Really? Yes. And it would be extremely important if you were like the French and it's like, hey, this other side, they're supposed to be the English. We can't lose to the English for very obvious reasons.

So these battles, as I said, they provide an opportunity for rulers to see how the troops might perform. And they emphasized combined arms in the sense that both infantry and cavalry would fight. These mock battles were not just minute long affairs like gab.

When I talk about this, you know how our melees, when we would do these, it's till the last man falls or the last man is standing. And that could take anywhere between 30 seconds to a few minutes. Yeah. Some of these battles went all day. No. Yes. In armor all day. All day. The endurance, the stamina. I would like to go on. I can't finish that sentence. Gabby.

what were you about to say right there no i just thought it's a brilliant display of strength and athleticism keep in mind also their armor that they were wearing was not nearly as heavy as what we'd be wearing now i don't care what they were wearing they can go at it all day i would like to see those talents used for other things got it got it like baking laundry

So anyway, they would go at it all day, as you said, and then combatants would often carry their real weapons into the fray due to a fairly common lack of rules and regulations in early tournaments. So yeah, in these battles, combatants would face all the perils of real combat, death, injury, or capture.

Yeah, that's the crazy part. You see in the melee. Yeah, you could take prisoners or take gear for defeating someone in single combat. Like straight up, this was possible. As a result, you had the right after a tournament was over to ransom your victims or their expensive war gear back to them.

which could make it an extremely lucrative part of the fight. That's amazing. Yes. Because the gear I'd assume was really expensive. Holy crap, it was. And especially if you were rich and you went to one of these things to actually fight, your tournament gear was expensive.

Fancy because you want it to stand out, right? It's not your normal stuff that you'd be wearing onto a battlefield. So this is where you see all those fancy tournament armors that are embellished with like crazy designs, feathers and all different stuff to stand out. Who was paying the ransom for the people that they captured?

The peasants who worked the land, basically. I mean, so let's say their family, right? Pretty much. So let's say that a lord was captured. Typically, what would end up happening? Like, let's say he was captured and his horse was taken, right? If that was a really valuable horse and he needed that horse because he didn't have any more horses or other stuff like that, there is a chance that in order to get that horse back, he would then have to pay money to the person that defeated him in order to get the horse. Or it could be his helmet. It could be

any number of things. Oftentimes, if a person was straight up captured, then they would have to be ransomed back to their family. So yes, that is something that would straight up happen.

So yeah, you could be captured, but melees could also have themed elements from individual tournaments. While early events were simple affairs that might have a large swath of rural land for combat zone, later events influenced by the social and economic prestige ought to make a spectacle out of training. And these events live on today in modern combat sports like Boo-Hurt, DEMA, and others.

The second major type of event, and perhaps more recognizable, was the tilt, list, or as it's more commonly known, jousting. Now, we'll get into the timeline here later, but the first instance of jousting that we at least have evidence for is from 1095, where there was jousting ahead of a larger melee at a tournament in modern Belgium.

In this first joust, we have our first fatality, actually. Count Henry of Brabant, who would die in the combat. And he would certainly not be the last. So they jousted to kill? No, God, no. No, no, no, no, no. So they jousted and killed by accident? It could very well happen. So here's the thing. Before, things were oftentimes standardized. And I know we're going to get into it here as time goes on.

Remember how I said, oh, in these early days, oftentimes they just brought their own weapons into combat. Oh, so it didn't necessarily it wasn't necessarily something that would break off. Correct. It wasn't a tournament, Lance. They just brought a straight up Lance.

So there was no weapons check, I'm assuming. It was just, oh, oops, I didn't know we couldn't bring this fully sharpened spear. Yeah, yeah. This is also one of the reasons as to why the lances that were meant for tournaments and later points would be hollowed out so that they would shatter upon impact, which actually, here's the thing, funny enough, more lances were also designed in the same way, except those ones would also be sharpened in comparison to the tournament ones. Because the idea was, let's say that you're charging in an opponent, right? And you have a lance.

What happens if your lance is fully solid and it makes contact with an enemy? It'll probably like you'll get caught on it. You get knocked off your horse. Exactly. Typically, Lance will go straight through them with the amount of force that is behind that. It gets stuck. You can't get the Lance back out again. And at that point, you're now an arm is restricted, which makes you an open target. But when a Lance was designed to break, it meant that you would charge continuously.

hit them. Lands would break as it makes contact, but it would already at that point be, it's going to sound weird for me saying this, six inches deep and breeding, breeding, bleeding, bleeding profusely from a hole. Oh God. It doesn't sound well no matter how it is that I say. For anyone who's heard the audio already that Gabby put on here, it's now stuck in my head. I really hope James put it in here. That's what she said.

