The art of fight-genesis

At this painting  we can see a  band of knights probably from XII century fighting in a long chain armours and great helmets with decorative talberts on them. Winning group domp the helmets from they oponents to show that the're beaten.

One of the most iportant aspects of medieval knight life was war.We might say that knights functionined and lived only for fight and contest,because the other points of knight's rules such as defending christans and proceeding according to rules of Holy Bible were reather threated iconically.

The most popular and known combat skill tests was the knights tournaments consisting of a series of single duels or on the beggining just one battle but with blunt weapons in this battle the only rule was: Try not to kill your oponent and the main quest was to take captives to the special area.
By the time in France shaped the duel we know the best:The horse duel.
Knights fought using five metres long lances with blunt tips and they try to dump their oponent from the saddle.

Turnaments were reserwed only for the richest nobility cause knights fought in private armours using their own lances and horses.I must refute the myth about the warrior rising  from the ground and continiue fighting after falling from the saddle because lose of helmet or falling from horse were signals to who won the duel.

There also were infrantry duels(always with armour)but they were rare because infrantry fight was less spectacular than horse duels.For win the infrantry duelist must bring his enemy to the ground.

 In this XV drawning we can see knights with full plate armour and Great basinets on their heads.From blood spiling from their legs we can tell that in this duel they use sharp blades ,and they strike to kill oponen

Of course they were more brutal and spectacular way of fighting called "sharp fighting"like Zbyszko vs Rotgier fight.
Unfortunately when the fights were battlet in armours knights didn't fight using long swords(too heavy,too small places)They fights using short war axes or shortswords,maces or various types of blunt weapons which passed the exam against the practically unpenetrable plate armour.

Above we can see the page from Talhoffer's fight book.This book writen in XV century is just a mine of knowlege about the medieval combat.