In the now-a-day epoch of the drones, precision-guided munition, hypersonic missiles, laser weapons, and military robots, stuffed with artificial intelligence, the “old good” close-quarter combat is deprived of the attention of the military analysts. It is an aberration.
The course of the last much-discussed armed conflicts, such as the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Karabakh region; the USA-led international operation in Afghanistan; the relentless armed tension between the Israeli militaries and Palestinian insurgents; the civil war in Syria, – demonstrate that the outcome of many tactical clashes, although opened by the most advanced weaponry, was finally determined by the close-in combat.
Despite the widespread publicity of the Azeri “drone warfare” in Karabakh, not the drones determined the outcome of the conflict but the infantry storm of the regional stronghold of Shusha by the Azeri special forces. It demonstrated their superior training and motivation over the Armenian troops in close-quarter combat, including hand-to-hand fighting. The Americans and their allies evacuated their personnel from Afghanistan despite the efficient application of the means of remote combat, – the drones, precisely-guided munition, aviation. The final victory over the Taliban forces required prolonged engagement of the ground forces in the close-in combat in which the Afghan mujahid warriors are not so toothless as in the high-tech warfare. The American and allied losses tended to become too high to bear, and the Western governments chose to withdraw their troops until they are bogged in close-in combat,sacrificing the pro-Western Afghan regime. The Israeli army is one of the most advanced armies in the world, unrivalled in the application of high-tech warfare including artificial intelligence. However, it is unable to gain permanent combat domination over the Palestinian guerrillas due to the same self-restriction to be engaged in close-in combat fearing the unacceptable losses. The governmental forces in Syria are successfully overcoming the resistance of their opponents because they enter tactical combat supported by the Russian aviation and press their opponents to the close-in combat where they demonstrate their superior morale and fighting capability.
In the reality of modern warfare, close-quarter combat with its climax of hand-to-hand action is developing from the special fighting technique to the kind of combat of strategical importance. Surprisingly, it becomes leverage to win a war. Two distinctive strategical cultures are evident today, – for one of them the close-in combat is attractive, and another one endeavours to evade it.
However, not a long time ago there was an epoch when close quarter combat dominated warfare, most of it consisted of hand-to-hand fighting. And much nearer to our time is the period when remote combat started separating from the conjoint tactical action with close-in combat due to the emergence of the novel means of warfare, new weaponry of troops. It was the Early Modern Time, the age of the introduction of effective firearms. That process teaches a lot how to employ close-in combat and hand-to-hand fighting in the armed conflict for gaining the tactical victory with the strategical prospects. Although the experience of the past is not directly applicable by military practitioners, its analytical potential has to be regarded.
On the modern scale of measurement, Antique and Medieval warfare was close-in combat almost as a whole, and hand-to-hand fighting was its dominant part. The effective hitting distance of the projectile arms of the time, – a bow, crossbow, javelin, – was as short as a few dozen meters; it is the distance of close-in combat today, arrival at the hand-to-hand action. Despite the abundance of the Late Medieval descriptions and depictions of close-in combat, the detailed eyewitness evidence of its course is scarce, and historians study it following the Renaissance military treatises and manuals on the tactics and martial arts. However, the treatises and manuals have the important common flaw describing the fighting technique not as it was executed but as it has to be practiced according to the authors’ beliefs. It is the reason why the reconstruction of close-in combat in modern historical films is an imaginative show like a ballet dance and not a trustworthy replica of the bloody work of war.Meanwhile, there is the underestimated visual source of Russian history and, as a consequence, of the military history of Russia’s armed contenders in Early Modern Eastern Europe. It reveals the tactics of troops and their weaponry in conjunction with the technique of the Early Medieval martial art. Due to its sequence of miniatures devoted to some events, like in now-a-day comics, it affords to study close-in combat of the time in detail both in the direct and reverse directions. The latter unfolds close-in combat from different kinds of hand-to-hand fighting via the combat by the means of the remote strike to the entering an engagement. The source is the Moscow Illustrated Anthological Chronicle; it narrates the events of the second half of the 16th century sometimes meticulously. That was the time of the Illustrated Chronicle’s compilation, and it is not an aberration to presume that some of the events are depicted by their participants and witnesses or the painterswere consulted by the military professionals of the period. The knife fight was the closest and often final part of the close quarter combat in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Time. The knife fight is the most personal technique of hand-to-hand fighting. The training, psychological endurance and motivation are even more important in the loose knife action than in the collective and cohesive kinds of hand-to-hand fighting, – the spear (pike) and sabre (sword)actions.