Guys, it's iconic. Yes. Anyway, jousting. The word jousting itself comes from French, providing more evidence for French development. It derives from the word jouster, which literally means to encounter. And while these encounters had more rules than the melee, perhaps due to the number of highborn combatants in them, they were still dangerous, perhaps even more so than the melee because you had single attention.

The aim in the joust was to land your lance on the shield of an opponent and hopefully unseat them from the mount. Each encounter would consist of multiple passes, with some accounts giving riders four passes and others three instead.

Shattered lances and unseated riders were the ideal outcomes, and this was reflected in the later rules for how to calculate victors. For example, King Alfonso XI of Castile had eight rules for royal jousts, which included things like how to determine winners and what to do if both knights fell or were unhorsed, and even some conduct rules for combatants.

So at this point, we've talked about what tournaments are and what happened at them, but we haven't really gotten into the timeline of them yet, which, yeah, I know. Okay, we talk a lot of context. This is a history podcast. It's an entire point. Well, let's go ahead and correct that here right now. Unfortunately, we don't know when the first tournament was, but we do have a good idea of the general period.

The first tournaments were held by the Normans around the second half of the 11th century as evidenced by texts that talk about events and what happened at or around the time of the tournament. Like we mentioned here earlier that Henry Brabant was killed in a joust in 1095. And from our evidence, it doesn't appear as though this was something new, which gives evidence that the practice was common even at that time.

So there are a few candidates for the first tournament, although this is slightly contradicted by the historic record.

Often, Geoffrey de Brulé holds the credit for organizing the tournament due to a line by a 13th century historian, Pigne Gatineau, who said in the 7th year of the Emperor Henry and the 3rd year of King Philip, there was treacherous plot at Angiers, where Geoffrey de Brulé and other barons were killed. This Geoffrey de Brulé invented tournaments. Using the date of the rulers mentioned, we can gather that this took place in 1066, which is a rather odd

auspicious year for the normans because you know the whole invasion of england however for 1062 he also states joffrey de brulee who invented tournaments was killed at anjos so he invented tournaments and was killed like pretty soon after contradict each other because now we're talking 1066 and 1062 so it's it's messy i mean they're close enough

Yeah. And we're talking about things in the historical record. This is one of those things like in the patron episode that we had, one of the questions that a patron asked was if I believe that time was lost, like just years wiped away from the historical record, like one of those grand conspiracies. And I said, no. However, I do firmly believe that a number of dates may be out of order when things happened or that we don't know.

know and that where maybe there's a gap in knowledge specifically because of stuff like this like we don't know if it's 1066 or 1062 and he may have been dead by one of those times in the first place we don't really know but that's kind of the point of confusion that gets created because of sources of information or someone was just starting a rumor like that one time i said you and aiden were brothers on the internet and now everyone believes your brother's on the internet we've

We've now talked about this multiple points. Those who are confused, she's talking about the Lore Lodge, Aiden Mattis, a guy who actually in two days, him and Roman Helmet Guy, we are traveling up to Philadelphia in order to start a new podcast show together. So we're all going to be doing that and you can look forward to it. But yeah, there's a thing of confusion where people on the Internet because of Gabby genuinely think that he is my brother. We are not brothers.

Just scarily look and act similar at different points. Anyway, yeah, this this whole thing that we're talking about may just be the historic version of an urban legend. We just don't really know. So we can't exactly then know when the first tournament was, but we can start to form a notion of the timeline based off of other sources.

Like, as we mentioned before, we have records of jousts as early as 1095, and we have charters from northern France around 1114, which prohibit the settling of feuds at tournaments. So in other words, if you were a count of one territory,

And you had a rival count who is the count of another territory. And you hated each other's guts. One of the common ways that people would resolve things was through duels. You weren't allowed to take these out on each other at tournaments because this would be unfair for the competition, I guess. And also there was a greater risk of you are not doing this to show your martial prowess. You are doing it in order to get revenge on someone, which means that you may actually try to kill them. And that wasn't the goal of the whole thing.

So point to remember. So, yes, they had that mentioned and then rules from tournaments in the early eleven hundreds that place prohibitions on the weapons the combatants could use.

