The White Council

Re: Swash and buckle

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : : : : : An unexpected blow with the shield-boss! Perhaps not technically a foul stroke but...... ;)

: : : : : : : Practically it is almost impossible to make a blow with the shieldboss or shield without your opponent getting cut at you. : : : : : Myth of fantasy writers- just a practical note from one in the know. : : : : : Palle

: Though difficult, I would not go so far as to say 'practically impossible' (with training). With proper attention is paid to space and time it can be done (for example in the 'zufechten' [close fight] you might use 'am schwert' or 'binden' [binding techniques on sword with your sword) to press aside and control your opponents sword to open him up for a blow with your shield).

: : : : I agree in respect to shields of considersble size, the rim smartly jerked into the chin or under the nose is much more effective. But for a small buckler like those used by English longbowmen a punch to the face would be a viable possibility.

: : : If you are armed that way and that close to an opponent probably armed with sword and kite shield- bye-bye, unless you are lucky or very good. : : : As for certain historians' and archeologists' theories that the pointed Germanic shieldbosses were to serve as a weapon, I f..t in their general direction. I also challenge them to come and try that tactic against me in combat. : : : Further the material consumption of making such an inferior weapon is such that you could as well make another spear to supplement a normal shield boss. : : : NT

: : The art of fighting with a broadsword (well relatively broad) and buckler was an English national pastime well into Elizabeth Ist's reign, when various people bewailed the fact that the English weren't up to date with continental rapier fencing. Though as it turned out the broadsword was far more useful in real warfare than the rapier, as the English found out in the Civil War.

: Quite true (although the term 'broadsword' in itself is anachronistic, it is an invention of Victorian scholars and fencers who used the term to distinguish swords of the medieval and renaissance eras from there own relatively slender blades), the great English master of defence George Silver in his work titled Paradoxes of Defence (ca.1595) presents series of arguments on the insufficiency of the rapier as opposed to the traditional weapon of the English (which he terms a 'short sword'; but it is short only in comparison to 'long swords' and long rapiers as, if you take his manner of finding the appropriate length of a sword according to your stature the sword will commonly be three feet or more in length).

: : There are examples of the Highland Scottish Targe (a relatively small shield used as late as 1745) with bosses having a bayonet-like blade attached, these were obviously designed for offensive use.

: : Not all weapons or defensive items were used in the way they were meant to be in the heat of battle. One British cavalryman of the Napoleonic period is recorded as saying that he sent more Frenchmen to the dentist by hitting them in the mouth with the hilt of his sabre than he ever wounded with the blade.

: In his treatise 'Brief Instructions' George Silver recommends this very tactic. In the 6th ground of the 6th chapter (on Certain Gripes and Closes) he says that when an opponent presses in on you, you may "...strike your hilt full in his face, bearing your hilt strongly upon him, for you have the advantage of the grip, for so you may break his face with your hilt, & strike up his heels with your left foot, and throw him a great fall...". : In other sections of his work he recommends like tactics to be used with the buckler (ie striking your opponent with it, usually after binding his sword with yours). The anonymous Tower Manuscript I.33 (a German fechtbook on sword and buckler from ca. 1290) shows some offensive use of the buckler also. And Talhoffers fechtbuch of 1467 shows both buckler and large shield (nearly the size of the men using them) used both offensively and defensively.

This is all very fine in theory, and possibly even under very special circumstances, BUT, have you two tried it? I routinely fight with sword and axe or sword and shield, and I do not let my opponent in close enough for that sort of thing as I will already be at his mercy before it. In theory and special circumstances, true, in practical combat I said and will maintain; it is a move that will get you killed. As for bayonet-like shield bosses, Martin, as a scholar of the late westroman empire you must surely have encountered the treatise on warfare with the weird ideas- the one with ox-driven ships and scythe-armed chariots. And look at Hitler's wonderweapons. That mad scientists have theorised over weapons does not make them practically usable. Just as architects' drawings for houses are often practicably undoable. NT