Part 10: Shields: Why Are Shields Different Shapes and Sizes?

shields are part of the medieval warriors equipment they obviously defend you from the slings and arrows over the enemy and there's about 400 years of the evolution of the shield on display behind me but why did they change how were they used and how did their design reflect what the warrior would be doing on the battlefield let's try and find out [Applause] first year I'm going to show you is Viking or anglo-saxon and this is very clearly a foot soldiers shield it's held with a grip it has no strapping that we're aware of to take the weight you have to have big shoulder muscles to handle this it's flat it has what's called a boss made of iron or carbonized it might even be vaguely steel because of the way the Smith's work they're basically a metal bit in the middle which actually is the cup that your hand sits in and this strap extends top and bottom this one is made of modern plywood for convenience typically they'd be made of strips of theoretically Linden wood although the archaeology bear is and this is to be used as single combat it can be used out here but it also is very wide and it doesn't defend the leg very well but what it does do is extend sideways and it would work very well in a linked up shield wall with a whole bunch of your other comrades they would be standing probably as close packed as they could get like this somebody slammed on this side of you somebody that side of you is many men as possible Spears or swords over the top and this would be interacting with other shields they also use these in single combat and there are various techniques you can catch a blade on the side here and if you can't if the blade impacts on the wood you can rotate away take their weapon away stab them and also those ways of attacking this shield because if this shield is held away from the body as it typically was if you hit on this side it can rotate the shield and all you've got is the grip stopping it from rotating or rotated on this side like this we know that a much earlier period shields the hoplite shields and the Greek shields which are many hundreds of years earlier than this often have impacts up here and down there which indicates that people are trying to attack up here and stab the face or trying to rotate the shield out so if you're in a group of other people your shields are overlapped hitting here impacts on this side of the other person's shields so it's not going to rotate so much but single combat is different single combat you're trying to open up the shield stab somebody this is also incredibly difficult to use from horseback and the reason is you need to hold the reins in this hand and have a weapon in this and so whilst you're holding the shield you can't actually hold the reins very well either there's no sign of any strapping that allows somebody to use this from horseback and so we know that the fighting was going to be on foot moving through history a little bit sooo what I think of as a transitional period the norman invasion the Normans were basically mounted Vikings and they made a transition from long ship combat and maritime combat to horse combat and this kite shield well it's called a kite shield in modern parlance but obviously they wouldn't accorded kite shield they just would have called it a shield is derived from the round shield it's still sometimes has a boss on it but the way it is strapped is very clear from the Bayeux Tapestry there isn't a grip here so the boss that she doesn't do anything this is an anachronism from earlier period and we see on the Bayeux Tapestry some shields have this boss on them and some don't so obviously some people felt more comfortable with this piece of shoe because it looked more like a shield it's a traditional shield like that with it and other people who said look just get rid of it doesn't do anything it just costs me money and weighs more and interestingly we see different kinds of strapping on the Norman kite shield or they're just the Norman shield this one is set up in a particular way there were lots of different ways of setting up this kite shield and I'm still experimenting this setup itself let me show you how it's used so gage strap goes around your neck so the shoot itself it can actually hang off you without using any hands at all but typically what you do is you put your arm through the strap and you hold on to it now you can either hold on or you can put it further through and this hand is now completely available for using the reins on the horse and much of the weight is taken by the gage strap when it's properly adjusted it and goes over the armor this is a shield designed for somebody who is fighting from horseback this is a shield designed for somebody fighting on foot so these two shields their shape and design clearly indicate a difference in fighting technique and a difference in battlefield tactics the other thing about this is the length protects your knee quite a lot as well so it can still be used in the shield wall and is used in the shield wall because we see it on the Bayeux Tapestry so this is designed by shield makers by the technologists of the time to be usable from horseback but also usable on foot interestingly as a cavalry man I find that I need the strapping to be different than the type of strapping use for people that are typically fighting on foot to reenacting on foot so I wonder back then whether they're depending on what you were expected to do your speciality whether your shield would be strapped differently I think that's quite likely because it's practical one of the problems with this shield when you're fighting on horse is this tail slams against your knee and after a few hours in the saddle which I've ridden that sin lock hill in the reenactments therefore English heritage my knee started to swell up get bruised and eventually started to bleed and the next day I had to actually pack a lot of sheepskin on my knee because it was hurting so much so we actually see a solution to that in the pea tapestry there are people who are unarmored who are travelling to tell William Duke William about something and their shields are strapped differently and they're supported like this that gets the tail of the shield out of the way of your knee when you're galloping fast get away from your horse's legs - it's obviously less protective because the back of the shield is really not particularly anything I guess it could protect the back of the horse a little bit but the men on the barre tapestry aren't in armor they're still carrying the shield they're not in armor they're obviously going very fast because their hairs streaming out behind them as well which is a wonderful little nugget of information on the bear tapestry but the shield is held differently and controlled differently I find that fascinating so it's not just a shield this shield looks similar to the earlier shield but it has a curve and that curve serves the purpose of wrapping around the body and I think indicates that the shield was used more close to the body itself and attacking the shield in a particular direction