About the Lord of the Rings scenario, maybe the closest historical equivalent of that would be patrols and pilgrimages. The only way a group as small as the Fellowship of the Ring would normally be used militarily would be as a patrol, which almost always had some kind of reconnaissance function: looking for the enemy, scouting the land for obstacles and shortcuts, or trying to find food and water. So while patrols might have swords to defend themselves, combat wasn't the point. It was much more important to get back to your army with whatever information you'd learned than to kill the other guys. Fighting was likely only when you stumbled into another patrol accidentally, or you had some kind of overwhelming advantage (like you caught the other patrol with their sentry asleep). You didn't want to let a hostile patrol get too close to you, and you might unleash arrows or javelins on them to encourage them to keep their distance, but a wise patrol leader wasn't going to turn it into a fight to the death if he could avoid it. But patrols, of course, usually stayed within a couple of days' ride of their parent army or garrison. And they were almost always mounted, so they could travel fast and avoid being captured. The Fellowship's long trek on foot from Rivendell to Mordor was more like a pilgrimage than any kind of historical military mission. So maybe the most useful sources about Fellowship-of-the-Ring-type scenarios would be about the Templars, Hospitallers, and other military orders who guarded pilgrims on their journeys through dangerous parts of the Holy Land. I don't know much about this, but a glance at the primary sources seems to suggest 1) pilgrims sometimes traveled in much larger groups than the Fellowship -- one group of 700 pilgrims was attacked and badly mauled by the Egyptians in 1119, and 2) the Templars built castles all along the pilgrim routes so they could take shelter if attacked. So once again, avoiding swordfights may have been more important than winning them.
Great talk. It's always good to hear someone with a lot of knowledge.
About the Lord of the Rings scenario, maybe the closest historical equivalent of that would be patrols and pilgrimages. The only way a group as small as the Fellowship of the Ring would normally be used militarily would be as a patrol, which almost always had some kind of reconnaissance function: looking for the enemy, scouting the land for obstacles and shortcuts, or trying to find food and water. So while patrols might have swords to defend themselves, combat wasn't the point. It was much more important to get back to your army with whatever information you'd learned than to kill the other guys. Fighting was likely only when you stumbled into another patrol accidentally, or you had some kind of overwhelming advantage (like you caught the other patrol with their sentry asleep). You didn't want to let a hostile patrol get too close to you, and you might unleash arrows or javelins on them to encourage them to keep their distance, but a wise patrol leader wasn't going to turn it into a fight to the death if he could avoid it.
But patrols, of course, usually stayed within a couple of days' ride of their parent army or garrison. And they were almost always mounted, so they could travel fast and avoid being captured. The Fellowship's long trek on foot from Rivendell to Mordor was more like a pilgrimage than any kind of historical military mission. So maybe the most useful sources about Fellowship-of-the-Ring-type scenarios would be about the Templars, Hospitallers, and other military orders who guarded pilgrims on their journeys through dangerous parts of the Holy Land. I don't know much about this, but a glance at the primary sources seems to suggest 1) pilgrims sometimes traveled in much larger groups than the Fellowship -- one group of 700 pilgrims was attacked and badly mauled by the Egyptians in 1119, and 2) the Templars built castles all along the pilgrim routes so they could take shelter if attacked. So once again, avoiding swordfights may have been more important than winning them.
Bronze swords... 🤯🤯🤯