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Forum Index > Historical Arms Talk > Best Shields -- Duelling and Formations Reply to topic
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Matthew Amt




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PostPosted: Mon 27 Aug, 2012 7:10 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Matthew Harrington wrote:
Than my 10th grade history teacher must have been pulling my leg. Laughing Out Loud


Ah! Not your fault, then. Teachers and textbooks below college level seem dedicated to myths like "wily Colonials hiding behind rocks and trees, sniping at stupid Redcoats lined up in the open." It's sad....

Quote:
Thanks for the info though. Being wrong in a discussion just means I learn more!


Happy to help! And it's a snowball effect, because the more you learn, the less you know! And good research always questions the answers rather than answering the questions. Enjoy. Bwa ha ha...

Matthew
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Kurt Scholz





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PostPosted: Mon 27 Aug, 2012 9:15 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Is it possible that for shield wall combat modified roundshields were used?
These could be closer to a targe by being suspended from a shoulder strap for example.

From the Viking duells it seems obvious that warriors anticipated the loss of shields in combat and had replacements. With such a mindset there can be slightly more dedicated versions for certain circumstances.
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Lafayette C Curtis




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PostPosted: Mon 27 Aug, 2012 10:35 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:
Scott Woodruff wrote:
People tend not to use battle tactics that result in massive casualties on both sides.


I'm skeptical of this generalization. To the contrary, I argue that close combat with edge weapons invariably results in a bloodbath if both sides stand firm.


Really? In that case, it's pretty obvious that you haven't read more recent works on the analysis of ancient Roman battles by Phil Sabin and the like, as well as similar works about the "experience of battle" dating from as early as the mid-19th century French officer Ardant du Picq to John Keegan's The Face of Battle and the like. The general consensus (or the closest thing we have to it) today sees ancient and medieval hand-to-hand combat as not being very deadly in itself as long as neither side breaks and runs, since combat itself tends to occur only along the front edges of the formation and can only last for only a few minutes before one or both sides gets physically or mentally exhausted. If only one side pulls back, the other will pursue and inflict horrendous casualties, but just as often both sides would pull back and a lull ensues until the combatants have recovered their breath (often in part by cycling fresh men into the front ranks) and charged back into the fight. This is nothing like the melées generally depicted in movies, and indeed it is the relative stability and low casualty rate of hand-to-hand combat that allows battle-winning solutions to be attempted elsewhere (such as by flanking manoeuvres or concentratng forces against a narrow section of the enemy's line).


Quote:
You see similar dynamics from the Roman era to the Renaissance. Against King Pyrrhus of Epirus, the Romans specifically - and successfully - adopted the strategy of fighting to the bitter end and inflicting debilitating casualties even in defeat.


This can be attributed to a number of factors. First, the professional core of the Epirot expeditionary army was quite small compared to that fielded by the Roman "barbarians." Second, the Romans could replace their losses much more easily than Pyrrhus did, and the Romans were probably quite aware of this. Third, I doubt the Romans were deliberately pursuing an attritional strategy; it's far more likely that Pyrrhus was making the mistake of thinking in Hellenistic terms by assuming that he would be able to force the Romans to the negotiating table if he could inflict one sufficiently dramatic defeat on the battlefield. Too bad the Romans were barbarians (don't blame me--that word came from the Tarentines whom Pyrrhus helped) and didn't understand the niceties of Hellenistic military diplomacy, so they kept on trying to obtain victory with brute force.


Quote:
They did so primarily with shields and swords.


Our understanding of Roman arms and armour in this period is nowhere as secure as that! Before the Polybian era, I don't think we have any contemporary (or near-contemporary) description of Roman equipment, and later information on the various "classes" of Roman citizen-soldiers in the pre-Polybian period are so far removed from the era they're describing that we're not sure about how seriously we should take them. Nevertheless, don't forget that these description pretty much paint the uppermost classes of the Roman citizen infantry as Italian copies of Greek hoplites, perhaps with the addition of javelins (which may be an archaic feature of earlier Greek contact since pre-Classical Greek hoplites have been depicted with javelins too). In short, we simply don't know for sure when the more familiar Polybian division into hastati, principes, and triarii came into being (and remember that these terms had different meaning in earlier Roman military organisation--again, if we could trust the evidence!)

(Look. I'm getting incoherent because I'm overwhelmed by the scarcity of evidence for this era.)


Quote:
Another famous example comes at Cannae, where Hannibal lost thousands "of his bravest men" in the carnage.


Mostly expendable Gauls who could be replaced much more easily than his African veterans, who suffered relatively little! And even then his losses are practically nothing compared to the massacre he inflicted upon the Romans. We also need to look at his other battles, like Trebbia and Lake Trasimene, where he's even more economical with his men. It is likely that, by the time of Cannae, Hannibal was beginning to get a bit desperate for a Hellenistic knockout blow that would lead the Romans to sue for peace, since his attempts to wean major Italian cities away from Roman alliance only led the traditional enemies of those cities to align even more closely with Rome.


