WEBVTT - Shields Like Fish Scales, Part 2: Shield Walls 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:14.720 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:15.640 name is Robert. 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.439 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:23.200 part two in our series Looking at shield Walls. Now. 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:26.200 In the last episode, we ended up focusing primarily on 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:31.400 one maybe unlikely, but a pretty interesting explanation of a 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:36.560 passage in a first century Chinese history that described a 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:41.680 group of soldiers information with shields overlapping like fish scales. 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:44.120 We ended up looking at a paper from many years 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.440 ago by an American scholar named Homer Dubs that tried 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:51.960 to connect that observation in the ancient Chinese history to 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:57.200 a fact from Roman history about a group of soldiers 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:00.480 that were sent somewhere east after being captured by the 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:04.640 Parthian Empire in battle. And we ended up coming down 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:07.640 with some major doubts about this particular theory, But it's 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:11.400 interesting because of the various facts that connects to, one 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:13.520 of which was simply that you could have a formation 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:17.399 of ancient Roman soldiers with their shields overlapping so that 0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:20.320 they looked like fish scales. Now that's a kind of 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:23.120 striking image in itself. So I know, Rob that captured 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:25.880 your attention and made us want to come back and 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:29.679 talk about shield wall maneuvers more generally today. 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:32.959 That's right, And before we get into shield walls, I 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:35.920 thought it would be helpful to just talk about shields 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:40.399 for a minute acknowledge the underlying invention. So, as Brian 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:43.760 Fagan and Thomas Hewlett described in the Seventy Great Inventions 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:45.840 of the Ancient World, a book I've referred to on 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:50.400 the show many times, the shield likely predates human body armor, 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:52.680 and in fact, I'd say it seems to be a 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:55.200 little stronger than that. I think pretty much everybody agrees 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:58.800 that the first armor of any kind was the shield. 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.560 Body armor itself probably only goes back to the third 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:05.960 millennium BCE, but the first shields are just lost in 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:10.120 the shadows of prehistory. The use of shields likely emerged 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:13.519 from just the use of found objects or nature facts 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:17.320 defend off attacks. And of course we can easily imagine 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:20.200 how one would quickly realize that, oh, the simple club 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:23.520 that I can use offensively is also something I can 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:26.560 use defensively. What else could I do to this to 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.200 make an even better block? Right? 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:32.000 Just going from holding any object to fend off an 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:35.400 enemy attack, maybe any hard object, and turning that into 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:39.560 more dedicated designs, something that has a broader face, maybe 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:41.799 to face against the enemy, something that would have more 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:44.480 deflecting zone, and so forth exactly. 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:49.120 And it's thought that early hunters likely quickly learned that 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:51.639 you could stretch and she could stretch an animal hide 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:54.000 of some sort over a wooden frame or a wicker 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:58.239 frame in order to provide a wide, durable defensive block. 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:02.919 Now I did briefly glanced at Douglas j Emlin's Animal 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:06.480 Weapons on this topic. This is a great book that 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:08.280 gets into I brought this one up in the show 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:11.800 before as well, about the evolution of various offensive and 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:16.960 defensive features for organisms, and then comparing that to various 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:21.120 arms races in the development of different weapons systems among humans. 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:24.240 Emmlin doesn't have much to say about the shield specifically, 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:27.160 but in general compares the development of human body armor 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:31.040 to an interesting case that of the stickleback fish, with 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:37.000 marine species having more spines, more pronounced armor plating, and 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:41.280 then fresh water variations being like less spiky, less armored, 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:45.160 And the idea is that this kind of underlines his 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:48.640 general statement and that is that in general observation of 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:53.560 nature is that any kind of weapon is costly. You're 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:58.680 putting biological energy into the development of those that armor 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:02.200 or those weapons, and you're missing out on other things 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:05.480 because of it. And you know, it's it's like that 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:08.120 in actual warfare as well. I mean there are various 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.200 human complications as well, but generally, if something is no 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:14.880 longer useful, it will stop being used. And if there 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.480 is a need for something to keep up with some 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:21.640 sort of other advancement, well then that's where the development 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:22.400 is going to go. 