Axes And Shields - Advantages Over The Sword

Hey folks, Matt Easton here, scholar gladiatorial. So continuing our talk about axes, I'm going to again try and keep this brief but I'm going to give you one other really important use and one advantage of using axes as opposed to using swords, and I'm wearing a sword as well which I'll talk about in a second, and that is against shields. Okay, so one of the obvious things is an axe is very much more effective at destroying or compromising shields, and so if we're talking about actually breaking the shields or penetrating the shields then clearly axes or their rear spikes, and this also goes to things like picks and warhammers, are going to be more effective at doing that. But there are two other ways where the axe is more effective against people using shields than a sword would be. Okay, so first of all I'll put the axe down for a second, okay, and go to the sword which is from Landsknecht M4M, always have problems with that word as you know. So swords were used with shields obviously predominantly more than axes we could say for most periods of history, and certainly in medieval Europe swords were more common than axes most of the time, but some people chose axes even when they had swords available to them, and certainly in medieval art sometimes they're shown using an axe and wearing a sword. So why would that be? Well, the sword clearly can be used in a number of ways with a shield and was done very regularly, and you'll notice of course that the sword is easy to wear, so it's a side arm, it's a backup weapon to your primary weapon which would often be a lance if you're a horseman or on foot a spear. But even if it's a primary weapon for some reason the sword can be used and of course was used throughout the centuries with a shield very effectively. But when we're coming to coming around an opponent's shield we're dealing with angles which can only be made by your arm and the articulations available to you. The sword itself, unless it's a curved blade, is essentially a straight line okay, so the sword being a straight line to come around the shield you can only get the angles around the shield that you're able to make with your own body. Now admittedly the angles that you can achieve with a sword around someone else's shield are possibly more diverse and varied than you might have thought of before, and if I just hold the shield out of the way for a second the sword can come around in a variety of angles all the way around here and that's just around the upper targets and around the other person's shield. It can of course also come around underneath the shield to the person's legs with cuts and thrusts from these similar angles around here. So basically you've got a huge variety of angles where your sword can come over or around the person's shield and often I think people just think about you know giving blows bam bam bam and moving the cuts around, but actually the thrusts and the cuts, and if we bring back edge cuts into this as well, can really come around the shield in a number of quite funky and interesting angles, but that being said as I say these angles are dictated by the articulations available to you in your hand and arm. The sword itself or the weapon itself is a straight line essentially. Now if we put the sword away for a second, if we come back to the axe now the big disadvantage of this axe anyway is it doesn't have a top thrusting spike, so a lot of those thrusting angles are now denied to you okay, unless you have a point on your axe. However if we're talking about giving blows, the axe itself now projects beyond the edges of the person's defense of the person's shield, which means that if you swung their head for example, if they're blocking a blow from a sword they could do that or that or that whatever angle they want to put the shield at, but either further away from the body or closer to the body, but if this axe is coming in it now comes further over the person's defense, so they need to move their defense wider and bearing in mind that this hits with more momentum as well, so it might be a slower and less nimble weapon than the sword, but it hits with more power and it can overlap the edge of the shield of the defense. Okay so defending with the shield becomes a little bit harder, a little bit more dangerous and you need to move the shield a little bit wider to deal with this particular weapon. Obviously you don't want that, you don't want to put a shield up and still clock a load of that spike in your eye or face okay, that's bad news, but then additionally to that we come to the second point and that is the fact that this projects over the edge and therefore if you don't hit the person with a swing you can then bind onto their shield and pull their shield with that hook essentially as well. It doesn't matter which side it's with and this could be a hammer projection instead of a spike, the fact is that you've essentially got like a big capital letter T and that forms a bit like a grappling hook or an anchor to grab onto bits of the shield and manipulate it okay. One disadvantage with this is it doesn't have a top thrusting spike so you have lost those attacks but certainly in terms of giving blows and hooking it is a very fearsome weapon and as I say as well in terms of compromising the shield and this is without going into the other big advantage of the axe and that is that you can literally just hit people wearing armour and still have an effect on them through the armour. You can't do that so much with swords because swords just don't hit as powerfully as these. Anyway I hope that's something interesting to mull over and suggestions for any other related videos are very welcome below. Give us a like and a subscribe and I'll see you soon for another video on Scholar Gladiatoria channel. Cheers folks! Thanks for watching we've got extra videos on Patreon, please give our Facebook a like and subscribe if you haven't already. Cheers folks!