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Jumping forward, a small force of Swiss at the Battle of Sankt Jakob an der Birs killed so many in their suicidal charge that the much larger invading French army opted to withdraw.


Certainly not a typical medieval battle!


Quote:
According to a memoir from the Battle of Novara in 1513, the the first rank of the defeated landsknechts suffered a 98% mortality rate and the victorious Swiss fared even worse. The weight of the historical evidence suggests that committed infantry units could and did hack one another to pieces.


And how typical is that casualty rate again? Remember, the Swiss had the advantage of surprise, and were basically steamrolling their way into the camp of a French army that barely had the time to form a line of battle before the Swiss bore down upon them--not to mention that most of the casualties on the Swiss side were inflicted by French artillery rather than the unprepared Landsknechts. In the more "classic" Swiss battles like Grandson and Morat (or, for that matter, Seminara) the victorious Swiss suffered little, while in more typical Swiss defeats (Cerignola and Bicocca) their victorious opponents suffered little. All this runs in favour of the interpretation that hand-to-hand combat in itself caused relatively few casualties until one side broke, at which point the victors were free to inflict horrendous losses during the pursuit.


Quote:
I interpret close combat as a game of chicken. Sometimes nobody swerves.


But in infantry combat, the body count only goes up when somebody does swerve.
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Lafayette C Curtis




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PostPosted: Mon 27 Aug, 2012 11:36 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Getting things back on topic, what should we make of the traditional reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo shield, which places an extra strap halfway between the rim and the boss? If this reconstruction is correct, it would convert a shield that otherwise looks perfectly like a Viking roundshield into an arm-strapped shield, and thus call for a different method of employment. On my part, I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of shield also existed in the Anglo-Saxon panoply alongside more conventional round shields with single central grips.
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Jean Thibodeau




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PostPosted: Mon 27 Aug, 2012 11:52 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Lafayette C Curtis wrote:
Getting things back on topic, what should we make of the traditional reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo shield, which places an extra strap halfway between the rim and the boss? If this reconstruction is correct, it would convert a shield that otherwise looks perfectly like a Viking roundshield into an arm-strapped shield, and thus call for a different method of employment. On my part, I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of shield also existed in the Anglo-Saxon panoply alongside more conventional round shields with single central grips.


Not sure if it was used historically by the Vikings but a guige strap over the shoulder would take the weight away from being only in the hand holding the shield.

Might be useful in formation but limit technique in one on one fighting.

Historical accuracy aside, the guige could be useful at times and discarded and not used when it's a nuisance and an impediment in other contexts.

You can easily give up your freedom. You have to fight hard to get it back!
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Geoff Wood




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PostPosted: Mon 27 Aug, 2012 11:57 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Lafayette C Curtis wrote:
Getting things back on topic, what should we make of the traditional reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo shield, which places an extra strap halfway between the rim and the boss? If this reconstruction is correct, it would convert a shield that otherwise looks perfectly like a Viking roundshield into an arm-strapped shield, and thus call for a different method of employment. On my part, I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of shield also existed in the Anglo-Saxon panoply alongside more conventional round shields with single central grips.


IIRC, that reconstruction was discredited. Don't have details to hand though.

Geoff
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Mikko Kuusirati




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PostPosted: Mon 27 Aug, 2012 12:58 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Sam Gordon Campbell wrote:
Would George Silver's target (targe?) be circular like the rotella or rectangular like the ones in Italian fencing treaties?
I'd assume the former rather than latter as the rectangular one is generally a centre-grip, whilst the former is strapped with 'enarmes'.

Silver's target is simply a larger shield with arm straps, as opposed to the small, hand-held buckler.



Most shields of this type do seem to have been round - I can't recall ever seeing a rectangular target, actually. Lots of rectangular bucklers, though, in Italian treatises and elsewhere.

These days, "targe" often refers specifically to the Scottish targe, which is typically smaller, flat and differs greatly in construction, but is otherwise similar to the more generic "target with t".

"And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
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Matthew Amt




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PostPosted: Mon 27 Aug, 2012 1:22 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Kurt Scholz wrote:
Is it possible that for shield wall combat modified roundshields were used?
These could be closer to a targe by being suspended from a shoulder strap for example.

From the Viking duells it seems obvious that warriors anticipated the loss of shields in combat and had replacements. With such a mindset there can be slightly more dedicated versions for certain circumstances.


It sounds like you're assuming that dueling equipment was the "default", and that battle gear had to be extra or modified or special in some way. It's the other way around, of course--duels were fought with battle equipment, or with specialized/stylized dueling equipment.

I've never seen any suggestion in ancient artwork that round center grip shields were used with neckstraps or armbands. They are always shown being held at arm's length. Probably a lot of shields had neckstraps, of course, for carrying them when not in use. That's the answer for the Sutton Hoo fittings, too, not an armband at all.

