The Armour Archive

Sort of a continuation of the period manuals discussions.

Why aren't shields more prominent in illustrations of late medieval fighting (1300-1600)?

Granted there are exceptions, pavises, the offensive shields used in judicial combats, etc... But by and large shields are not a huge presence on the late medieval battlefield and the shields that do appear are generally small.

Why?

My personal theory is logistics. A large shield is a pain in the ass to haul around. So it was unlikely to be used in the skirmishing warfare that makes up the majority of fighting in a war (or the street fighting of civil unrest / feud) More importantly, fighting in groups with large shields is a very different skill from individual fighting. Since what passed for a standing army in the Middle Ages was centered around the horseman there was no way for large groups to aquire the skill of fighting with large shields.

Thoughts?

Look at the later era weapons. Pikes, polearmms, 2 handed swords. How would you use a shield? I do a 1540s Landsknecht and prefer to use a Zweihander and a Katzbalger if I loose my Zweihander. I like polearms too. I do use a small buckler for rapier fighting, which is period. But I do wonder about fighting with maces and warhammers with out a shield.

I was always thought it was the Armour. The more Armour you have on the less you need a shield. The more Armour your opponent has on the greater your force must be to penetrate. Thus two handed weapons.

Thanks Khann

I think khann hit the nail on the head,or shield on the boss so to speak. With solid plate defence, a shield is just an encumberance, that will be hacked to bits within a short time anyway. I think they often blocked head shots with the left arm,and just kind of absorbed the rest...Otto

Plate is great for those that can afford it, i.e. the guys that composed the cavalry and had no need of a big shield. What about the infantry peons?

I think a big part of it is a lack or arrows/quarrels in honorable combat.

Aelric

ahh, but remember, these are books, i fyou can afford a manual then you are fighting in plate, probly from horseback. the infantry peopns likley wouldnt have had access to it.

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What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee:

....From the 14th century on, the "infantry peons" were increasingly and almost exclusively armed with weapons requiring two hands to wield.

After the late 14th century in North Western Europe, the 'paviser' had seen his day end with the civic Militia of Paris arnound the turn of the 15th century.

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Bob R.

"What about the infantry peons? "

They were not the mud covered peasants of modern movies. Like Chef said they had pole arms and pikes.

By the fifteenth century armour had advanced to the point of making the shield an unnecessary encumbrance. By that time, knights only carried one for the joust.
The infantry carried the small bucklers which survived well into the Elizabethian period. Pavises still existed for the arhcers, crossbowmen, and handgunners. In fact, this was sole duty of the 'pavissers', to provide thier protection.
Again, with the popularity and effectiveness of two-handed weapons, shields were not used.

Ryan

About the peons, it seems to be a great advantage to be more mobile than your more encumbured boss in plate armour. I think that if facing a square of billhook -wielding manics, i would not want anything attached to me that could be caught and pulled in range of them. i still use a billhook out here on my small landholding/farm for tree and branch removal, and it make me wonder about the courage of those "peons" to stand and fight in all that.

Another question about the peon thing... I understand about the idea of the SCA and that we are all "enobled" because of it...We greet each other as nobility M'lord, M'lady, and can get rank via lord/ladyship etc..
Is it possible for someone to want to portray a peasant-not the bird- and not get the bird because of it?
cheers
galenow

We have to always beware the spectre of speculation on any historical topic. The most important thing in all this is that in the treatises on combat, there is very little material on the use of the shield. This should give us pause and cause to reconsider what we're doing as recreationists in representing foot combat in the period we study.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Bob Charron:
We have to always beware the spectre of speculation on any historical topic. The most important thing in all this is that in the treatises on combat, there is very little material on the use of the shield. This should give us pause and cause to reconsider what we're doing as recreationists in representing foot combat in the period we study.</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

AS I have argued in the past, however, Bob, the treatises aren't the be-all-and-end-all of medieval combat. Even if we allow that they are representative of some kinds of medieval combat in the periods in which they were written (and I don't accept that), they were still all (with the exception of I33) written after the point in history when armor largely obviated the need for shields. If one were to use the Manessa Codex as a guide (and I do), one could argue that shields were very common, almost essential for dismounted combat among knights. Even the fellow who has grasped his sword in both hands still retains his shield on his back rather than getting rid of it. There are many, many sources that show earlier knights (prior to the middle of the 14th century, although shields are still commonly seen after that) using shields from the Grande Chronique to the Manessa to the "Mispronounski" (grin) Bible. Let's not get so caught up in the fechtbucher that we ignore the fighting of the rest of the middle ages!