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:25.360 Right, And that's something people it's easy to forget about 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:30.040 the costs of defenses, and that'll definitely play into some 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:31.560 things I think we're going to talk about in the 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.120 episode today that like you know, you might think, like, well, 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:38.280 why not just have a really really huge shield, you know, 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.640 like just takes a gigantic space so the enemy really 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:44.080 can't get to you at all. If you think about 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:46.360 it for a minute, that comes with all kinds of downsides. 0:04:46.440 --> 0:04:49.080 It's getting heavier, it's harder for you to move around, 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:52.120 it makes it it reduces the amount of space that 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:54.960 you have access to and attacking and so forth. There 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:58.440 are downsides to defenses. They're not only upside. 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.000 Yeah, and there's ultimately a a whole host of like 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:04.840 known downsides like among the general public, and then downsides 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:08.360 we don't think about, and a lot likewise advantages run 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:10.440 the same way. And a lot of this is because 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:12.560 of what we see in movies. You know, even if 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:14.920 we're not actually setting down to watch some sort of 0:05:14.920 --> 0:05:17.680 a sword and sandal epic to learn about ancient warfare, 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:20.680 we can't help but sort of absorb the image of that, 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:23.000 and then we carry that around even if we're like 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.560 I do this, I find myself doing this. I'm like 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:28.680 reading some sort of text about ancient warfare, and you know, 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:32.960 it's a really good text, very well cited, making very 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:36.640 rational arguments. But you know, I have seen movies like 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:40.200 three hundred, I've seen movies like Gladiator and Troy and 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:42.360 so forth, and you know those movies are going to 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:44.640 inherently have errors, and they're just part of like my 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:48.200 visual catalog of the time period. 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:51.919 They influence your view of what happened in history without 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.440 you even consenting to the fact that they're doing that. Well, 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:57.440 you didn't like set out to say I'm going to 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.360 learn what ancient combat was like by watching a movie. 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:02.560 It just kind of gets in there. You don't have 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:03.280 to try. 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:05.400 Now this idea of what if I just had a 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:07.840 big shield though, This is really interesting when we get 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:12.240 into the history of armor though, because we just pointed 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:16.360 out that the shield came first. Everything else followed. As 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:19.240 we've discussed in the show before, you had the invention 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:24.839 of the helmet, roughly twenty five hundred BCE being the 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.400 time when this becomes popular, and this largely emerges as 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:32.200 a counter to the devastating battlefield prowess of the mace, 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:36.880 and so soldiers of the ancient world did typically wear helmes, 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:40.240 but according to Fagan and Wholett, they typically wore no 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.520 additional body armor and depended on the use of a 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:47.320 large shield to cover them from head to foot, with 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:50.560 the frequent addition of a pair of greeves, they write 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:52.960 to protect the lower legs. But we'll have more to 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:55.720 say on that in a bit. So, yeah, this idea 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:57.680 you go back to the ancient world is like you 0:06:57.680 --> 0:06:59.240 have a shield, you have a helmet, and you're essentially 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:03.160 good to go. No notes, and they had this would 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:07.279 remain standard for centuries upon centuries to follow and even 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:10.160 on up into the sixteenth century CE among the Aztecs 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:13.520 of the America's a big caveat here. There's going to 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:18.440 be a lot of variation in specific shields, but there 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:22.040 are some sweeping generalities that are in play. Basically, they 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:25.000 say it was a popular approach for various militaries at 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:28.680 various times, in part because a simple shield was far 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:32.480 easier to produce and mass produce compared to fitted body armor. 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:37.280 Yes, another really important economic consideration. The cost of making 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:40.320 something is not just the cost of the materials that 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:43.080 go into it. Something that can be you know, made 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:45.880 a thousand times the same way is generally going to 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:47.880 be easier to do than something you need to fit 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:49.200 to individual people. 