Matthew
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Scott Woodruff





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PostPosted: Mon 27 Aug, 2012 4:19 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I often use a center-grip round shield with a long guige strap that allows me to extend the shield to full arms length. This in no way limits my movement, I can easily shift from inside to outside guar and back, and pushing against the tension of the guige gives me a lot of stability and makes the shield much easier to use for long periods of time. A significant portion of preserved viking age shields have two eyelet mounts for a strap, usually these are in line with the grip so that the shield can pivot in the normal fashion, but sometimes they are at a diagonal relative to the grip. http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisandpeter/shield/shield.html
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William P




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PostPosted: Mon 27 Aug, 2012 11:17 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Matthew Amt wrote:
Kurt Scholz wrote:
Is it possible that for shield wall combat modified roundshields were used?
These could be closer to a targe by being suspended from a shoulder strap for example.

From the Viking duells it seems obvious that warriors anticipated the loss of shields in combat and had replacements. With such a mindset there can be slightly more dedicated versions for certain circumstances.


It sounds like you're assuming that dueling equipment was the "default", and that battle gear had to be extra or modified or special in some way. It's the other way around, of course--duels were fought with battle equipment, or with specialized/stylized dueling equipment.

I've never seen any suggestion in ancient artwork that round center grip shields were used with neckstraps or armbands. They are always shown being held at arm's length. Probably a lot of shields had neckstraps, of course, for carrying them when not in use. That's the answer for the Sutton Hoo fittings, too, not an armband at all.

Matthew


guiges are common for carrying on the back according to evidence ive seen in particular the site that scott has linked us to plus other websites,
and they seem a sensible thing for carrying them on the march, not to mention people like huskarls with 2 handed weapons can if needed drop the 2 hander, get the shield off their back and use it for whatever reason, whether to huddle under during arrow fire, or in other cases that a 2 handed weapon is less than ideal.

in essence, it means the shield is always there when you need it in battle.

it also seems likely that the needs of shieldwall combat is what maybe prompted the saxons by the time of hastings to adopt the kite shield. These seem more suited to an essentially static battle line. where you need to be shield facing the enemy to have it pivoting about means gaps in the lines can open up.

though i admit this doesnt explain why it wasnt adopted alot earlier, like maybe during the reign of alfred the great for example.

a strap grip shield cant be easily hooked out of your hands, and the long kite shape of course means you dont need to keep moving your shield up and down to stop people indiscriminately hitting your legs and feet with a spear or something as oppsed to the round shield.

Edit: i had meant to say that you DONT need to keep moving the shield up and down to protect your feet..


Last edited by William P on Tue 28 Aug, 2012 10:28 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Kurt Scholz





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PostPosted: Tue 28 Aug, 2012 1:36 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Yes, I think large battles were much less frequent occurences than small encounters if warfare was more endemic and more of a requirement if warfare was sporadic. A round shield is very well suited to beat up someone without exposing yourself, whether in line or not. Line combat can be a special warfare situation and a lot might depend on the regulation of activity. Front ranks can act in a more "skirmishing" manner and retreat to the safety of their common line with more mutual support. This concept can be developed into line combat with very solid lines and correspondingly arm-strapped or at least temporary(Scutum) ground-posed shields of tight ranks. Development of equipment and concepts will mutually depend upon each other with modifications of existing templates before switching to something new at the exclusion of prior design features. I wasn't referring to the Sutton Hoe shield, but to the Bayeux Tapestry Huscarls. These straps can help to use many weapons with two hands, not only Dane axes.
Scythian/Sarmatian ornaments seem to reflect a similar idea of strapping shields in different manner for utilizing the bow or the spear/xyston, while switching to a center grip mode if using axes or the akinakes, but the source and concept make it no recognizable example for infantry line combat.
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Matthew Amt




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PostPosted: Tue 28 Aug, 2012 5:39 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

William P wrote:
guiges are common for carrying on the back according to evidence ive seen in particular the site that scott has linked us to plus other websites,
and they seem a sensible thing for carrying them on the march, not to mention people like huskarls with 2 handed weapons...


Yup, pretty much what I meant!

Quote:
it also seems likely that the needs of shieldwall combat is what maybe prompted the saxons by the time of hastings to adopt the kite shield.


Nah, it was just a fashion change. It *did* mean a change in how the shield was held and used, of course! "Better" and "worse" are obviously pretty subjective and variable, but overall the kite shield must have been at least equivalent or a little better, since it did replace the round shield.

Quote:
and the long kite shape of course means you need to keep moving your shield up and down to stop people indiscriminately hitting your legs and feet with a spear or something.


Huh, I found just the opposite, that the kite shield is MUCH better leg protection without having to move it much at all! You can lean on it, too, when you're not fighting. Easier to take a nap on, too.


Kurt Scholz wrote:
Yes, I think large battles were much less frequent occurences than small encounters if warfare was more endemic and more of a requirement if warfare was sporadic.


Sure, sorry, I didn't mean *major* battles were the rule! There would have been plenty of small-scale stuff. But anytime you get more than half a dozen guys together, the tendency would have been to line up. That gets all your weapons pointed in the same direction, and everyone close enough together to support and protect each other.

