Dual-wielding shields?!

Let's talk about paired shields. Hey folks, Matt Easton here, Scholar Gladiatoria. So some weeks, months ago now in fact, I did a video where I was talking about shields for part of the video, and I happened to pick up two shields during that video, and as a result of picking up two shields, the thumbnail showing me holding two shields, some people clicked on that video expecting me to be talking about paired shields. Now would this make any kind of sense? That was the question that came out of this. For a start, I'm holding two very different types of shields here. One is a strapped shield with so-called N-arms, that is, you know, you stick your arm through one strap and hold another, and this is a kind of large heater shield like you might find in the 13th, 12th, 13th century, and this is a boss grip shield, that is, you're gripping inside the boss. The boss is that domed knob on the front of the shield there, and they are very, very different beasts. On one hand, the strapped shield is less tiring to use, and you can use larger shields quite often. I'll put a caveat to that, that Roman shields were in fact boss gripped, and certain types of pavis are boss gripped, but those very large boss grip shields are generally held down almost like you're holding a briefcase with your arm hanging down at the side, so they're not generally speaking held up like this. With most boss grip shields of a medium size, or small bucklers of course, they're generally speaking held up here, or even at arm's length quite a bit of the time. Different to a strap shield, strap shields tend to be obviously closer to the body, because as you can see, if I hold them like this, quite simply the boss grip shield can reach further than the strap shield, even if I stretch both my arms out as far as they can go, you'll see that the boss grip shield, there we go, the boss grip shield projects beyond the strap shield. So I'm holding both of these because they're contrasting, they're almost, not quite, but almost opposite ends of the spectrum. A large strap shield versus a medium size gripped shield. I could be holding a pair of strap shields, or a pair of boss grip shields. Now does this make any kind of martial sense? Was it done? Well first of all, it's easier to answer the question of was it done historically. Basically the answer is no. We, as always, I would caveat that with saying that we don't know whether it was ever done, we don't know at some point in history did someone grip two shields for some specific reason, or because they were weird, we just don't know. It's possible that it happened, however I am not aware of any historical source that I can think of, or artwork, or sculpture, or manuscript, or anything like this which shows or describes the use of two shields at the same time. Could holding two shields at the same time serve any kind of purpose? Well I suppose if your job, the nearest thing I can think to it is in the Anglo-Saxon and Frankish period, we sometimes hear reference, and sometimes it's shown in art, in fact there's one 11th century manuscript in the British library that I can think of that shows this, of shield bearers. Now very important people like kings or earls sometimes had shield bearers. Now these shield bearers, as far as I can ascertain, tended to be youngish men or boys whose job was literally to carry a shield around and protect that very important nobleman, presumably from things like thrown javelins, axes, arrows, slings, this type of thing, mostly missile weapons, but additionally potentially in melee combat as well. Now obviously in the Anglo-Saxon period there was less armour, armour was less prevalent, even people who had the top level armour of the day generally speaking only had a male shirt or bernie over some degree of clothing, probably not gambesons by that point, there's some debate about this, but probably no gambesons in this period, and a helmet. And that was it, they had a male shirt and a helmet. Now in a late medieval context that's incredibly lightly armoured for the battlefield, that's lighter armoured than most archers were in the 15th century, most sort of professional archers by the late 15th century had a brigandine over male and a steel helmet and sometimes leg armour, sometimes even arm armour as well. So an early medieval king with just a male shirt and a helmet is actually really quite lightly armoured in the grand scheme of things and obviously more lightly armoured than an average Roman legionary. So the shield was incredibly important, this type of boss grip shield at this period, so therefore if you're wandering around on the battlefield or even in some kind of skirmish, if you've got essentially servants running around you with shields it's going to increase your chances of surviving that conflict, both in hand-to-hand combat and in missile combat. So in that context if you were a shield bearer, possibly, possibly, although there's no evidence of it, I've never seen any examples or any suggestions that this is ever done, but possibly if your job was purely to protect someone, maybe having two shields might be beneficial. Another situation where it may possibly be beneficial is essentially the same job, is if you were in siege warfare or essentially enabling men doing specific jobs, they could be miners for example trying to dig under a wall or people trying to get close to shoot crossbows at defenders on a wall or something like this, so siege warfare is possible again if you had two shields, preferably large