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:52.840 Yeah. Another really important thing about the shield, and this 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:54.640 is this is not going to come as a shock 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:58.120 to anyone who has even just ever had a character 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:01.240 pick up a shield in a role playing But if 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:03.880 whatever you're doing on the battlefield can be done one handed, 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:08.360 be it like a spear or a short sword versus 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:10.880 a two handed weapon or a bow, then a shield 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:14.960 adds a great deal of additional protection. And unlike in 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:19.320 your your RPG, you can't in real life you're you're 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:22.239 not gonna say, well, I could give my character a shield, 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:26.560 but would it look as cool as ultimately you know, 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:29.440 it may just be like one point of armor class, 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:31.240 two points of armor class, whatever the case may be 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:35.200 in your game, but in reality it can make a 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:36.520 obviously a huge difference. 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:39.080 Yeah, that's a good point. I would almost say note 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:42.960 for the creators of D and D like I. Then again, 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:45.600 you know, I'm not a military historian, so I don't 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:47.320 really know, but I would tend to think that you 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:51.160 should get more AC from your shield than you should 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:52.080 from your armor. 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:55.520 Yeah. Yeah, And I'm guilty of this too though. It's 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:57.400 like I'll be I'll just think, well, I don't know 0:08:57.400 --> 0:08:59.800 if this character would have a shield that's not really there. 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:03.680 And you know the counter argument as well, it would be, well, 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.320 I guess getting pelted with arrows is your character's style. 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:09.200 Maybe it depends on the kind of armor, like you 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:12.640 get more AC from like plate armor, but yeah, people 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:14.640 get a lot of AC from just putting on hide 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:15.200 and stuff. 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:18.480 Yeah, I guess it also in dungeons and dragons and stuff. 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:21.079 It also depends on sort of like what is your 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:25.840 visual iconography that you're leaning on to create your character 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:30.559 and so, and that might be actual historic iconography, or 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:36.040 more likely iconography from films and fantasy. Anyway, coming back 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:39.720 to the idea of the film and a big shield, 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:43.600 we do see just this arrangement depicted in ancient art. 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:46.720 An example that the authors here bring up is the 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:52.480 twenty five hundred BCE Vulture stela from Tello, which shows 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:58.920 the troops of Sumerian ruler Inannatum dressed in helmets, brandishing 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:04.959 spears and carrying large rectangular shields. The depiction, they also argue, 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:07.679 seems to provide us with a very early depiction of 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:12.319 a shield wall, so a collective formation of shields. However, 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:15.440 as we'll touch on in a bit, just because you 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:18.439 see shields position a certain way in art, even ancient art, 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:21.480 doesn't mean that's necessarily exactly how it was arranged. But 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:24.200 we'll come back to that. They add that the exact 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.280 kind of shield used would depend largely on the roll 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:30.640 of the given infantry. So fast moving skirmishers are typically 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:33.199 going to depend on small shields. They could be used 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:37.720 with precision and without hindering your speed and maneuverability. Meanwhile, 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:42.240 you're plotting heavy infantry would often benefit from these big 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:45.800 rectangular shield designs that they could provide a great deal 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:47.840 of cover and could be lined up to present a 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:53.280 shield wall against attacks. A very late example of the former, though, 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.160 you can look to the clans of the Scottish Highlands 0:10:56.160 --> 0:11:00.760 and the Highland Charge where they would would they would 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:05.480 drop their musket after firing it and then rush forward 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:07.760 with a with a small shield and a melee weapon. 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:10.240 It's like a shock attack, but that would be a 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:12.440 you know, prime example where you can benefit from the 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:16.320 protection of the small shield with but still being able 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:21.360 to maintain a great deal of mobility and speedy. Now, 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:23.760 one of the resources we turned to for this episode 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:28.800 is the excellent blog of doctor Bretz Devereaux, a collection 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:32.360 of Unmitigated Pedantry, which is a great blog if you're 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:39.240 interested in the history of warfare, especially if you're interested 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:42.120 in Roman warfare, but he gets into a lot of 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:48.200 medieval warfare as well, and frequently analyzes warfare that we 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:52.280 see depicted in the Lord of the Rings show, even 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:55.400 movies like Dune, and of course things like a Game 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:58.920 of Thrones or Rome or you know, the latest Gladiator movie, and. 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:02.600 So forthing those scenes with the historical lens talk exactly 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:05.439 what matches up to what we know about ancient warfare 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:06.920 and what does not exactly. 