We do know that a specifically jousting-focused tournament happened in 1127 in Würzburg, Germany, which is southeast of modern Frankfurt. So what does that mean then in the historical sense? Well, here's what I think the evidence means. The charters from the 1100s I think provide strong evidence that tournament culture had already taken root firmly by at least 1110.

And given the proliferation of other medieval social developments, I'd place the first tournament happening sometime around, you know, 1050 or so based on the development markers like jousting being present in textual evidence. We don't really know, but this is just the most likely case because documents are lost and we lose a lot of these records. That's the unfortunate thing. So we can't distinctly say for absolute certain when something came to be. So at this point, then we've talked about tournaments and what they were and a brief look at their historical development.

But just why would the medieval world hold tournaments? There was, after all, danger of significant injury or even death. Or, you know, you could be taken prisoner and held hostage by your own countrymen, which would cause you to lose stupid amounts of money. So why? Why risk so much for a simple game? Well, there's a very practical reason for it. War. Straight up war.

While to a modern audience who is listening to this right now, a tournament might be easily conflated with your images of a Ren Faire, that wasn't always the case. You see, my friends, in the Medieval Ages, the concept of a standing army was a long distant memory. That hadn't been a thing since the days of the Roman Empire. And it was going to be a far off development for future events once standing armies became more commonplace in the early modern period.

While kingdoms could afford to keep a small body of men under arms for things like customs, guarding important sites or figures, or even just acting as a kind of law-keeping force, most of an army that marched to the battlefield consisted of levies. Little more than farmers that were armed with a degree of training, likely some less-than-ideal weaponry, and a dream. A dream of actually surviving and making it back home for harvest season.

What this meant was that the few soldiers that were kept under arms at all times needed to be capable of efficient fighting and maneuvering on the battlefield and to work well together. And that was especially true for cavalry, which was the true kings of the battlefield throughout the majority of the medieval period. Like even before the Middle Ages, the concept of citizen cavalry limited participation in that armed body within the military.

In the Roman period, the equites were both a social class and the source of cavalry for early Roman armies as they went into the field. Their wealth meant that it was possible to upkeep both their war gear and their mounts, something that neither the state or the lower rungs of society would or very likely could do.

The equites then fielded significant value to Roman armies as scouts, forgers, messengers, and their ability to fundamentally change the course of battlefields. Though also at the same time, when I mentioned this, interestingly enough to note, the Romans were not big on cavalry. They would not be big on cavalry until going into the later Roman Empire, and especially when it came to the Eastern Roman Empire, put a large focus on cavalry. For the most part,

The Romans, this is like one of those weird things among all things. They prioritized heavy infantry so much in comparison to what just about any other society would do for prioritizing things. So I guess in the ancient world, it was more common to specifically utilize infantry, especially in Europe, that they would use auxiliaries and mercenaries for cavalry more often. Like Gullick cavalry were commonly utilized. This is one of the things that

they would have to have in order to have a more balanced military force. And it's interesting that in the wake of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, that this system continued, at least in parts. While the harsh boundaries of plebeians, equites, and senators would crumble with the empire, the nobility still maintained this order to some capacity. Land was parsed out to notables, with the revenues from the land able to support these families, their tenants, and their war gear.

The most important aspect of this gear was undoubtedly their mount, and a proper warhorse is, oh dear god, so freaking expensive. While this is a history podcast, let's get into the numbers here for a second. First, while tournaments have their roots long before the 13th century, this period provides some of the best sourcing that we have for goods prices, which we're going to use here.

In the reign of King Henry II, who ruled from 1154 to 1189, a run-of-the-mill warhorse ran around two pounds sterling, with more expensive mounts costing up to 13 pounds sterling for top-quality stock.

Now, this is during the 12th century, mind you. So we must take inflation into account when converting to modern currency. And I'm telling you this right now. This is one of those frustrating things. I'm talking about anything in history and comparing stuff for prices because I can talk about what the value of something was in like 1885 in comparison to what it is now in 2024. But trying to convert things from medieval pricing to today's day and age is terrifying.

So freaking painful because the value and ease of production for different goods is so vastly different. So here's the thing.