Quote:
A round shield is very well suited to beat up someone without exposing yourself, whether in line or not. Line combat can be a special warfare situation and a lot might depend on the regulation of activity. Front ranks can act in a more "skirmishing" manner and retreat to the safety of their common line with more mutual support. This concept can be developed into line combat with very solid lines and correspondingly arm-strapped or at least temporary(Scutum) ground-posed shields of tight ranks. Development of equipment and concepts will mutually depend upon each other with modifications of existing templates before switching to something new at the exclusion of prior design features.


Well, I'm not sure I'm following your train of thought, here, but line combat was the rule, not a "special warfare situation". Mind you, a line is not always a shield wall! Skirmishing in open order was done in lines, archers lined up in lines, cavalry attacked in lines, etc. A line of battle was simply what you had between your two flanks. In some times and places, skirmishing was done by distinct bodies of troops, with close fighting done by others. But with folks like Vikings and Saxons, it could all be done by the same guys, first chucking javelins and spears in open order before closing things up to fight nose to nose. But I wouldn't say that close combat in a shield-wall-type formation was something that had to "develop", or that there had to be significant changes in the shield for it.

Matthew
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Benjamin H. Abbott




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PostPosted: Tue 28 Aug, 2012 10:12 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Lafayette C Curtis wrote:
In that case, it's pretty obvious that you haven't read more recent works on the analysis of ancient Roman battles by Phil Sabin and the like, as well as similar works about the "experience of battle" dating from as early as the mid-19th century French officer Ardant du Picq to John Keegan's The Face of Battle and the like.


Surely you have the ability to distinguish disagreement from ignorance.

Quote:
The general consensus (or the closest thing we have to it) today sees ancient and medieval hand-to-hand combat as not being very deadly in itself as long as neither side breaks and runs, since combat itself tends to occur only along the front edges of the formation and can only last for only a few minutes before one or both sides gets physically or mentally exhausted.


The evidence I presented complicates this consensus as you describe it, which authors such as Yuval N. Harari aren't part of to begin with. According to both primary sources and thought experiments, soldiers committed to butchering each other tended to succeed. Obviously this depends on equipment. I suspect pikes in particular facilitated mutual annihilation. Sir John Smythe explicitly rejected the tactic of allowing pikemen in the front rank or two to fight their bellies full. Instead, he advocated thrusts in rapid succession from each the first four or five ranks, which the aim of immediately putting the opposing pike block into flight. However, if the enemy stood firm, Smythe instructed soldiers in the first rank to close with swords and daggers. Imagine two groups of pikemen both employing Smythe's tactics and tell me how that produces low casualties.

Quote:
This can be attributed to a number of factors.


Regardless of how you attribute it, the mere existence of the Pyrrhic victory makes the claim that only the vanquished suffered significant losses in close combat untenable.

Quote:
And even then his losses are practically nothing compared to the massacre he inflicted upon the Romans.


This line illustrates how we differ. Most accounts report that Hannibal lost 5,700-8,000 killed out of a total force of 40,000-50,000. That's a casualty rate of 11-20%. How can you read that as practically nothing?

Quote:
Certainly not a typical medieval battle!


My argument makes no reference to the typical medieval battle.

Quote:
Remember, the Swiss had the advantage of surprise, and were basically steamrolling their way into the camp of a French army that barely had the time to form a line of battle before the Swiss bore down upon them--not to mention that most of the casualties on the Swiss side were inflicted by French artillery rather than the unprepared Landsknechts.


Your description of the battle, while consistent with some secondary literature such as the Wikipedia entry, bears almost no resemblance to the primary account from Florange that Harari reproduces. Florange might be mistaken or lying; that's always the danger we face in constructing historical narratives. It's interesting how secondary depictions of the battle vary so widely.

Quote:
In the more "classic" Swiss battles like Grandson and Morat (or, for that matter, Seminara) the victorious Swiss suffered little, while in more typical Swiss defeats (Cerignola and Bicocca) their victorious opponents suffered little. All this runs in favour of the interpretation that hand-to-hand combat in itself caused relatively few casualties until one side broke, at which point the victors were free to inflict horrendous losses during the pursuit.


Yes, there's no question that the fierce charge works spectacularly well when the enemy breaks. My understand is that there was only moderate fighting and relatively few casualties either side at Grandson; the Burgundian basically ran away. Morat, on the other hand, stands out as an example of route and massacre. In all three cases, the Swiss received limited losses because their foes broke quickly. As Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, the Swiss tended to suffer against any infantry capable of engaging them in extended close combat. The Cerignola and Bicocca, gunpowder weapons, not blades, defeated the Swiss.

The Swiss record supports my thesis that committed aggression in spirit of Smythe's instructions results in either triumph or shared slaughter.

Quote:
But in infantry combat, the body count only goes up when somebody does swerve.


