I would like to know if anyone really knows what was commonly used (historically) as a campaign scabbard for long longswords and hand and half swords.

I have ordered my first collection item, a Crecy Grete. It will be 45" long. I experimented with placing an arm behind my neck while trying to lift a stick. I can not believe that a back scabbard is really all that comfortable in terms of drawing the sword (especially if wearing pauldrons). I had a suspicion that the real story may have been that there was some sort of quick release bracket utilized to hold the scabbard, such that a solder could remove the entire sword and scabbard and comfortably unsheath on of these monsterous things in front of his body.

Let me know if you have tried several things and found one that both protects the sword, but permits reasonably comfortable removal.

Hello Jared

Back scabbards where not really seen much in the european context. There are a few illustrations that show someone carrying a sword on the back but this well may be showing a military type on the march and not something that was done as a place to draw the sword from. At 45" the sword would be to long to draw from the back as you have deduced. It is most common to see swords of length carried over the shoulder like a rifle often with the pommel resting in the hand.

Best
Craig

Jared, you're partly right, at least.

To the best of my knowledge, no such quick-release devices were made or used -I'm fairly confident of that at least through the end of the 15th century. You're thinking too hard. However, you *would* have drawn the sword from its "travel-scabbard" in front of yourself.

A weapon like a greatsword was a weapon of war. One didn't just go around casualy carrying the medieval equivalent of an M-60! Any time it saw use -especialy a sword like the Crecy- it would be in a battle: which usualy occured in a field, with both armies arrayed carefully on either side, with quite a bit of time for organizing and getting one's self ready. That means there was pleanty of time to draw that monster and get rid of the clunky scabbard somewhere in the back with all the baggage.

Such a sword might be carried across the saddlebow (although recently I believe this has been questioned!); or at the hip like any other sword (there's good evidence for this in funerary brasses).
IIRC, in later periods (16th/17th centuries), greatswords might be worn in a scabbard on a baldric, which might be slung across the back, then removed for drawing. But your sword is very much 14th century, so it wouldn't be very appropriate to do so with yours.

Fiore dei Liberi likely lived most of his life during the fourteenth century. The unarmoured scabbarded sword vs. dagger plays are, IMHO, quite clear proof that longswords similar in size to Albion's Crecy were (at least occasionally) carried as self-defence weapons at the time.

Rabbe

Thankyou all for the insight.

You have helped heal my bruised ego (trying to draw the pole from behind my neck actually strained my shoulder badly enough that I was momentarily concerned that I may have significantly injured or strained my shoulder muscles!)

I think I will not concern myself with quick draw sword techniques and large swords. I may settle for a scabbard with a shoulder sling and simply taking the whole affair off if I want to withdraw it.

Jared Smith

It's the larger twohanders of the 15th and 16th century that were carried over the shoulder. But those swords were between 5-6 feet long.