A good estimate for how much a person might make is to look at the contemporary wages of soldiers. During the reign of Henry II, there was a significant jump in pay from one pence per day, which, mind you, when we're talking about this here, think of like a pound and like you have pence. It basically has a penny. So one pence per day to two. It doubled. I mean, can we do that? In some places, they actually kind of, I mean, it really just depends upon where you're actually- What caused it though? Their economy or he just was feeling very-

I'm not sure actually for specifically why that would happen. I'm pretty sure that what had been happening for large periods of time is that soldiers' pays were largely stagnant. So as an example, when you look at the Roman Empire, what a Roman soldier was being paid in like 150 AD was the exact same as what one was making in 250 AD, despite the fact that the currency had vastly increased

inflated by that point. So it had devalued so much because of inflation and debasing currency, replacing it with cheaper metals and all this. And yet soldiers are making the exact same pay for like a period of 50 or 75 years, which means that their value was getting lower and lower and lower and lower, which is really bad. In this case, though, when talking about the cost for all this for a warhorse, it becomes a bit more of a problem.

Because while this is certainly a large promotion for men-at-arms, it still didn't really put a dent into the cost of a horse. Factoring in the holy days and figuring out hypothetical men-at-arms didn't take any days off, it might take just under a year and a half for a basic warhorse at that pay rate, and nearly six years for your top-of-the-line stallion.

Like I'll note here that this doesn't include upkeep and other necessities, including feed, tack, stabling and other care as needed. And also keep in mind that you typically didn't get loans in order to buy this stuff. If you want to compare a warhorse to a car, think about it this way, Gabby.

What is the average price of a car today? Like if you're just going out and buying a car from a dealership. $40,000? Yeah, like maybe $30,000, $40,000 or something along those lines. But those really crazy SUVs and like the really expensive top of the line cars. $100,000?

Yes. Like I think the Denali is like a hundred something thousand. So if someone was talking about here for a basic pay, that it would take them a year and a half to be able to do that, to save up. There's no such thing as a car loan. There's no such thing as like a mortgage for a house or whatnot. It's like you could get a loan to do these things, but loans were completely different back in the day. So if you were going to buy a horse, you typically had to pay for that price outright. And most people are not going to be able to afford that

because they can't pay for a car with $40,000 in cash. The majority of people can't, at least. That's not practical. So if we take a look at the 2023 US average hourly income rate, which according to sources is just under $30, you're looking at a modern comparison of around $82,000 for a basic amount, $181,000 for a middle quality amount, and $327,000 for a superior quality.

Again, this is nothing to say about the cost of feed, upkeep, or anything else. While we don't have great sources for the cost of these items in the 12th century, we do for the 14th century.

Fodder costs around two pence a day and saddles range between five and 10 shillings or between 60 and 120 pence. Bringing that to the present, that means you're looking at $82,000 for the horse, nearly $2,500 for the saddle, and just under $29,000 per year in fodder, food for the horse alone. Like imagine if you were spending $29,000 on gas per year for one car.

That's insane. So that means that any household that wanted to keep a warhorse would have to be making the modern equivalent of over 200,000 per year. And if you remember our episode on Robert the Bruce, knights trained from a young age and likely with multiple horses, just as they would on campaign. In some instances, we have records of knights bringing multiple horses on campaign and may in fact be required to have multiple horses.

Some records indicate the knights would have been required to have five horses on campaign, with some having upwards of 20. Though it should be noted here that these certainly were not all warhorses. Some could be pack horses or just different horses to be able to ride in order to give your actual horse that you were going to use a break. Either way, it meant the knight was expected to keep and maintain massive investments in their weapons, armor, and perhaps most importantly, their mounts. That sounds so pricey. It is.

So only like the wealthy were knights, right? Oh, incredibly so. Yes. Where you saw some people that were not necessarily nobility was more common down in Italy. So remember how there was a bunch of merchant houses and you had all the city states? Well, they were rich, though. Exactly. They were rich. They may not have been nobility to own stuff for land, but you had a bunch of merchants who would have their own like bodyguard units of cavalry and whatnot under them. That's what we would call new money. Yes. Yes.

Yeah, literally, that's actually one of the best way to phrase it, especially when it came to the merchants out of Pisa, Genoa or Venice. Yeah, exactly. So with that amount of money put into just the mounts of the cavalry, it perhaps then makes sense that the magnates really wanted to make sure that they got their money's worth. But it wasn't just to make sure that they got their horses exercised. Like I mentioned earlier, standing armies in the medieval period were small.

