An advantage and disadvantage of SWORD AND SHIELD

Hey folks, Matt Eaton here, Scholarly Guy tutorial. Let's talk a little bit about sword and shield. So I've mentioned many times in previous videos that sword and shield is a really really awesome combination. We shouldn't be surprised by this because of course throughout history going back to the ancient period shields were predominantly used obviously with spears primarily but also with swords and they were a very very popular weapon combination across the world and across a huge period of time. We're talking thousands of years here. Okay right the way back to the Bronze Age really once swords were invented and really a lot of swords when we're talking about them we often tend to talk about them in isolation or some people do. I try not to because a lot of swords only make sense when put in the correct context of the fact that they were used with a shield and I've said this in application to the Roman gladius for example. A lot of people want to compare a gladius with some other type of sword but you've got to remember the gladius is part of a weapon set. It's used with a scutum with a large shield and really that's where the gladius makes sense. The gladius as a weapon used by itself doesn't make a lot of sense but really to say that yes indeed so the point of this video is because I'm going to talk obviously more about this topic in the future but really to say that whilst sword and shield is a very awesome weapon combination it's pretty powerful against most other combinations that you might put with a sword. So we might do for example sword and dagger, sword and buckler, paired swords generally speaking most of these combinations I would say are inferior to sword and shield but as I've mentioned you can't always carry a shield and that's one of the reasons why for example sword and dagger or rapier and dagger was very popular because you can wear a sword or a rapier anywhere and you can carry a dagger anywhere you can't carry a shield anyway it's a large object you can't really practically wear it not in everyday life anyway so in terms of sidearms that makes the shield sort of irrelevant it's really a battlefield weapon you've got to know that you're going to have a fight in order to have the shield ready but assuming we do know that we're going to have a fight and you've got your shield or taj ready you now have an absolutely awesome weapon set but one important thing and this is what I really want to get around to saying there's one important thing to recognize about the use of the sword and the shield together and that is that whilst the shield gives you a huge benefit in defense and in some ways in offense as well it is something you have to get around that gets in the way to a certain extent now we do occasionally see in movies and indeed some reenactors just simply hold the shield in front of the body then fight with the sword this is an incredibly poor way of using the sword and shield together because what it means is that your sword arm and sword hand assuming that they're not armored are now completely exposed and also your shield is very close to your body the further I take that shield away from my body and if I bring my left foot forward it means I'm creating what I term a cone of defense the further it goes away from my body just like with a buckler the greater defense it offers and it has the great benefit that now when I cut or attack with my sword my sword arm is covered because you'll notice my arms because I was born this way my arms are the same length so that means that if I extend my shield out now when I attack with my sword from different angles my hand and my sword are the same range as that shield so that shield is defending and blocking the line which is great because with a medieval sword we don't have a lot of hand protection I'm assuming I'm not wearing armor I don't have arm protection so it means that my one of my most vulnerable parts that would otherwise be very vulnerable with the medieval sword or side sword in fact is now at least on one side protected by the shield from this side we can indeed move the shield over to this side to protect it from that way as well so we can give cuts from that side covering the sword arm here and from this side covering the sword arm there so bucklers and shields can protect the line to the sword arm and that's one of the reasons undoubtedly why we don't see developed hilts being evolved sooner or if you're using a shield or a buckler you don't necessarily need them but the point I want to finish up mentioning is that in doing this it does block some of your lines of attack so if I'm just using a saber or sword by itself I can attack from any direction very very quickly just by moving to the sword arm okay but as soon as I have a shield in the way I now can't necessarily do that so easily because now my own shield is going to get in my way so there is a trade-off you gain a huge amount in defense and certain types of offense as well if I pair the two things together but you also lose a little bit of the speed and diversity of your attacks so when you add a second item into your equation it doesn't always only result in benefits it sometimes results in some detracting factors as well cheers folks thank you for watching please subscribe follow us on facebook you can buy t-shirts through spreadshirt support us on patreon or follow us on pinterest thank you