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:09.800 Yeah, one particular post though, relates to what we're talking 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:12.839 about here today, and that's a twenty twenty three post 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:17.679 titled Collections shield Walls and Spacing, Hollywood Mobs and Ancient Tactics. 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:20.760 So we'll come back to some of his observations regarding 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:24.160 depictions of shield walls and modern media. But I bring 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:26.559 him up now because he makes the following observation about 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:30.480 shield sizes. Quote, Battlefield shields tend to vary within a 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:35.440 relatively narrow range of sizes and basically two major shape categories, 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:40.160 either round or oblong. So there's a lot of variety, 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:43.079 certainly as I already mentioned, but they tend to fit 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:46.760 into these two broad categories. Alongside the usage already sighted, 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:48.959 he also points out that there were never, so far 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:50.959 as he could tell, square shield. So if you see 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:54.600 a square shield, like a perfect square shield in art 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:57.800 or in some sort of TV show or movie, you 0:12:57.840 --> 0:12:59.120 were right to be suspicious. 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:02.319 Right, So the real shields found in history are either 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.320 like a circular disc of varying size or something that 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.839 is fairly tall, basically sort of the shape that you 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:12.960 would imagine a person could hide their tall body behind. 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:15.480 Yeah, it's like it's either going to be like those 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.360 round sleds that you slid down a hill on, or 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:20.800 they're going to be like those the long sleds you 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:23.280 slide down a hill on, but you just don't see 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:24.000 square sleds. 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:25.920 That's a good point. 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:29.560 So Devro makes some really fine points about shield size 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:32.600 relative to the body of the soldier wielding. It that 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:35.480 these shields were on the whole big, generally larger than 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:38.680 we see in films and video games. The larger ones 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:41.479 were broad enough to on their own block a significant 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:45.439 portion of the soldier's body, and even the smaller examples 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:49.000 could cover exceptionally well if you were turning your body, 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:53.040 turning your shoulder toward the enemy, making yourself as narrow 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.520 as possible behind the shield, which was typical. 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:58.960 Form right, and in fact, it almost seems that people 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:02.120 tend to distinctively know to do this if you know 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:05.959 you're in a dangerous situation, if you are think you're 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:08.600 about to get into a fight, whether armed or unarmed, 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:10.960 you tend to want to pivot your body so that 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:14.320 you become narrow so that your side faces your opponent 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:16.280 instead of your facing them head on. 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:20.280 Now, in looking at these different shield sizes, you know, 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:24.160 I can think about what's cool and what looks effective 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:28.160 for combatants, but I know when I see it, I'm like, 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:30.680 if it was actually me, I would say, give me 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:33.400 the biggest one you have with the most coverage possible, 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:35.720 you know, and it needs to be about the size 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.920 of a church door. But an interesting thing that Devreeu 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.520 points out as well is that most shields are going 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:45.760 to focus on protecting the head in the chest, and 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.400 even smaller shields are going to do this quite well. 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:51.480 And as far as lower parts of the body goes 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:53.720 like you know, lower legs, the feet and all. He 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:57.080 adds that in close combat, all strikes are going to 0:14:57.120 --> 0:15:01.440 originate from shoulder height, and you know, certainly you could 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:03.880 aim at your opponent's feet in such combat, but it 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:08.040 would be tricky and it would expose you to counterattack. 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:12.760 So the defense is ultimately well placed here. Also, coming 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:14.960 back to body positioning, you're going to have your body 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:19.040 perpendicular to the combat. And on top of that, most 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:20.920 of the shields you're looking at are going to be 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:23.240 maneuverable to some degree or another. I mean they're all 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:27.960 maneuverable to a degree, but perhaps more so than a 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:30.200 novice might assume just looking at images. 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:33.400 Right, So, a shield is not like a static defense, 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:35.480 say of a particular part of your body, but it 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:38.480 is something you move around in reaction to the enemy 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.160 and to protect the parts of your body that need 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:43.360 to be protected depending on what you're about to do. 