Often, this corps of trained men was augmented by locally raised forces. And while it bolstered your numbers, it came with risks. These untrained men might have to leave for harvest time. A long campaign might see them desert. Perhaps more importantly, they weren't trained fighters. This meant that the trained corps of the army needed to be as effective as possible. So training was required.

As we've mentioned in previous episodes on Medieval Period, young men of noble birth received extensive training in individual combat. And on horseback or on foot, men were trained from a young age to be deadly fighters. But that didn't always mean that they were effective in the field and as a group. Like you could be trained from a young age in sword skill, but it's a completely different ballgame when you are actually in a real battle. You know what I mean? It's like you could practice for a sport your entire life, but if you then go and actually compete in said sport,

and you never did any drills that would actually be team on team or anything else like that, like in the case of soccer or football, you're kind of out of luck. You know what I mean? Yeah. So early tournaments with large mock battles often had hundreds of knights with even more foot soldiers in support, providing valuable experience and how these groups had to work together on the battlefield. But tournaments would hold a third reason for existing, which I'll have to unpack here.

My friends, I also put forward that tournaments had a significant social value for medieval states. We know that tournaments started likely sometime in the mid 11th century before the Norman invasion, and we'll get more into this later, but the timing is important. This was an era before the Crusades. Outside of Spain, there wasn't really any kind of external foe for the Europeans to fight, which caused a problem. Most of the time that they were fighting, do you know who they were fighting?

Each other. Each other. Because we went over this when we talked about crossbows. Like they would fight each other so much. The church had to be like, hey, besties, don't do that on all of these days that we just listed above things. Yes. And this was especially common in France. Oh, dear God. France was an absolute clusterfuck when it came to the different stuff for medieval decentralization. It was the ideal feudal state you could imagine. Right.

where all these varying little states and I say states, all these varying little baronies and counts and et cetera, pretty much operated their territory like their own independent kingdoms rather than part of the kingdom of France. It's very messy. So medieval inheritance practice often favored the firstborn sons of a family, which would leave the younger generations to fend for themselves. And this oftentimes led to wandering knights who were looking for opportunities to make themselves famous and earn a living.

So they just took the firstborn and then they kept having, what was the point of that? What would the other sons do? I know they needed more heirs or whatever and they didn't have birth control, but that's not the point. The point is, what were the plans? The classic phrase that goes with it is you have the heir and the spare.

Right. Is that at a minimum, you want two sons because one is going to be the heir and the other one is the spare in case the first one dies, which was a very common thing. But then past that, I believe I'm going to pull this up because I distinctly remember this is that there was a common way that they would have this phrase. You have.

The firstborn is the heir. The second one is the backup, who is trained typically as like a knight or leader, possibly some like they have a mixed training, like basically the same as the first one, but not maybe necessarily as much because you don't want to give them too much ability to overtake the first in case they both survive.

Your if you had a third son, that third son was almost always dedicated to the church. It did not matter if they were really pious or not. It did not matter if this was like the most sleazy, like party frat boy you could imagine.

If he's your third born son, you're more than likely going to dedicate him to the church. That's so unfortunate for him. Yeah. Now, here's the thing. Within the church, especially the Catholic Church at this time, you had a lot of power. When you were part of the clergy, you could get really rich. So this was a thing that helped both your influence, your family's influence, and it was actually a really good and cushy position. Problem was you couldn't hook up with anyone. Well, you weren't allowed to, but people did.

Well, that's just not very cash money of them now, is it? Remember, the people that were going into this position, the majority of the time they went in because their family made them, not because they actually wanted to go and join the church. So, yeah, they would do this. And then if you had a fourth, a fifth or a sixth son, etc., those sons typically didn't have as much of a role. It was more like, all right, trust.

trained to basically be a knight and you're going to fight and then pass that point past the third or fourth son. We don't really have much else for you. So good luck, Chuck. That's unfortunate. Yes, exactly. So that's kind of how that whole thing goes. As I said, that often meant that a bunch of these younger sons were wandering knights who were looking for opportunities to settle themselves down and actually make something for themselves. Given their training and upbringing, it meant that violence was significantly more likely to

I mean, look at the Normans before the invasion. They basically carved out a massive chunk of France, Italy and Sicily in their hunger for new lands. It was all these varying different wandering knights, you could say, under different lords. This also created a bit of an issue for the nobility of Europe, because while warfare was inevitable as part of medieval life, certainly it wasn't the best interest of a kingdom to have a nearly constant boiling pot on their hands of people trying to get new lands for themselves from their neighbors.

