The Real Historical TOWER SHIELD: What made the Medieval PAVISE SHIELD so Special?

Let's look at an original 15th century pavis. Hi folks, Matt Easton here, Scholar Gladiatoria. Now I'm here at Olympia Auctions in London, looking at some of the amazing things in the upcoming sale on the 4th of December, 2024. And amongst those things is this absolutely incredible, it's quite difficult to fit on screen, pavis. Now this is Austrian, in fact it's from an arsenal in what's now Northern Italy, but of course the borders have shifted. But it's essentially from the Holy Roman Empire. And we could largely describe this as an Austrian pavis. Now, many of you will know what a pavis is, but for those of you who don't, it is a large rectangular shield like this, which is used predominantly by crossbowmen to load crossbows behind in war. But they were also used in siege warfare and fortifications and they had a whole bunch of different roles. But one of the characteristic features of this large rectangular shield, and we'll look at the construction of it in a second, is on the back at the top there, you'll see it has a beak at the top and behind that beak is a bar. Now behind that bar goes a rod or stake and that helps this to stand up on the ground so that you have your hands free to load behind it. But that being said, if I just move a bit further away, this type of shield is also equipped with N-arms. They no longer survive, but we have the attachment points we'll look at in a second. So these can be carried and used as shields, as a shield would normally be used. Now, generally speaking, the ones that are really big like this are not used an awful lot in hand-to-hand combat. They're mostly used stationary to load and shoot behind. But there are smaller varieties of these, sometimes known as hand pavices, which are more mobile and are used in actual close combat, together with a hand weapon like a sword or a war hammer or a mace in the right hand. And these are particularly a style that was found in the Holy Roman Empire, what's now Germany and Austria and Northern Italy. But there were equivalent pavices found, slightly different style, found in places like England and France during the late Hundred Years' War and the Wars of the Roses. But this particular style, with this gutter up the center of this very angular shape, is something which is really characteristic of the Holy Roman Empire. So here we have the pavice now standing on the ground, as it would be when it was propped up by the stake or peg behind it. As you can see, the sort of height, if I was someone who was loading a crossbow, this is just about the right size for me to hide behind. Now, the front of the shield, first of all, the construction of it. So it's wood, okay? So it's essentially made of three sections of wooden plank. So we've got a plank on each side with a plank in the center, carved out and constructed, rather connected via pegs and glued. So we've got three sections into this characteristic shape with this beak at the top here, which reinforces that top angle where it would be resting against the stake or leg. And this design on the front is the Austrian Bindenschild, I think it is. So this represents the region that it's from. But you'll notice that the red, and this is very typical of medieval shields and in fact, things like tapestries and things like that, rather than just being plain flat red, we actually have foliage in a slight orangey color within those red sections. So this gives a certain texture and three dimensionality to the design. It's not just red and white. And then we've got the League of St. George and the mullet up here, heraldic device up there. So this outer surface is wood covered with canvas. And then the canvas is gessoed and then it's painted. So that's the outer face. Now, if we turn around here to look at the inner face very carefully, because obviously this is quite delicate. So if we put it there. So the inner face, this is actually wild boar hide. So that leather that you see there is original 15th century wild boar hide. And you can see the little dots where the hairs were originally on the leather. Now we've got a bar across the top of here. Now that is where the stick or stake would enter through for the thing to be propped up. Okay, so that's a very important element on any pavis and that goes into the wood and has to be very strong and very secure. But in addition to that, we have also got rivet points down here. We've got a rivet point there with a sort of staple. We've got another rivet point here and we've got two staples up here. Now it's clear that these different rivets and staples and the remainder of leather straps underneath the rivets were for the attachment of N arms of various sorts. Now that could be a strap for carrying it. It could be a straps for holding it. We don't exactly know the arrangement of those straps, but there's some amount of research being done into these. And there are other examples of these surviving in places like Ingolstadt and places like that where we can look at the different arrangements. And they're not all the same. Not all pavises have the same arrangement of straps, staples, rivets, and so on and so forth. But fundamentally, this type of shield, very, very popular all over Europe, but particularly in the Holy Roman Empire. This example, fundamentally Austrian, probably for crossbowmen primarily, but could be used by other soldier types and was used a lot in sieges and fortifications as well. So an absolutely fantastic survival and a very, very rare thing to be able to feature on this channel. And hopefully that has been somewhat of a treat for you to see on the channel. And if you've got any more questions or particular inquiries about pavises or the way that they were deployed, used, or made, then maybe that's something I can do a deeper dive on in a future video. Anyway, thanks a lot for watching and check out the catalog linked down below for the auction coming up on the 4th of December here at Olympia Auctions. Thanks for watching. Cheers, folks.