#BRUTAL

THE BEST OF THE BEST OF EISENLIGA CUP WAY OF HONOR 2024
ENJOY!
POWERED BY EISENLIGA
/ eisenliga
/ eisenliga
BUHURT INTERNATIONAL
/ buhurtinternational
/ buhurt.international
Check out all themedievalthings family:
Facebook / themedievalthings
Instagram / themedievalthings
Twitch / themedievalthings
Apóyame vía PayPal [e-mail]
30 days Free Music: share.epidemic...
Support me donating by PayPal [e-mail]

[@ValfodrMN]

Always the Best!

[@Demetrio7]

Amazing!

[@germanyhmbfederation2929]

😍😍😍

[@romanor1er]

👍🏻

[@joshmarten-brown7220]

Who is the Gentleman in that amazing armour in the thumbnail?? I want to know if he has any photos of his kit

[@pablogarciahuedo6925]

Me han salido moratones viéndolo

[@Philtopy]

Modern Buhurt is not medieval.
It is medieval inspired, but not medieval.
I’m not criticising. It’s awesome and cool.
I just want to raise awareness about the wording.
many things in these fights have no basis in historical accuracy. Many of wich are there because of safety reasons (because no participant wants to risk death) and because the fighters are hobbyists doing this in their free time and not knights. They are strong and hefty, but they lack the actual physique and skills of people who trained deadly combat from their childhood on.

[@Themedievalthings]

@@Philtopy we have not the technology yet morty, but we will

[@Renemy11500]

Whats the diffrence with old school buhurt? (Leaving techniques out)

[@Themedievalthings]

None at all, he is talking about correct medieval technics and materials in buhurt, so, not talking about buhurt, a mix between reenactment and hema, as usual

[@lorenzodoz992]

Pues agárrame esta, saludo amigo.

[@Philtopy]