hitting it here or hitting it low it's naturally going to turn it very much because of the curve it's just basically going to rock the person using it it's not going to actually open it you up there is a technique of a axe coming over the top and opening the shield up but you're still going to move the whole arm of the of the the person you're doing it against because it's trapped at the forearm and it's held here unlike the earlier period where you're just having to rotate the shield in the grip of the warrior so this clearly indicates transition in technology and in battlefield tactics and the way that the shield is used it's still a piece of wood between you and the enemy but it's now evolved to a different type of use the kite shield stays around for another 100 years or so it it modifies itself it the top gets chopped off a little bit so in the first crusade we see truncated kite shields whatever you want to call it it's starting to get towards what many people think of as the classic knight in armor shield shape this it's basically the same except it's quite different the shape is very different it is still curved it still curves around the body we still have strapping this one is strapped for a diagonal hold again there is a very personal thing depending on what you want to do with the shield you would have modified it just takes moving some nails and some rivets to move the strap around it now has a flat top which means you can hold it up here it can protect your face it doesn't protect the lower legs at all but that's okay because this shield is coupled with an evolution in the quality and the protective value of the personal armor that somebody would be wearing you're starting to have elbow plates guttering over the forearms lower cannons and upper cannons pauldrons place protect the shoulders big helmets full face masks so the shield is still very useful though but it's dwindling in size because it's much easier to use a small shield than a big shield I don't think at this period anybody's fighting in a shield wall there's no easy way of overlapping this shield there's no easy way of getting support from your fellow warriors and arms you can obviously stand side by side and you could probably overlap it a little bit but the design leaves big gaps and it doesn't really lend itself to the shield wall formation which is a good thing because we have no record of shield walls being used in this period so chances are they weren't doing them what they were doing though is riding with this as well so this is forefoot combat and also very much for riding a horse and fighting with a lance and a long spear this shield can be you can ride along with it when it's strapped properly when it's strapped the way you need it to be you'd have your hand here this shield can be kept an angle so a bit like this and that creates effectively a glassy plate like they have on the front of modern-day tanks angled armor is better at deflecting things it's the same for a lance and a spear so this would sort of we see it we see actually we see elbows holding the shield up like this and you're just popping the Knights eyes over the top braced against a helmet potentially and forming kind of a protective plate that the lance would bounce off you could also use this for fighting the corners are potentially very dangerous we see this in modern-day club Tony we see people punching with their shields and in fact are some interesting discussions to be had about the evolution of the modern-day medieval combat fighting techniques the only problem with that is it's quite specialized they're not allowed to stab they have light weapons there are no missile weapons being used so the equipment is evolving to be best used in a particular set of circumstances that they're finding themselves and it's not really war it's very tough and very hard to do but it's not quite the same as having somebody actually trying to kill you with whatever weapons they can have cross bows and arrows and all sorts shield use for the nightly classes dwindles in the 14th and 15th century because the actual plate Armour they're wearing and their fighting techniques have changed so much that actually carrying a shields a bit pointless they are still used in the formal tournaments and arguably a bit of an anachronism even then although you could argue that the wood helps grab the lamps and protect you in that specific situation but on the battlefield nightly class are not really using shields but there is a category of ordinary soldier that is very much still using shields and that's the crossbowmen and we know this because we see illustrations of it this big thing called @ / V's which is a square shield resembles modern riot shields actually quite dramatically suck into the ground and the chap winding up the crossbows got to take time he's got to concentrate on quite a complex technical job winds up a crossbow puts a quarrel in there pops up and looses the bolt at his enemies pops back down again and hides now obviously crossbow when we're aware of longbowman and longbowman could loose more arrows per second than a crossbowmen roughly 2 to 1 depending on what the quality of the longbow man is an equality the crossbowmen but obviously as crossbow men you've got a you're not looking you've got to concentrate on your job so having a shield is essential for them and they were very very rugged and also sieges people use shields all the time his shield never really went away it just wasn't used by the Knightly class I find it incredibly exciting to think that today the Monday police force uses two types of shields so they're still in use they're still in active use today they use a long square shield not dissimilar to the design of the kite shield and they use them in shield walls as a defensive structure against things being hurled at them and also there's a type of shield used by anti riot squads which is circular and smaller very similar to the anglo-saxon or Viking shield and used in a similar way because they're used by fast acting snatch squads to burst out from the shield wall and go and arrest people and take them back and do whatever they need to do with them and I find it fascinating that the shields we were looking at in history that did a certain job are also kind of reimagined and reinvented by the modern-day police for very similar purposes isn't that wonderful circularity of history and continuity of technology and techniques from the past thanks for watching please like and subscribe and don't forget that notification button we've got a lot more exciting episode's coming up every Friday and look forward to seeing you then [Music]

Channel: Modern History TV

Views: 1,013,396

Rating: 4.890739 out of 5

Keywords: modern history, documentary, history, historical, history documentary, kingsley, jason kingsley, medieval, middle ages, knight, kingsely, jason kingsely, mediaeval, medeval, knihgt, shield, kite shield, saxon shield, viking shield, shield wall, heater shield, riot police, police, battle, combat, entertainment

Id: zEsjPQeWmd8

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2018