Having said that, however, what others have said above is true: Shields became much less common (except with lances on horseback)as armor became so much more effective, both because they were rendered unnecessary by the armor and because knights wanted to free up their other hand for a two-handed weapon.

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Hugh Knight
"Welcome to the Church of the Open Field, let us 'prey': Hunt hard, kill swiftly, waste nothing, make no apologies"

SyrRhys,

I like it when you and Evil Bob get onto the same thread... the result is always a very high-level conversation.

I've had this same "the map is not the terrain" problem with the fechtbuchs for some time, and I'm one of the folks who's been neck deep in dragging them out... though E.B. is unique in having a startlingly well-organized and prescriptive text. It's for this reason that I've irritated a lot of the wma folks in looking at the differences between the manuscripts... there are so many differences in body usage that, imho, one MUST conclude that there were a vast number of different, though sometimes related, fighting styles around, and it would be foolish of us to think that we had more than the tip of the iceberg.

But there are, actually, several instances where shields figure prominently in Central European military history. I"ll give a few.

1. Sigismund of Luxembourg, at this point an elector, but not yet Emperor, is ambushed in the Transylvanian mountains by a contingent of Vlachs. His retinue covers him from the Vlachs' poisoned arrows with their shields until they can get him to safety. (Bob, an implication about the power of the Turkish bows, that needs to be run through eventually. This weekend remind me to tell you about the battle of Nicopolis).

2. The army of Janos Hunyadi, and Mattyas Corvinus: both were made of wagonburg troops, but in Mattyas' (Matthias') army, pavisiers formed the backbone of his infantry, which combined very heavy infantry with pavises with heavy cavalry, augmented by archer/skirmishers. They were generally able to far outfight their weight in enemy troops because they were organized around what the pavise could do for the infantry.

3. Hussars in both Hungary and Poland made extensive use of the tarcsa, a particular form of shield, and even those whose roles were more on skirmishing lines (the geography of East Central and Eastern Europe dictating vastly improved mobility as a military necessity, otherwise the Tatars and Ottomans simply raid your economy to death), used a mid-sized round steel shield, sometimes of buckler size, sometimes larger.

4. If you look through, say, Gladiatoria (which Bart Walczak is now transcribing! Joy!), you'll see those funky corrugated shields being used.

5. Spanish footmen fighting against pike-and-musket troops still used a shield and sword.

I personally suspect that shield use was quite widespread. For my area, you even have that weird semi-lozenge "Ungarische shilt" with the thrusting spike right where it'd hurt the most on a boxing jab... but we get into trouble between what survives in images and archaeology, and what was likely to be more common usage.

This whole post has probably made Chef twitch: just one of those cases where specific locations and times really makes for vast differences, and broad generalizations can get us into big trouble. Most of what I know about late medieval military methods would be totally unpracticable in Burgundy in his period...

"it seems to be a great advantage to be more mobile than your more encumbured boss in plate armour"

Yes in little to no armour you'd be real mobile, until you were hit once fairly well, then you'd be dead. You plate wearing boss was a walking tank,he's virtually indestructible, and trained in say Fiore or Talhoffer.

As the light fades from the aformentioned peon's eyes he might note the piles of dead relatives at the feet of the plate wearing boss and realize that he should have armoured more heavily (assuming the peon's found a wat to unhorse him in the first place)

Course thats rather irrelevant since nekked pesants were not on the battle field as a general rule.

Even men at arms would have been in things like plackards, curiass, chapel de fer ectect. They weren't exactaly lightly armoured in SCA terms.

I think Chef once posted something about men at arms becoming so well equipped that the nobels were getting jealous, and wanted them barred from the lists.

IMO nekked, unwased, infantry is largely a myth.

Besides who would want to be a pesant?
I'm a pesant in real life, it sucks!

