Why enclosed hilts weren't developed on swords earlier in history

Hi guys, Matt Easton here. So one of the most common questions I've had over the last couple of years of doing videos on this channel is why weren't developed hilts, that is more protective hilts for swords, developed at an earlier date? Well, the standard answer to that question is actually that by and large if you're predominantly using a shield for example, then you'll notice whenever I do things with the sword my hand is pretty much protected by the line of the shield. Exactly the same is true if you're using a buckler. Okay, if we look at the earliest fencing treatise I-33, sometimes known as I-33, which uses the sword and buckler, you'll see that usually the hand is protecting the line, sorry the buckler is protecting the line to the hand. So the hand whenever you're doing things is pretty much protected by the buckler. So that's the first thing. However, I've never been fully happy with that as an answer. It isn't a capsule answer because very simply swords were used by themselves throughout history. You can see in Roman art, you can see that sometimes gladiuses and sparthes are used by themselves without a shield. Obviously in a, you know, a kind of civilian setting where you might carry a sword around but you're not going to carry, you're not going to walk around in the streets with a shield because that's just stupid and you'd get some very strange looks from your neighbours. So, and equally if you're travelling often you won't necessarily be carrying a shield or a buckler so it doesn't really make sense in most civilian contexts and even in some battlefield contexts it doesn't make sense. If you look at medieval artwork showing people like billmen or archers whose primary weapon is something else, obviously a billman's primary weapon is a bill and an archer's primary weapon is a bow, very often they're carrying swords as a sidearm and this is something that I mention all the time to remember. This is a sidearm, it is something you can wear. It's not fair to necessarily compare it with glaives or weapons like this or polearms because it is something that you can wear and you can't wear a quarterstaff, you can't wear a glaive. This you can take anywhere with you so long as you're legally allowed to. You can wear it easily, it's a big knife. Okay, so there are many situations even where in military life where if your primary weapon is put out of use for example or simply you can't use that primary weapon anymore, in the case of archers they might run out of arrows or very simply you come into hand-to-hand combat. A bow isn't a very good item to have in your hand in hand-to-hand combat, the sword is very clearly better. So there are many situations where those people, if you look in art, they're not carrying a shield, they're not carrying a buckler, they're not carrying anything for their off-hand and in fact if you look at the fencing treatises, if you look at all of the Messer sections or the very scant bits of arming sword stuff that there is for example in Fiore, the sword is used in one hand without something in the left hand and the left hand is used for grabbing and grappling. Okay, so it's not useless, your left limb is still a useful thing to have and especially in armoured fighting when you're talking about full plate armour, in actual fact your hand, your ability to grab and grapple is very often more useful than carrying a shield or a buckler and that of course is why shields and bucklers weren't generally speaking used once plate armour was fully developed because the left hand is better employed either for grabbing or for holding a weapon two-handed. You don't really need a shield or a buckler if you've got full plate armour. So very clearly the sword itself was used by itself and so therefore the answer of, oh well, developed hilts didn't develop because, or enclosed hilts didn't develop, more protective hilts didn't develop because of shields or bucklers, doesn't really cut the mustard. It doesn't really answer the question I don't think. Next up, a very common thing that people say next is because of gauntlets. Well I'll brush that one aside fairly quickly because the gauntlet question, yes in terms of war a fully armoured man-at-arms will be wearing gauntlets, definitely. So clearly they don't need any more hand protection because they've already got gauntlets on. However, firstly gauntlets aren't actually fantastic protection against strikes from heavy pole arms or indeed big two-handed swords. There's a famous quote when Henry VIII was talking with King of France or his courtiers were talking with the King of France's courtiers before the Field of the Cloth of Gold. They were talking about having a tournament and there's a famous quote saying that they weren't going to use two-handed swords in this tournament because there were no gauntlets made that could protect you properly from big two-handed sword strikes. And the same is kind of true of pole axe as well. People who reconstruct modern pole axe for the most part are pulling their blows or if you're looking at Battle of the Nations type stuff they tend to use unhistorical gauntlets so they often will, you'll see them wearing 13th, 14th century armour but they'll have like 16th century clamshell mitten gauntlets on or very simply they're getting broken fingers. And obviously in the modern world the broken finger is not a terrible thing you can have it fixed. In the medieval world a broken finger basically means you're screwed okay. Yes fingers can kind of mend themselves if you splint them but most badly broken fingers require internal pinning. They couldn't do that in the medieval or renaissance period not with that massive risk of infection and death by blood disease so it's not going to happen. So basically broken fingers big bad bad news in in the medieval period. So gauntlets, the answer of gauntlets doesn't really work for me more importantly for all of those reasons that