@@Renemy11500 Ill gladly elaborate. please prepare for a wall of text because Im an enthusiast and jsut love talking about it. (I was a medieval tour guide in a castle for a year)
*edit, ok it became really long and took over an hour to write. But I hope its an interesting read :)*
The intention of a buhurt was different from today.
Today its a sports competition with the goal of making opponents yield by overwhelming them with blunt force. Secondly its an important imperative that all combatants survive the competition with minimal to no major injuries. thirdly the modern competitions have a system of many teams competing several rounds until one final winner and second and third places are determined. The entire priority of the fights is that a team wins as a group entity. The individual fights for the group.
I will take all these points appart now in comparison to the historical evidence I can remember. Its a general swing so dont expect actual named sources. For that I would have to invest some hours wich I simply do not have.
*1. safety and the point of a buhurt:*
historically speaking people had a completely different mindset than we have today. For them death was something very present and all around them. 1/3 of all kids died at the age before 10. another 3rd doesnt survive until the age of 18. Sickness and injury are abundant even in times of peace. These people were also very spiritual. Fate and acceptance of peril was hardbound into their minds. This was especially present with the knights who were a class of warriors who all strived towards doing their god given duty and stand out from the crowd to gain their lords and gods favor.
A buhurt wasnt "a sports competition". it was a ritualised battle. serious business. a test of their combat ability and bravery and a chance to show everybody their worth as a warrior. of course they made a big sports show around it, especially in late medieval times, but the essence of it stayed the same. They were also much rarer.
There are scripts about a french knight who fought and won glory in ONE buhurt and lived from that fame for the rest of his life.
so having in mind that these people didnt fear death or injury as much as we do today and that they actively sought out these risks to show off, all these safety measures we have today werent their concern back then. Your only imperative was to keep yourself and your friends and relatives alive. injuring or killing your opponent wasnt that bad. of course you would still try to avoid killing them to not demage your lords combat force or to risk blood feuds with other houses, but if your opponent simply wasnt a good enough warrior to prevent his death, heh sucks to be him.
So they often fought to first blood until their opponent yielded to avoid further demage o himself. So they aimed for weak spots and didnt thrash on the same plate 20+ times to cause a blunt force trauma. (like in modern buhurt)
We know this because there is plenty evidence that many people died in these buhurts and many others suffered grave and crippling injuries.
*2. the kit:*
*Team Colours:* Parts of what I said in point one already explains a lot of things. But these people were also about presentation. You had your own house with its own heraldry and you wouldnt wear team colours, but the colours of your own. So every team would consist of many different colours. this way you could always be identified as an individual amongst the fight.
(its the same for actual medieval battles. A medieval army was a glittering rainbow of colours and these people knew their allied colours very well, so they had little issue to indentify who is who.
*Stature:* They had to sustain their combat prowess to protect their lands and status and they tried to gain attention to increase their fame and income. so they started training combat from a very young age and sustained that training for their entire lifes. Their physique is so different to what the modern buhurt fighters have. Most modern fighters are bulky and brawny, spending many hours in the gym to create muscle mass. they also only train in armor once or twice a week at most. They are, in the end, just civilians doing this as a side hobby.
but a knight *lived* for combat. he trained in armor for his entire life. he has built a musculature to sustain it and wear it like a second skin. their body shape wasnt bulky, but slim. their endurance must have been legendary. much more comparable to what we see with traditional martial artists like Bruce Lee: slim, but made out of flexible steel. Its obvious we cannot reenact those people statures and it would be unfair to judge modern buhurt fighters by these standarts, but the difference is still there and has to be mentioned. When something claims to be medieval, all factors have to be considered.
*The armor:* These modern buhurt armors ARE historical! definetly 100%!
They just have two issues: They use kit from all across medieval times. It is not fitted to one specific era. You have somebody wearing half plate from the 15th century to a norman facegrilled helmet from the 12th. For example. (I dont mind that so much but others see that as a MAJOR historical innaccuracy and write entire novels about how that is heresy)
also many of them are not fitted to the body shape of the wearer, but to the padding, nor are they crafted to the same degree of quality as the armor of old. They are used as tools for the competition. nothing more.
But the medieval knights were different. Their armor was part of their image. It was part of what they are. They lived in them. They therefor invested HUGE ammounts of wealth into them and payed great attention to look great while wearing them. they had servants and squires cleaning and maintining them.
A lot of their life was about showing off, appearing "above the crowd" and they invested a lot of care into that image. you can compare their mindset a little to modern gangster rappers. By that I mean the way they treated the people close to them, the way they talked tough when faced with opposition and how they rewarded loyalty or betrayal. part of that "showing off" status was to present a formidable knightly physique and athletic ability. a super padded warrior like a mountain wasnt their intention. all historical imagery shows their slim waist lines, highly polished armor and fabulous individual decorations. Also if you decrease the padding, you can also make the armor smaller and decrease weight and cost.
And a well fitted armor that sits tightly on your body has all the protection you needed. Your shield and combat ability made up the rest of your safety lines.
*3: The structure of a buhurt competition:*
There was many reasons why buhurts were made: To settle a feud, to keep your knights occupied in times of peace, to show off the combat prowess of your knights to others.
the century is very important here. Because the "sports event" buhurt only got into fashion in the late medieval times.
keeping in mind how dangerous these fights are and how a man already presented his prowess by joining a fight once, there wasnt a need to pit a team twice. They much rather fought once. There are some indications that victorious and still combat ready individuals would sometimes join further buhurts with new team compositions until a select small group of winners was determined like "Sir XY wins as the best fighter, not a single blade has touched his skin! Sir YX wins a prize because he has beaten Sir XX who was undefeated for so long! Sir YY wins a prize as the toughest for he has fought while bleeding out of a dozen places!" And so on. But that was only the case with the second kind of buhurt that was most like "sports event" and what inspired modern buhurt.
But the far greater majority of buhurts were about settling feuds between houses, lords or kings. Then the battle was much more serious and taking other knights hostage was a priority. A man who was defeated was declared a hostage, had to pack his things and join the victors household and live there until ransomed out. they didnt have a bad life there perse, but it sometimes took years for their family to be able to affort the payout and the lord of a land beeing away as a hostage for so long can cause major demage to everything concerning the property because others might exploit that weakness.
You see with all this babble that the entire concept of a friends teams vs teams kind of sports competition with blunt weapons and padding are a completely different scenario as the historical one.
We modern people cannot reenact real historical buhurt because we want to have it safe and as a frequently repeating thing. The physique of out modern figthers is not comparable to those of our ancestors and we cannot affort the same ammount of money and care for our kit.
That doesnt mean modern buhurt is bad. its still an awesome window into our legacy and its a great spectactle to watch. But in the end its just a romanticized fantasy of the real deal and we will never ever have something that really comes close to that. Because then we would have to have much better trained fighters, individual coat of arms, better armor and a high risk of death and permanent injury to everybody involved.