So the tournament provided a bit of a vent for this energy. Knights had the opportunity to put their combat skills to good use and support their lifestyles while at it. This is by no means a conclusive theory. Absolutely not. But I think we can effectively argue that the tournament then is the result from a need to train armies. They need to have something to be like a pressure valve on knights and their forces.

errant wandering, and the economic opportunities that are abound when the rich and famous of the medieval world gather together in one place. But there is one part I still want to take a closer look at, the training aspect. While we oftentimes associate them with the modern world, military exercises for medieval monarchs were a great way of making sure that quality stayed up and troops kept under arms were effective on the battlefield.

While these are a far cry from modern military exercises, they are at least certainly distant ancestors. The Normans who revolutionized the use of armored cavalry in the decades before the English adventure that they went on were some of the first pioneers of what was effectively a scrimmage battle. They would set aside a large area of land and have two armies of both cavalry and infantry wage a mock battle.

Originally, these battles were fought with ideally blunted weapons. Keep in mind when I say this, ideally, as you talked about here earlier, Gabby, the amount of quality control that actually existed for this was not always guaranteed.

Oh, man. So, yeah, but there isn't a ton of rules and regulations, which is perhaps then to be expected. Each tournament effectively set its own rules, but these were not often made to protect the combatants. What were they made to protect? Just to establish a series of rules for how to determine who wins. Oh, boy. It wasn't a matter of protection. It was these are the boundaries that we're going to create so that we can judge it. Well, I guess that makes sense when you look at.

Their alternative would be nice just killing each other in actual battle. So exactly. So it would take then several centuries to implement safeguards for tournament combatants with addition of show or blunted weapons, rules for downed fighters and even limitations on who could enter as fighters. It culminated in the dissolution of the melee in Europe in favor of the joust instead, based on the reduction of risk to individual combatants.

This movement away from the melee was in line with the adoption of further regulations placed on the combat to make them safer. The 1292 Statute of Arms dictated that no pointed weapons were to be used in tournaments.

It took like 200 something years to know, guys, hey, does this thing have a sharp point on it? Yeah. OK, we probably shouldn't use that. I'm glad they finally came around eventually. Yeah, this wasn't an isolated incident either. Just like modern sports tournaments had to respond to a high percentage of participants that were killed or maimed in combat. In Germany, by 1480, there was a formal inspection process of weapons to ensure that they were actually blunt.

Which means that for a couple hundred years, some places would have more rules, others would not. And it was like, guys, bro, trust me, it's totally blunt. I swear it's fine.

Yeah. Groups of armed men armed with quarterstaffs would stand sentinel around the arena itself to rush and protect individual combatants from injury or being after being unhorsed if something like that happened. Squires could rush to help their lord should he be imperiled and were protected by regulations that condemned their attackers to both prison and confiscation of their war gear before facing public shaming if they went and attacked them. Okay, so they started to get serious. They did, but this is especially going into the 1400s where...

there's a lot more pageantry involved. So did they do all of this for money? Like, what was the point? That's a good question. Why all this risk? Why take to the field of battle for no military aim with all the perils involved?

Well, just like any modern sporting event, people tournaments had a lot of money involved in them. Knew it. And there were often many prizes that were handed out. You get jewelry, exotic animals, other luxury items, all different kinds of things. If you won the tournament. Plus, all the ladies will think you're badass. Oh, no, that was actually part of it. Like is part of the thing to show off your prowess. If you were trying to impress someone. Yes, indeed.

That means like people talk about that whole thing for like a night trying to win a lady's favorite. No, that literally could be a part of a whole thing for a tournament. I would definitely swoon if I saw somebody hit somebody with a big pole and they fell off their horse. Yes, you would, Gabby. Yes, you would. Swoon worthy. Mm hmm.

So besides all that, though, there were other ways to make money, too. Knights could be taken prisoner or have their war gear taken for ransom. In some instances, the loser of a joust would suffer the indignity of losing their armor for losing the tilt. And so be forced to purchase it back from the winner for oftentimes exorbitant amounts of money. Oh, that would actually piss me off. Yeah. They were just cool with it. That was just a rule. So they were like, that's fine. None of this stuff is mass produced. Like, OK, if I lost my armor, if something happened to it,

You know what I can do right now? Just order more. I can literally just order something off of like medieval collectibles or from Felon Fair. Medieval Extreme. Or why am I drawing a blank on it? I'll begin with a B. Bergschneider. Bergschneider. Yeah, I can do something like that. There was no Bergschneider back in the day. No, you had that have those pieces custom made.