I consider that a myth. If close combat weren't deadly, while would anyone run at all? To the contrary, the overall record indicates that close combat with edged weapons so dangerous and unpleasant that only the most courageous and well-armed soldiers could endure for long. For clarity, I'm not discarding what you describe as the consensus. The model of measured and intermittent engagement between opposing lines that you promote best describes numerous ancient/medieval/Renaissance battles. This was one way of managing the inherent risk of close combat and rewards individual skill as well as group cohesion. The pike fencing that Smythe decried but other authors recommended fits this mold. Smythe's coordinated charge concentrates exponentially more violence on opposing as well as friendly bodies. It's an intensification technique designed to cause a route. If it doesn't, a bloodbath ensues. That's my macro interpretation of Novara according to Florange. This isn't to say that the Swiss and landsknechts fought to the death without interruption; we know that wasn't the case. But level of losses on each side and short duration of the battle makes the first model inappropriate.

I hope to expand on this theory of close combat in future. Stay tuned.
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Gary Teuscher





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PostPosted: Tue 28 Aug, 2012 10:34 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Quote:
I consider that a myth. If close combat weren't deadly, while would anyone run at all? To the contrary, the overall record indicates that close combat with edged weapons so dangerous and unpleasant that only the most courageous and well-armed soldiers could endure for long.


There is a natural desire for humans to want to run in a situations of stress like this - whether or not it's the best idea. In a combat state, the "mob" of an army is not logical. It's hopefully training and discipline will hold off the natural desire to run, at least for a while.

I agree close combat with edged or pointed wepaons is indeed dangerous and unpleasant - that's why many think combat between lines consisted of some combat, a break, combat, break, etc.

But the route is indeed where most casualties are caused. As a general rule, the casualties in battle where less than those in a route, which is why defeated armies suffered many more casualties.

The victorious side geberally sees most casualties amongst it's front line - the losing side sees casualties throughout the whole army.

It's that tough battle were neither side yields for a long period of time when you truly see similar casualties among both sides.
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William P




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PostPosted: Tue 28 Aug, 2012 11:14 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Matthew Amt wrote:
William P wrote:
guiges are common for carrying on the back according to evidence ive seen in particular the site that scott has linked us to plus other websites,
and they seem a sensible thing for carrying them on the march, not to mention people like huskarls with 2 handed weapons...


Yup, pretty much what I meant!

Quote:
it also seems likely that the needs of shieldwall combat is what maybe prompted the saxons by the time of hastings to adopt the kite shield.


Nah, it was just a fashion change. It *did* mean a change in how the shield was held and used, of course! "Better" and "worse" are obviously pretty subjective and variable, but overall the kite shield must have been at least equivalent or a little better, since it did replace the round shield.

Quote:
and the long kite shape of course means you need to keep moving your shield up and down to stop people indiscriminately hitting your legs and feet with a spear or something.


Huh, I found just the opposite, that the kite shield is MUCH better leg protection without having to move it much at all! You can lean on it, too, when you're not fighting. Easier to take a nap on, too.




ah it seems i made an error, yes, i also meant to portray that yes, its the complete opposite i.e kite shields are good because you DONT need to move it up and down a whole lot to protect your legs

i still think the long strap gripped nature of a kite or teardrop shield is a design much better for shieldwall combat

although as the romans and their celtic enemies showed, it neednt always be a strap gripped shield to be good for shieldwalls

a kite would also in a sense make a good proto pavise, not saying the normans had crossbows but since its body coverage is alot better you can sling it on your back and not worry as much about, while retreating for example

actually matt, now that i think of it.. is there any evidence of a similar sort of 'carry on your back' guige for your typical imperial roman scutum or ANy of the roman or even celtic shields,

interestingly though, the NVG byzanto-rus reenactment group did a experiment testing the drilling and formations in the 10th century byzantine military manual of emperor nikophouros for the 'hoplatoi' (i.e 'hoplites') the standard pike armed byzantine heavy infantry which made up the mainstay of the army.
these men were equipped with kite shield, sword, the 4m pike, long gambeson, and thick felt cap

the project, it seems the photos of the NVG event are gone, but but suffice to say what they did in formation with pikes levelled was to simply hang the shield partly in front of them while they held the pike in 2 hands they maybe had one arm through one of the arm straps..
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=251628
theres a photo of something similar in the link above.
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Matthew Amt




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PostPosted: Wed 29 Aug, 2012 4:29 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

William P wrote:
although as the romans and their celtic enemies showed, it neednt always be a strap gripped shield to be good for shieldwalls


Agreed!

Quote:
actually matt, now that i think of it.. is there any evidence of a similar sort of 'carry on your back' guige for your typical imperial roman scutum or ANy of the roman or even celtic shields,


Definitely. The Fayum shield has a pair of iron rings (loops?), and it seems that the marching legionaries on Trajan's Column have their shields slung, as I recall. Most of the Dura Europas shields had rings for a strap. Couldn't tell you about solid evidence for Celtic shields, though.