shields or pavises, possibly making almost like a testudo type defense to get closer to enable that person, whatever their job is, whether it's to shoot something or to mine something or set fire to something or whatever, a bit like in Lord of the Rings where the explosive stuff's put under the wall at Helm's Deep, that kind of thing, possibly again and it's the same scenario as a shield bearer. So essentially the only scenario where I can think it would be beneficial to have two shields would be if your job was to carry shields essentially, to protect other people for whatever reason, either because they're really important or because they have a job to do. In one-on-one combat, would two shields be any good? Well first of all defensively it'd be pretty good, you could certainly stay alive and I suppose we could say that's another context where the use of two shields together may possibly, you could possibly argue it might have some use, so if for example your primary weapon broke or was taken off you or fell off a bridge or whatever, you fell out off the edge of a boat, you lost your primary weapon and there was no other weapon around but there was another shield around, yeah in that situation I suppose, especially it's funny in this situation if we've got one boss gripped and one strapped, the boss gripped shield is actually easier to use as a weapon, so potentially if there was literally no other weapon to hand and you can't get a weapon off the opponent but you've got a shield and there's another shield lying around, well potentially in this situation you could keep yourself alive for longer whilst your buddies come to rescue you, or you could essentially use one like a shield and use one like a striking weapon, so yes you could technically do it, again I have never seen any suggestion of this ever being done historically, but it could physically be done. Would it be good against someone for example with a sword and shield? No, the problem is shields can strike and so lots of people who know a bit about medieval weapons, you see it on TV documentaries on the History Channel proudly proclaim the shield is not only for defence, you can also strike with it, as this is some secret magical thing that I've never thought about hitting anyone with this before, but of course you can strike someone with anything, you know anybody who studies medieval combat knows that every bit of your body is potentially a weapon, everything lying around is potentially a weapon, so literally if you don't have a weapon in your hand and you've got a shield and you can't get any other weapon, potentially yes even a chair, chair and shield could be an effective combo, it's better than nothing, it's better than your bare hand and yes that is a child's chair, it's not that I'm just really massive, so yes absolutely you could pick up another shield and use that shield as a weapon. So to conclude, would paired shields have any advantage really against someone using a shield and a conventional weapon like a sword or an axe or something like this? No, okay the fact is that a shield whilst it can strike whilst you can hit people with it, it's not really primarily designed, unless it's got a spike on it or something else, it's not really primarily designed to do harm to an opponent, it's not nimble, it's large, it's relatively unwieldy, it's designed primarily to defend, it's not designed to attack, so if you find yourself with two shields, indeed it's generally going to be a disadvantage, there should be no surprise, hence people didn't run around with two shields, against someone who's got a shield and a weapon. The other thing I would say is that we do indeed find shields that are specifically designed for striking, there's certain, famously certain Highland Targes for example sometimes have a spike on them, certain types of Buckler sometimes have pointy edges or a pointy boss, but above and beyond this there's also the German Dueling Shield, there's a similar Hungarian shield that we can see in Paulus Kall's manuscript, one on the left arm with a spike on it, and there's also a type of tournament or bridge fighting shield found in Italy in the 14th-15th century which is a little bit similar to the Hungarian shield, and these were all used for striking, absolutely, so a pair of those used together would be more advantageous than just a pair of normal shields, because those have got spikes on them, they're essentially like a weapon and a shield combined, which a normal shield kind of is but not really. So to conclude absolutely I would say could two shields be used together? Yes they could. Would anyone choose to use two shields together? I would say generally speaking no, however if there's a specific circumstance for it then of course you do, just like anything you do to stay alive or in some cases to protect someone else. So might you carry two shields to protect your king? Yes, maybe. Might you use a shield in your weapon hand because there's no weapon around? Yes, maybe. That might be better than just having a bare hand. So there we go, I hope that kind of addresses what's actually not as silly a question as it initially seems. Had I ever thought about dual wielding shields before I can honestly say no I hadn't. So thank you very much for those of you who commented under that video and suggested that I talk about dual wielding shields, because actually the more you think about it the more interesting it gets. Cheers folks! Thank you for watching, please subscribe and feel free to follow us on Facebook.