What is the difference between a war and a tournament?

Answer 1

Tournaments were the sporting practice of martial skill, and in later medieval periods, heavily regulated in terms of equipment used and material.

Early tournaments were much less regulated, spreading over a large area of land, often with bands of knights working together in teams to ambush and capture opponents, for the honour of defeating them, and the large profits to be made by such capture.

by the later 14th and 15th C the field of tournament had become restricted to a single field, or "list", and sporting elements such as the joust were developed, with additions such as the tilting barrier, a fence between the riders to prevent the two horses colliding, the use of specially-made lance heads to minimise injury, and the baton, a wooden or whalebone sword to minimise injury.
Later on, jousting armour became incredibly heavy and thick to protect blows only coming from the one side, for maximum protection at the expense of mobilty - utterly impractical for real combat.


Warfare, in contrast, was simple, no holds-barred conflict not between individuals, but between nation states, with the intention to cause injury, death or harm which the tournament avoided.