Matthew
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Kurt Scholz





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PostPosted: Wed 29 Aug, 2012 9:35 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Matthew Amt wrote:

Kurt Scholz wrote:
Yes, I think large battles were much less frequent occurences than small encounters if warfare was more endemic and more of a requirement if warfare was sporadic.


Sure, sorry, I didn't mean *major* battles were the rule! There would have been plenty of small-scale stuff. But anytime you get more than half a dozen guys together, the tendency would have been to line up. That gets all your weapons pointed in the same direction, and everyone close enough together to support and protect each other.

Quote:
A round shield is very well suited to beat up someone without exposing yourself, whether in line or not. Line combat can be a special warfare situation and a lot might depend on the regulation of activity. Front ranks can act in a more "skirmishing" manner and retreat to the safety of their common line with more mutual support. This concept can be developed into line combat with very solid lines and correspondingly arm-strapped or at least temporary(Scutum) ground-posed shields of tight ranks. Development of equipment and concepts will mutually depend upon each other with modifications of existing templates before switching to something new at the exclusion of prior design features.


Well, I'm not sure I'm following your train of thought, here, but line combat was the rule, not a "special warfare situation". Mind you, a line is not always a shield wall! Skirmishing in open order was done in lines, archers lined up in lines, cavalry attacked in lines, etc. A line of battle was simply what you had between your two flanks. In some times and places, skirmishing was done by distinct bodies of troops, with close fighting done by others. But with folks like Vikings and Saxons, it could all be done by the same guys, first chucking javelins and spears in open order before closing things up to fight nose to nose. But I wouldn't say that close combat in a shield-wall-type formation was something that had to "develop", or that there had to be significant changes in the shield for it.

Matthew


OK, what I mean by a fluiditity between skirmishing and line combat is that in some cases you don't stick to the line to fight, but sortie. Such a sortie can be mutual with a skirmish in between lines or breaking into enemy lines. You can also just keep in your line and do all the fighting under more protection with showing less individual aggression.
These are different mindsets suitable for different fighting armaments. Of course all kinds of soldiers line up because this helps orientation, coordination and reduces fratricide.
Off topic, calling it a line might be Indo-European-centric because half-moon formations were underused by them, not to forget forming circles (and not just hollow squares).
The Early Medieval Vikings and Saxons switching from obviously skirmishing to combat more in line are what I mean by something intermediate. Even a close combat line can develop from a ranged weapon exchange line and reflect a dynamic situation development. This close combat situation is still not necessarily the same kind of battle line concept as a contemporary Byzantine soldier, trained with a long spear, would describe it. For him it's rather what their medium armed - medium role troops do. It's shifting between more "rigid" skirmishing and a kind of "light" line fighting without utilizing mutual pressure of several ranks and employing lots of space through footwork back and forth.
Is that a better explanation?
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William P




Location: Sydney, Australia
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PostPosted: Thu 30 Aug, 2012 3:33 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Matthew Amt wrote:
William P wrote:
although as the romans and their celtic enemies showed, it neednt always be a strap gripped shield to be good for shieldwalls


Agreed!

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actually matt, now that i think of it.. is there any evidence of a similar sort of 'carry on your back' guige for your typical imperial roman scutum or ANy of the roman or even celtic shields,


Definitely. The Fayum shield has a pair of iron rings (loops?), and it seems that the marching legionaries on Trajan's Column have their shields slung, as I recall. Most of the Dura Europas shields had rings for a strap. Couldn't tell you about solid evidence for Celtic shields, though.

Matthew


thats good to know , id hate to have to hold that shield for hours on end during the march in my hand, even if its just hanging there.. by my side..
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Lafayette C Curtis




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PostPosted: Tue 04 Sep, 2012 2:37 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:
Regardless of how you attribute it, the mere existence of the Pyrrhic victory makes the claim that only the vanquished suffered significant losses in close combat untenable.


Of course there always were exceptional cases where the victor suffered as heavily--or more so--than the vanquished side in hand-to-hand combat. But that's exactly what such instances are--the exception. If all victories were Pyrrhic victories, would we even have needed the appellation "Pyrrhic?"


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And even then his losses are practically nothing compared to the massacre he inflicted upon the Romans.


This line illustrates how we differ. Most accounts report that Hannibal lost 5,700-8,000 killed out of a total force of 40,000-50,000. That's a casualty rate of 11-20%. How can you read that as practically nothing?


Compared to the near-annihilation of the entire Roman field army? Hannibal would have shrugged his shoulders and thought those losses well spent--at least until he realised that the Romans were just going to keep raising more men. Moreover, as I have mentioned, the brunt of Hannibal's losses fell upon the relatively expendable Iberians and Gauls. His most valuable infantry--the African veterans re-equipped (and perhaps even retrained) in the Roman manner--remained largely intact. He also had little problem building his army back up to the pre-Cannae strength within a matter of months. The only problem was that the Romans had even more.

And, once again, Cannae wasn't Hannibal's usual style of battle. In his earlier encounters his armies clobbered the Romans while suffering relatively light casualties in return.