As for my feelings on this subject, you can take Rhys' post above, copy it, and just sign my name at the bottom. I feel that even after the shield became relegated to the tiltyard, that it's use for every situation was widely taught. You would have learned how to use a shield by the time you were ten years old. Not everyone on the field had full white armour, even by the end of the 1400's- these people utilized shields of all types. They appear in illustrated editions of Froissart well after the 14th century.

[This message has been edited by Vitus (edited 02-14-2002).]

What I seem to be hearing here, from some of you, is that the shield largely fell by the wayside (but never disappeared entirely) because the tactical focus was on the offensive (i.e. 'the best defense is a good offense') and that this mindset was brought about the by development of armor which made powerful offensive weapons necessary.

Which is to say: in order to bring down the armored juggernaut (who happens to be trained in close quarter combat) you needed a weapon which could inflict lots of damage at the greatest range.

Thanks Russ, for following the advice of my post and locating examples that would document the use of large shields - exactly what I meant. Let's continue to do this.

So, if your part of any of these infantry contingents and you're going to fight in a large, static formation backed up by archery or guns, then please use large, pavise-like shields.

If you're going to protect the man who writes your paychecks from any possible arrow hit please use your shields to do so. Especially if the enemy will not close so you can use your weapons. This makes perfect sense to me. They are no liability at all in this case.

Hugh also mentioned knights on foot in the 13th century fighting on with shields after being unhorsed. Sure. They had the shields on their arms and necks while they were on the horse, and they're still there. And he speaks about slinging the shield behind you on the guige when it got down and dirty (if you have time to do so after being dismounted)- and I've seen a lot of that in the illuminations.

In a line of dismounted knights in any era who the enemy were going to close with would do this very same thing. There is a difference between fighting at distance or fighting in little armor compared with fighting up close and personal and with a lot of armor. The left hand is much, much, more useful when unencumbered by a shield.

So....I'm not arguing anything here except that we should look at the documentation. If we have books used to instruct nobles in combat, we should take their material into consideration.

Were shields used on foot by nobles in the period? Without a doubt. In the proportion that we see them used in the SCA? Very doubtful.

I don't think there is anything wrong in saying that for supposedly heavily armored nobles (which is a little redundant, no matter if you're Roman or Renaissance Dutch), we see too many shields for the kind of fighting we're supposed to be doing most of the time in the SCA.

And that's why Jester's question got raised. There was an apparent discrepancy he noticed between the game we're supposed to be playing, and the manuals that taught that game.

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Bob Charron
St. Martins Academy of Medieval Arms

[This message has been edited by Bob Charron (edited 02-14-2002).]

Could it be the fault of the artisans?

My knowledge is limited, so I am probably way off base. But I went to a museum once. Oh, and the other night I stayed at a Holiday inn...

Anyway, my lady and I took a trip to the museum a few weeks back and there wasn't much of anything as far as armour, but I did see several paintings that if you looked real close, you could see combat. One was even a siege of a city in France. The painting was said to have been painted in the 17th century - representing a 15th century siege. What I found interesting - and pertaining to this post - is that the artist was french, and that the army trying to siege the city were all in black (presumably some sort of heat-blued armour) while the french were all in shiny white/gray armour. (Good vs. Bad ) I saw the French wer fighting with no shields and mostly weapons that we simulate in the more outgoing Pas'. While the invading army used siege engines, etc.

My point is - you can't always trust the artist. I stared at this one picture for over 30 minutes and I could see were the artists loyalty layed (or lied?) without even knowning he was a french artist. His dipiction of the battle favoured the French to be honorable and fighting with virtue, while the invading army were dogs who were fighting for the pure pleasure of killing.

So maybe, just maybe, the lack of shields in historical art is an artist trying to recreate a chivalric picture in his mind that he was never around to see. Kind of like we do, only we use performing arts rather than painted art.

Just my thought - feel free to shoot holes in it.

In Service,
Aidan

Hi Aiden,

The "chivalric" display would give the defenders their pretty, heraldic shields. Speculating about art only gives you - well, speculation. What tells you the nitty-gritty of how armies were equiped and fought are those boring, musty, muster rolls, and inventories of equipment bought, ordinances of armies, etc. Add to that battlefield archaeology, and first hand accounts of combat.

These example give overwhelming evidence for the lack of shield use in combat from the late 14th century - 15th century.

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Bob R.

[This message has been edited by chef de chambre (edited 02-20-2002).]