Custom made every time? Every time. You could have. What if you like, I don't know, gained or lost some weight? Great question. That stuff would have to be modified.

That's so much effort for like maybe winning something. Yes. Yeah. And so that's why just because you found a suit or got a piece, it doesn't mean that it could actually be compatible with you. You didn't really know. So this is why looting on the battlefield, you didn't know if you were actually going to get a good piece that could be utilized. But you could sell it. But you could sell it. And it was probably going to fit someone or could be modified in some way to fit someone else. So that's pretty much how that would work. Either way,

When you're able to take prisoners, when you're able to ransom them back to their families, when you're able to get all this gear, there was way more that was on the line in addition to hoping to just take the victor's purse. And while it's often a trope in your early mountain blade games, if you or anyone who actually listened to this right now, if you go and play that, which I highly recommend because awesome game, it is entirely possible for knights to make a decent living just from tournaments.

William Marshall, the Earl of Pembroke, made a comfortable living in his youth as a tournament fighter before receiving the favor of Eleanor of Aquitaine. That is just something that if you were good, it's like being a sports star back in the day. With all this death and injury, though, how did society react to the tournament, you may wonder?

While in our Olympic episode, we talked about how any free male could compete. The tournament was much more rigid and thankfully more clothed. Especially considering that I knew that you would boo of all people when talking about this Gabby. For anyone who listened to that episode, there's one type of thing that got her very interested. And that was the, um, why am I drawing a blank? It was the type of race where they race while carrying a shield and armed in like greaves, slingshots.

So they're naked except for limited pieces of armor that they're wearing. And maybe like a small bit of loincloth. No. Some did. They're free balling most of the time. That sounds so uncomfortable to run, though. I mean, I wouldn't know, but I'd assume. Oh, the thing they would often do is they would tie their penis to them. So you give you took it like a string or something. So I think we talked about the claw is they would wrap it around the penis and then they would tie it to their leg.

No. Yeah. I refuse to believe anyone would do that. So it's not just dangling around there while running. Yeah. No. Yeah.

See, this is one of those moments when I explain something to her and she's just like, no. Would you tie it to you? Like if you had to, if you had to. If I had to, sure. Anyone with comments available, put it in. Would you tie it? Would you be willing to do that? I feel like that's just not only is it dehumanizing, it would be uncomfortable. Uh-huh.

I don't know how I feel about that. Yeah. Well, that's what people would have to do. And thing is, as time went on, of course, they would obviously wear clothing.

Originally, you had to be wealthy enough to afford the armor and mounts to even participate, which effectively would bar most people from competing. But interestingly enough, as the medieval ages progressed, you didn't just need to be noble because there was a wealthy non-military class of the population that would emerge as cities developed more and you had merchants, kind of like what I talked about with the Italians. So when this happens, that meant that they needed to reestablish the exclusivity of the spectacle and also to keep untrained amateurs from getting themselves needlessly killed.

In England, high fees prevented all but the most determined from entering the lists. While in Germany, prescriptive lists prevented non-nobles from participating in tournaments, and individuals had to present documentation and could not be a heretic, an adulterer, a merchant, or quote, someone who intended to seduce women or virgins by word or deed. Okay, so that makes a lot of sense why in A Knight's Tale he needed to get his papers forged.

Yes. Literally yes. To enter the tournament because also he wouldn't be allowed. Yes. Okay. That makes so much sense. And also you can be, you can cheat on your wife. Yes. That's so noble of them. That's so good.

Remember that whole thing that we were talking about with the knights errant, like the wandering knights who were trying to go and do this stuff for a living? So theoretically, one of the things that could potentially happen is that you could get a guy who wanted to try and impress some noble lady. So he goes to try to win and show himself off at a tournament so that he can bag some rich older woman who is maybe newly widowed or something along those lines. At least he tried to wow her. Yeah. I feel like that's just...

You know, it's kind of noble as long as he's being on the up and up. He's trying to get it, you know, he's trying to get the bag. And so the tournament was interesting that when we talk about that whole thing with women, it was a time when the gender lines of society actually would slightly blur. I mean, ever so slightly, women played roles in the tournament beyond objects of admiration, taking part in roundtable tournaments where ladies would play the part of noble women from the story of King Arthur.