The historians do not have an equivocal opinion about defining the knife fight as a separate part of hand-to-hand fighting considering opportunistic and accidental. The prominent researchers of the Russian Medieval weaponry and fighting technique, Artemiy Artsikhovsky and Anatoliy Kirpichnikov insist that “everything known about the combat tactic of the 11th-12th centuries do not confirm the frequent use of the knives in action” (Kirpichnikov) and “it is not reasonable to consider the knives as a widespread kind of arms” (Artsikhovsky). By the middle of the 16th century, the tactics of close-in combat did not increase the importance of the knife fight in the comparison with the 12th century. However, the compilators of the Illustrated Chronicle emphasized the knife fight during the storm of Kazan, the capital of the Kazan Khanate, in 1552. The Illustrated Chronicle places the knife fight as the climax of the storm which sealed the destiny of the city and destroyed the mighty Tatar successor of the Golden Horde.
In the Illustrated Chronicle’s comments at the miniatures, the knife fight is described as the result of the particular ferocity of the battle over Kazan and the density of combatants that made the use of swords and spears difficult. The miniatures of the “Taking of Kazan,” the definite particular narration in the Chronicle’s course of events of the 1550s, are not coloured. It shows the distribution of labour among the compilators of the Illustrated Chronicle, some of them authored the plot of the artand others worked as colourists. The uncoloured miniatures afford some important details that are evasive in colours. There are two warriors in the foreground of the knife fightminiature. It is impossible to attribute one of them to the Moscow or Kazan troops at a first glance because the Illustrated Chronicle depicts both armies similar in their arms, armour, fighting technique and equipment following the fact that they were very close really, almost twins. Meanwhile, the difference between the knives and the fighting technique of the front warriors are intentionally emphasized by the plot maker. The knife of the warrior on the left has a curved blade widening in the middle of its edge and the point hooked to its rear. He holds his knife by the “sabre grip” and thrust his opponent with the circular upward move by the blade’s point to under his chin. That is one of the few assailable spots of the mail-armoured men typical for the Moscow and Kazan forces. The knife of the warrior in the foreground’s right has a straight blade, the warrior thrust his opponent by the blade point downward, the “hammer” strike, to upper of his collarbone, – over the collar of his mail, another unprotected spot. Both warriors utilize their types of combat knives with the deadliest technique; it is evident that the knife fight is their regular combat practice. The knife with the straight blade is the combat knife known as the “Scandinavian long knife” attributed to the Vikings, North-German and North-Slavic warriors. It is similar to the combat knives on exposition in the museum of the Savva-Storogevsky (St. Savva of the Guardian Hills) Cloister near Moscow.
The knife with the curved blade is the “Eastern”, -Turkic, Persian and Arabian, – combat knife of the “khanjar” type. It is similar to the collection of the “antique” knives in the Museum of Knives in the Turkish city of Bursa. Both types of knives are well-known today due to numerous examples of 19th-20th centuries in museums and private funds, and now-a-day replicas of combat, kitchen, touristic and other varieties.
The fighting technique with the “Scandinavian” straight knife is well-known in the European swordplay manuals. On the pictures of the outstanding Polish war-artists of the second half of the 19th – first half of the 20th century, Jan Matejko and Wojciech Kossak, devoted to the Grunwald – Tannenberg battle (1410), the Czech and Teuton warriors use the combat knives of the “Scandinavian” type, both of them thrust their adversary by the “hammering” downward strike. The artists could easily consult militaries between their friends for this technique because it was a part of the infantry training in the 19th-20th century.