I've just mentioned because in actual fact most people using swords alone by themselves weren't wearing gauntlets so gauntlets aren't an answer to the question okay. In a civilian environment you're not wearing gauntlets and the soldiers, the aforementioned soldiers, the archers and the billmen according to medieval art they didn't usually have gauntlets either okay. If you're using a pole arm generally speaking you don't necessarily need gauntlets anyway. A pair of stout gloves might be all you can afford if you're a kind of you know pikeman or a billman but equally if you've got a long weapon I think generally speaking gauntlets are less less necessary. With a short pole arm like a pole axe they're necessary but with longer pole arms used by billmen and halberdiers and people like this you don't really need gauntlets and they're not really shown being used very often by those kind of troops and obviously an archer or a crossbowman can't wear gauntlets because you wouldn't be able to use your your crossbow or your bow. That's not to say that aren't isolated cases of those kind of soldiers wearing gauntlets, there certainly are but they seem to have been the minority rather than the norm so therefore why didn't those people have developed hilts on their swords? Again gauntlets can't be the answer so we're left with it's not it's probably partially to do with shields and bucklers it's probably not to do with gauntlets so what else could it be to do with? Well actually I think the main answer is a kind of bigger picture thinking. Invention is is a thing that requires certain quite kind of strong there are certain points in history where an invention comes along and changes everything and in the 16th century we kind of see that with swords in the 16th century suddenly we see all manner of swords getting more complex hilts on them. Now it did start earlier than that okay the very first development that we see is a finger ring and I've mentioned this in previous videos one of the first adaptations to the hilt that we see is very often in artwork even going back to the viking period you see people putting their forefinger over the front guard over the front quill on like that and very clearly that makes the finger vulnerable if you don't have gauntlets and so one of the first things to happen was for a ring to be added to protect the finger. Once they had added one ring on one side it became logical to add another ring on the other side because it's a symmetrical double double-edged sword so you want to be able to turn the sword around and use it both ways as you like. One of the next earliest or kind of a similar period perhaps a little on average a little bit later adaptations that came along was a knuckle bow on the front okay if you'll notice if you look at my hilt if I hold it this way on that simple cross guard actually protects my hand all the way down to the pole however if I open that up so you can see there my hand is protected by the cross guard if I open that up you've now got a line to strike into my fingers particularly my lower fingers are the most at risk okay it's the same doesn't matter which way around I hold the sword whether it's point up or point down so very clearly linking that and that with some form of knuckle bow as it's called so a bar which goes across in front of the fingers is the next kind of simplest adaptation we see this on sabers but you see it very early on in fact on falchions and messes in particular and you see this from the 15th century particularly the late 15th century you start to see the beginning of that growth of hand protections however by the middle of the 16th century you've got things like this okay this is a obviously a backsword so this is a basket hilt as it's called basket hilt and backsword but you get very protective hilts made up of a complex of bars essentially on rapiers backswords broadswords also even on falchions certain long swords even have it to protect the lead hand so essentially by the middle of the 16th century and even earlier than that really but probably by you're talking about about 1530 1540 you have a very protective hilt and swords why was this well I think partly it's this question of invention once something gets invented and widespread it spreads like wildfire and everyone wants it and before that it has to be said the the fencing systems were adapted to deal with the fact that there wasn't hand protection so if we look at the medieval sword again whether I'm using a messer falchion arming sword various different types of arming sword if I've got a basic hand guard like that the guard positions that we hold the sword in if you look at any medieval fencing treatise tend to be back here ready to strike back here ready to cut or thrust obviously you can't see the lower part of my body but the sword held back on this side over over this shoulder with this point forward so the guard positions tend to keep the hand back just as in longsword because of course the hand is vulnerable and you only move we start from the basic cutting position as I pass forward to cut with the back foot the hand comes into distance but so does my blade so the opponent at that instant has to deal with the threat of my blade and can't just hit me in the hand because they'd get hit by my blade in fact there are techniques where you move offline and you move out of the way of the blade and just hit the person's incoming hand which is fine that is a technique however that doesn't really work very well as soon as you get a basket hilt and the fact that they had basket hilts and enclosed hilts changes how you hold the sword what we start to see is the hand starts to come forward and you start to get so you see me when I'm sabre fencing as many of you you have seen I'm in a position like this because my hand is safe inside the basket of the sword you actually get a transitional kind of period in the early 16th century where we've got all of the medieval guard positions just like before