They would take their place as the face and mistress of chivalry, commanding their knights to take to the field. Some women even composed and performed songs for events where they normally were not able to, adding to the already extensive opulence of the entire affair.

Men, too, use the tournament as a way to show off. We're used to the notion of medieval chivalry's opulence and tournaments were perhaps exemplary of this. Armor was embellished and upscaled with all kinds of stuff. We're talking gold, jewels, ornate designs. You if you think of like a crazy fancy suit of armor, you're probably thinking of a tournament armor, as I already talked about.

You have to remember the tournaments were some of the few times in which all the nobility gathered together, and so the impulse to show off your wealth and prestige was overwhelming.

It got so bad that even some tournaments had to forbid particularly opulent displays, forbidding gold and velvet and limiting spectating women to just four skirts so that they didn't like show up in the most insane over the top outfits possible. Think of it like the Kentucky Derby on super steroids at a time when everyone else is in like drab brown cloth.

So you had to know you can only wear four different skirts. Yeah, like four different skirts or like different things of layering that would show off how many different colors, patterns and other things that you had. Interesting. Beyond societal reactions, the church also provides an interesting juxtaposition, though, which to view the tournament. Ironically, the church decried tournaments as acts of senseless barbarity and

and bemoaned Christians killing Christians on the field while simultaneously calling for a near-continuous war in the Middle East.

So scholars are divided, but there's not insignificant argument to make about this serving the same end as the tournament and siphoning off the violent energy of European chivalry. We already talked about like how in the first crusade, one of the key points for this. And I remember when we did that whole nine part series on the crusades, how the the the papacy was basically like, all right, we need to get these French knights to stop killing each other and to follow us. Guys, let's go to the Middle East.

Let's save Jerusalem. And that was like one of the key points behind why they did it. Like, look, look, this is how crazy this stuff could get. In one notable instance, 16 knights died in one day of tournament fighting.

The local church where this incident happened would condemn tournaments as, quote, inventions of the devil and distractions from crusading against true enemies. And from there, the knights who died, they were denied burial on holy ground, which if you get that for the Catholic Church is a really big deal. Yeah. So the religious pressure against tournaments were interesting enough. And this would be paired by concerns with the very nobility itself on what tournaments could do to the stability of the realm.

I mean, think about it. You are a medieval king. Surely you have supporters, but you also have enemies. Tournaments provided an excellent place for all of them to meet near you. Conveniently armed for combat. Tournaments were centers of violence and greed, lubricated by plentiful drinks. Because holy crap, would people get drunk at these things? Guess what, Gab? Just like the Ren Faire. Kings like Henry II and Louis IX went so far as to outlaw tournaments entirely based off these fears.

Richard the Lionheart, son of Henry II, did bring them back, but under strict conditions, including licensing and strict fee schedule. By the end of Richard's reign, only six sites in England were allowed to even host tournaments, giving him economic and political control over the tournament market.

This is just one of those things that when we talk about this, like, I think there's a larger point to be made about the history of sports and the history of tournaments. Often an extension of society, sports tend to underscore some of the best and worst instincts of society itself. Paired with large sums of money, sports can spread into discussions about society, culture, and even morality. And I think you could find parallels and discussions about the state of society based on medieval sports and discussions about similar modern sports.

Either way, I'm looking forward to learning more about the historical past of combat sports while I continue to beat the crap out of people on the field. At least that is my hope when going into this. I really hope that I don't get a third concussion.

Why would you say that? Because I what you want me to say? Oh, man, I really hope that I get a third. Who would say that? No, I'm really saying why did you bring up the possibility of a concussion? I'm wearing a 30 pound helmet. The chances of that are probably way lower than it ever was in soccer, because in soccer, a game where you're not supposed to be getting head injuries. I got headbutt in the face and it shattered my nose and gave me a concussion. The moment you get a concussion, you're never you're not LARPing. You're not boo hurting. You're not doing anything.

bubble wrapping you well thanks gap yeah don't worry anytime on that note i think we're gonna go ahead and end things here today my friends thank you all to everyone who has been listening i will see you all here next time um let us know in the comments this now since spotify and apple and everything else in here like they have comments or at least spotify does so let us know what it is that you'd like to hear next make sure to check us out on patreon because if you want ad free episodes as well as bonus episodes we have a whole bunch of things that

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