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Certainly not a typical medieval battle!


My argument makes no reference to the typical medieval battle.


But why? Surely we should be discussing the typical situations, not the bloodier-than-normal aberrations?


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Remember, the Swiss had the advantage of surprise, and were basically steamrolling their way into the camp of a French army that barely had the time to form a line of battle before the Swiss bore down upon them--not to mention that most of the casualties on the Swiss side were inflicted by French artillery rather than the unprepared Landsknechts.


Your description of the battle, while consistent with some secondary literature such as the Wikipedia entry, bears almost no resemblance to the primary account from Florange that Harari reproduces. Florange might be mistaken or lying; that's always the danger we face in constructing historical narratives. It's interesting how secondary depictions of the battle vary so widely.


The thing is, Harari's excerpt of Fleuranges only began at the point where the serious hand-to-hand fighting commenced, so it said nothing about the preliminary stage of the battle where the French artillery wrought havoc upon the advancing Swiss formation. This wasn't Harari's fault since he was trying to illustrate the experience of hand-to-hand, close-quarters combat anyway. However, it doesn't mean we shouldn't look back by a paragraph or two in Fleuranges' account because I had vague recollections that he mentioned the Swiss lunging ahead in a desperate bid to neutralise the threat of the French artillery...

...bleh. My French apparently isn't good enough yet to deal with the unconventional spelling and all. Maybe somebody with better French skills can look over this passage (the paragraph immediately preceding the quote in Harari) and see if it's what I'm looking for? (Or just have the complete first volume here: http://archive.org/details/mmoiresdumar01fleuuoft )

Fleuranges wrote:
Les Suysses vindrent pourgaigner l'artilleriez, là où estoient les lantskenecht, et pensoient bien quant il auroient deffait cela qu'il avoient ung grant advantaiges au combat, et s'il y tailloient, il se povoient saulver en faveur de ce petit boys que je vous ay dict. Et vindrent pour combattre main à main les dicts lantskenecht, en l'ombre d'ugne povre maison; mais mons' de Sedan ^ partit avecque cent hommes d'armes ; lequel, quant il se veirent, commencèrent à fouyr; et n'estoient que leurs enfans perdus, dont la pluspart fut mys en pièces par le seigneur de Sedan et la gensdarmerie qui estoit avecque luy, et croyez que s'il fut demouré en son estât, comme il estoit ordonné, que la bataille n'eust point estes perdue.


There. I'll still have to look for other Novara accounts in sources like Giovio and the like, since I'm not sure that Fleuranges is the guy who mentioned the effect of the French artillery upon the Swiss in the opening stages of this battle.


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In the more "classic" Swiss battles like Grandson and Morat (or, for that matter, Seminara) the victorious Swiss suffered little, while in more typical Swiss defeats (Cerignola and Bicocca) their victorious opponents suffered little. All this runs in favour of the interpretation that hand-to-hand combat in itself caused relatively few casualties until one side broke, at which point the victors were free to inflict horrendous losses during the pursuit.


Yes, there's no question that the fierce charge works spectacularly well when the enemy breaks. My understand is that there was only moderate fighting and relatively few casualties either side at Grandson; the Burgundian basically ran away. Morat, on the other hand, stands out as an example of route and massacre. In all three cases, the Swiss received limited losses because their foes broke quickly. As Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, the Swiss tended to suffer against any infantry capable of engaging them in extended close combat. The Cerignola and Bicocca, gunpowder weapons, not blades, defeated the Swiss.


But isn't that the point? In a successful hand-to-hand combat, the casualties are sharply asymmetric: the victor suffered little, while the loser got cut up to pieces. That was the norm. Gunpowder modified the equation since a firefight alone seldom produced decision, so two opposing lines could go on blazing away and attritioning each other for hours before somebody launched the decisive charge or a shock action elsewhere produced the necessary decision, and as a result we see a sharply increased casualty rate among the victors from the end of the 15th century onwards. However, the casualties in the actual fighting with white arms was still one-sided, even more so in later times when bayonet charges usually drove the enemy or were driven back without coming into actual hand-to-hand contact.


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The Swiss record supports my thesis that committed aggression in spirit of Smythe's instructions results in either triumph or shared slaughter.


Triumph? Yes. It's still the cornerstone of modern military theory. But I don't see the evidence for mutual slaughter being the norm rather than the exception.


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But in infantry combat, the body count only goes up when somebody does swerve.


I consider that a myth. If close combat weren't deadly, while would anyone run at all? To the contrary, the overall record indicates that close combat with edged weapons so dangerous and unpleasant that only the most courageous and well-armed soldiers could endure for long.


The thing is, war and battle isn't just about actual violence. The threat of violence is often far more important both to the soldier and to the civilian. In a missile exchange the two sides were some distance away, and the combatants hung around because (paradoxically enough) they felt that the space between the lines would still give them some time to escape if their side was worsted. On the other hand, the pressure of hand-to-hand contact was far more immediate, and the participants felt the sense that if they weren't going to win then they'd better run away now before things got worse--an act that ironically caused the collapse of the line rather than being a consequence of it.