The fighting technique with the “Eastern” curved knife is known much lesser. The khanjar combat knife was utilized for infliction of fast cut wounds in a melee when to immobilize a few adversaries was more important than to kill one for sure. It was a similarity of the fighting application of the khanjar knife and sabre. The Crimean Tartar warrior handles his curved khanjar-type knife with the sabre grip for the slashing thrust on the oil canvas of another Polish artist of the second half of the 19th century, Walery Eljasz-Radzikowski, devoted to the battle of Cecora (1620). The pose of the warrior is a little clumsy; the artist could easily find the “Eastern”-type knife in the arms collections but was not consulted by an expert of the particular fighting technique with it.
After detecting the types of combat knives of the fierce opponents on the “knife fight” miniature of the Illustrated Chronicle, is it possible to associate the warrior with the straight combat knife of “Scandinavian” type with the Moscow offensive forces and the warrior with the curved knife of the “Eastern” type with the Kazan defensive ones? That could be a weak supposition because Kazan’s commerce with Western and Northern Europe was not lesser active than Moscow’s one, and the Moscow trade with Turkey, Iran, the Transcaucasia and Central Asia was not inferior to the Kazan trade.
Two opponents fighting with the sabres are depicted on the miniature behind the warriors fighting with the knives. One of them, behind the warrior with the straight “Scandinavian” knife, thrust with the sabre of the “Russian” type, that is similar to the “Eastern”, “Turkic Mongolian” sabre but made heavier to crush an armour. The sabres of this type have the blade of the same width almost to its point and the longitudinal groove, known as fuller, along the middle of their blade. The sabre of the opponent behind the warrior with the curved “Eastern” knife belongs to the proper “Turkic-Mongolian” type with the plane blade slowly narrowing to its point. The exact attribution of the sabres of the different types to the Moscow and Kazan opponents of the storm of Kazan in 1552 is highly dubious as well. However, it brings higher probability in a sum with the attribution of the types of knives. At last, it is possible that the warriors of the left group are Kazan’s defenders and the warriors of the right group are Moscow’s attackers.
The sabre combat was the main kind of close-in combat inEastern Europe, it came before the knife fight in the course of hand-to hand fighting and often two kinds of action were mixed in a melee as it was during the storm of Kazan.Due to the description and depiction of the storm in the Illustrated Chronicle in detail, it is possible to determine the opponent on the second miniature unmistakably. There are the Moscow troops on its left, climb into the rampart’s breach opened by the mine explosion or wall-crushing guns, and the Kazan troops on its right keep ground to repel them. The difference in the types of sabres of the foreground warriors confirms the attribution.
The third miniature emphasizes the brutality of the sabre combat; the East-European armies of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Time, among all other kinds of close-in combat, born much of their losses in the sabre fight. The losses of the sabre fight were heavier than the losses of the remote composite bow-shooting because the sabre slash produces severe hacked wounds without hope of recovery.
The sabre fight in the tactics and combat technique of the East European armies requires more study than its review as a forerunnerand co-runner of the knife fight, and we will devote the special page to it. For the present, let us pay our attention to the visual accuracy of the Moscow Illustrated Anthological Chronicle in its depiction of the weaponry, armour, equipment, tactics and fighting technique of the East European armies of the Late Medieval and Early Modern time. It turns the Illustrated Chronicle to be the first-rate historical source for our understanding of warfare. The commitment of the Moscow and Kazan forces to close-in combat and hand-to-hand fighting with their sabres and knives, their training and morale brought them their multiple battle successes in the 15th 16th centuries against each other and the enemies around.
Read about remote, close-in and hand-to-hand combat; Late Medieval and Early Modern fighting technique, tactics, operational art and strategy; rulers, generals and warriors; origin, course and consequence of war in my books, – [in English] War on the Eve of Nations. Conflicts and Militaries in Eastern Europe, 1450-1500 (Lanham, Boulder, New York and London: Lexington Books, 2021) and in Russian with English abstracts Ukrainian War (English abstract on my Akademia.edu). The Armed Conflict over Eastern Europe in the Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries, V. 1. The Melee of Rus’; V. 2, Turkish Onslaught: Balkans – Black Sea – Caucasus; V. 3. Head-to-head Offensive: Baltics – Lithuania – Steppes, Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 2017, 2018 and 2019
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Vladimir Shirogorov 