30. The Medieval Arms Race Between Swords and Armor
Beginning in the late twelfth century, an arms race began to develop between swords and the increasingly tougher armor encountered on battlefields. The result was polarization in sword designs. They became either longer and heavier for concussive impact and the infliction of blunt trauma through the armor, or more squat and sharply pointed to pierce the armor with a thrust.
By the mid-fourteenth century, the knightly sword had lost the arms race. An entirely different sword, the longsword, emerged in response to the new armor, and proved more effective at dealing with it than the knightly sword. Thus the longsword supplanted the knightly sword, and the latter was relegated to a secondary weapon or sidearm.