I have a couple of personal anecdotes that may not completely apply to ancient, medieval, and Renaissance hand-to-hand combat but may still prove illustrative anyway. The first is from the early 2000s, when as a teenager I was recruited into a civil defence program that stemmed from a public initiative to tame the sociopolitical instability in Indonesia at the end of the previous decade (somewhat wasted effort since things had stabilised by then, but I wouldn't complain). The lottery put me into auxilliary riot squad training, and in the final day there were several mock battles designed to develop a certain measure of aggression in the recruits; these got fiercer and more serious towards the end of the day when it was announced that the losing side would only have dinner at midnight rather than the usual schedule at seven. I ended up in the front rank rather more often than I would have liked, and the likelihood of being hit in this position was virtually 100%; at the same time, I noticed that the vast majority of hits fell upon our helmets and rattan shields (round and arm-strapped, in case anybody's wondering), and in most "battle" sessions (each of which lasted only a few minutes before both sides ran out of breath) I suffered a very large number of hits but none that would have caused death or serious injury if the combat had been fought with real weapons and real armour. Of course, we were young, inexperienced, and not even at the full pitch of our physical development yet, so that may have skewed the results somewhat, but on the whole this brief experience easily convinced me of the merit of Sabin's close-combat models and other interpretations based upon it when I read them a couple of years later.

The other was from 1998 or so, when the economic crisis and the change of government caused a temporary collapse of law and order in several major Indonesian cities. I was unfortunate enough to witness several urban brawls between adjacent neighbourhoods at this time--from a safe distance, that is--and what happened may have some interesting parallels to the mechanics of close combat in earlier times. Most of these brawls took place over well-defined "battlefields" in the shape of a straight stretch of road or tarmac where large numbers of youths from the opposing neighbourhoods could gather and show off their number. For the most part the two sides held apart, throwing insults and mineral-water bottles (as well as the occasional rock or broken roof tile) at each other. Sometimes a champion would spring ahead and challenge the other side to battle; most of the time this was ignored, but sometimes it led to one-to-one duels that ended when one champion was worsted and his comrades rushed to extricate him, sometimes leading to a very brief hand-to-hand clash with a few fighters who rushed in from the other side to support their winning champion before retreating as if by mutual consent. Now, from time to time, there'd be a general "engagement" when one side managed to psyche itself up into launching a charge, at which point the other side would run away for some distance. The pursuit never lasted long; I don't know whether the pursuers ran out of breath, or realised their vulnerability so deep in enemy territory, but in any case they inevitably came running back towards their end of the road shortly afterwards. Sometimes they came back unmolested, but just as often the previously losing side came along in hot pursuit until it was their turn to run out of breath or morale, thus leading to a see-saw encounter that would go on for a while until both sides grew tired of it. What struck me in hindsight is that there was barely any hand-to-hand contact during these rushes back and forth; despite the presence of spiked clubs, motorcycle chains, and cheap katana knock-offs, these weapons rarely ever hurt anyone, with the majority of injuries being caused by people tripping over something or bumping each other and falling on the hard road surface (often injuring themselves with their own weapons in the process!) while thrown rocks and roof tiles stood a very distant second. When the police intervened most of the injuries were caused by their rubber bullets and batons rather than anything the rioters had (except for the ones who got disoriented by tear gas and tripped or ran into a wall or electrical pole).

I've never spoken about this second anecdote before to anyone because I didn't remember much of it until a similar but far more wholesome incident happened a few weeks ago at the end of Ramadan. Many of the children in my present neighbourhood got toy guns as present for completing their Ramadan fast, and soon this led to a mock battle between two districts separated by a bridge. The children rushed back and forth along the bridge, firing and jeering at each other, much in the same way that the rioters/brawlers see-sawed up and down the length of a street more than a decade before. It was fun to watch but at the same time it amazed me that two incidents of such different characters could be marked by virtually identical tactics.

Sorry for going so far off-topic. If we'll have to agree to disagree, so be it; I wouldn't want to live in a world where everybody blindly agrees with and follows my opinions to the letter! Wink


Last edited by Lafayette C Curtis on Tue 04 Sep, 2012 11:52 am; edited 2 times in total
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Scott Woodruff





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PostPosted: Tue 04 Sep, 2012 8:36 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Lafayette, I found your anecdote to be most interesting. Like sometyhing straight out of Homer. I have experienced some similar events and it does seem like there is a deeply ingrained instinct in humans to use such tactics. It really is more about threat of violence than violence itself. I have noticed that in both real hand-to-hand combat and mock reenactment combat that after most sessions of intense, close-up combat both combatants come away with multiple minor injuries but only rarely does one land a really serious blow. "Kills" almost always result from a fight going to ground where one is able to subdue the opponent and administer a coup-de-grace with a knife, dagger or belt-axe. Use of shields makes this even more the case.
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