and then they combine those positions with the more forward held hand forward positions that you see in later backsword and broadsword and sabre sources so if you look at morozzo for example morozzo is a good transitional thing you can see all of the medieval guard positions keeping the hand back and you can start to see the positions which present the hand forward as well because he's got more hand protection on his side sword and that becomes even more the case as we get later into the 16th century and into the 17th century when we've got really protected hills and you notice all the guard positions start to become very forward and the hand is very protected okay so for me I think it's partly a case the answer to why didn't these hand guards develop earlier on the main answer for me is simply because there are moments in history when something gets invented and becomes popular and it isn't until that point that it suddenly it kind of explodes and spreads everywhere why did it why was it invented at that point and why did it get popular at that point well that's a complicated question to answer shields and bucklers remained in use I think a major change has to be the fact that swords debatably started being carried more often than they had been before in civilian life and this is certainly true in countries like England and France because there were legal restrictions to carrying swords in cities in the 14th and 15th centuries however what we see is by the end of the 15th century and going into the 16th century suddenly all gentlemen or anyone who aspires to be gentlemen which by that point because there was a lot of social change by that point included a lot of the male populace started carrying swords now if you have a very large population of civilians suddenly walking around with swords it makes sense that they're going to very quickly start adapting what they're carrying to suit a civilian environment more and I think that there's also a question here of thinking about how you fight if you're fighting in a civilian situation you're possibly aiming to kill your opponent but you're not necessarily under any time restriction maybe if we've met to have a duel it might be an illegal activity however we've met probably to meet somewhere secluded early in the morning where the legal authorities won't catch us before we finish the duel hopefully so we've got a certain amount of time there's no specific rush necessarily even if it's a street fighting situation if it's between two individuals there's not necessarily any rush whereas on a battlefield you have to kill and defend yourself all around and when you deal with an opponent you're generally going for lethal targets so you're going for head or body as quickly as possible to dispatch someone because you might be just about to be attacked by someone else it's a very different situation to fighting in a civilian scenario where very often at this time it's going to be one-on-one one against one so I do think that partly the fact that civilians are always often only carrying a sword by itself or possibly they have a buckler or a dagger but that hand protection is definitely going to be a big bonus to a civilian partly because of course they're unarmored but also very importantly partly because I think in the nature of civilian fighting you're more likely to have time to target someone's hands and forearm if you're fighting someone and there's no particular rush as you'll see in our sparring very often we will go for these extended targets and Manciolino in 1531 says you will want to offend most what offends you the most and what is closest to you in other words the opponent's and that's very much paraphrased the opponent's hand and forearm are the things which are closest to you when they're attacking or indeed defending but equally the thing that offend you the most because they're the thing that holds the weapon and stretches out to to find you to reach you so if you can offend those things you can disable the threat and of course they're closest to you and very often the easiest thing to hit however in a battlefield situation that doesn't always work like that because you're often often wanting to just kill someone completely put them out of action and then deal with another threat so it's a very different type of fighting so there we go there's some loose kind of thoughts I understand I've been a bit rambling and a bit random in this but I think that the development from this to this is very often explained by oh it's it's shields and butlers or oh it's gauntlets I don't think it's really actually either of those things although they play a part I think it's actually about the nature of sword carrying and what swords were predominantly used for and I think that if you look at looking at the you know from the the sort of ancient period right away through to about the probably about middle of the 15th century these were predominantly carried either in war or in traveling they weren't carried that much in cities and they were predominantly used for war once we get into the 16th century suddenly these swords start to get a quite a civilian feel to them they start to especially if you look at the development of the rapier as well of course they start to be formed in a way that's far more beneficial in use in a civilian dueling one-on-one environment and the nature of fighting with a sword in war can be isn't always the basics obviously the basics of cutting and parrying and your footwork are the same but the way that you actually fight is very different with a sword in war compared to a sword in a civilian scenario so there we go guys some some thoughts my if I had to say in a nutshell the reason why the developed hilt wasn't developed earlier I would say it's because swords really got a more civilian emphasis to them in the 16th century that really warranted the use of more protective hilts that wasn't really required in the war swords of earlier periods there we go guys cheers