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:46.800 It makes me think about Captain America's shield. I haven't 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:50.960 watched enough Captain America recently, and maybe he's my least favorite, 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:52.600 so I don't notice what he's doing as much. But 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:55.280 he does throw the shield around, which does feel kind 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:59.440 of like someone thought, well, the shield isn't interesting enough, 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:01.680 Maybe he can throw it and it can be a weapon, 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:05.000 Like let's make it more active and less passive. But 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:07.160 in reality, like the shield is going to be a 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:12.720 rather active defensive bit of armor. Now, as far as 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:16.040 arrows go, Devereux points out that it's only short range 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:18.120 that you'd need to worry about concerning like your lower 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:21.560 legs and feet. Long range missiles are going to be 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:25.520 coming from above anyway, So again, imagine yourself holding that 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:28.880 shield up. You know, if it's positioned correctly towards the 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:31.600 incoming arrows, you're not going to have to worry as 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:35.360 much about your feet. So basically, shields can provide a 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:37.960 great deal of coverage for the individual fighter on their own. 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.480 But then in formation we get into the widely used 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.920 shield wall formations that you see in various militaries throughout 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:56.560 the ancient world and for centuries and centuries after that. 0:16:57.480 --> 0:16:59.880 Now Devro goes into a great deal more detail about 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:03.680 all of this that we're not going to cover. That 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:06.359 post is a great deep dive, so I recommend checking 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:08.119 it out. But there are several key points that he 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:11.200 makes about shield walls, and points about how shield walls 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:15.920 are generally incorrectly depicted in video games, movies, and art. 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:20.840 And again this is kind of important because these are 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:23.800 the examples that end up coloring the way we think 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:26.720 about it. So I'm compressing many of his points here, 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:32.040 but essentially this one I found really entertaining and insightful. 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:36.879 Really tight formations of soldiers with shields and swords just 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:40.480 look cool. They look cool now, and they look cool 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:43.479 in Roman times, and as he points out, we actually 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:48.440 see Roman depictions all their own troops locked into tight 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:53.439 formations for seemingly this reason, like tighter formations depicted than 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:55.280 they would have actually had on the field. 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:57.199 That's right. So he's making the point that when you 0:17:57.240 --> 0:18:01.480 see a movie scene today where armed infantry with say 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.400 spears and shields or swords and shields, are going into 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:06.800 battle and you see them with the shields all lined 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:09.720 up side to side, touching, you know, so that you 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.359 couldn't even get in between the shields. They're making a 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:16.640 literal wall of the shields or even overlapping. That that 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:21.840 was not actually a common battle tactic in many ancient armies. 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:25.119 You would have different kinds of formations, and sometimes for 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:30.679 various reasons, soldiers would close up into tighter ranks and 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.080 hold their shields out. And we'll talk about some reasons 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:35.320 for that as we go on, but they're not often 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.080 in reality as tight as we see in fictional media. 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:40.680 There's more space in between them for good reasons. 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.400 Yeah, But I guess part of it is like the 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:46.360 idea that it gets across, like, look how tight these 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:48.600 soldiers are, like they are a single unit. They're like 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:53.239 a single mass, you know. We like the idea of that. 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:56.919 Another example he brings up is that early modern gunpowder 0:18:56.960 --> 0:19:01.520 tactics eventually became quite tight in their format to maximize 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:05.359 fire over frontage. Uh and and this and this also 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:07.840 did not depend on combat maneuverability. You weren't having to 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:11.919 swing the you know, like your your rifle around. But 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:15.360 this tight image of formations then is used to imagine 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:19.960 formations for historic soldiers who were swinging around weapons or 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:23.520 using big spears or something. So that that's I think 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:26.440 that's a great point as well, the way we take 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:30.200 modern or at least more recent examples and then use those, 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:34.439 perhaps even subconsciously to imagine the past, which you know, 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:36.960 this is a big tool that we use in imagining 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:39.199 the past in general, like start with what you know 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:43.359 and then and then imagine like ancient people doing that. 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:45.600 But you know, it doesn't apply, you know, one to 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:49.199 one for every situation. Another point that he brought up 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:52.280 that I really liked was that, you know, in in 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:57.000 various screen depictions especially, we see more unrealistic depictions of 0:19:57.040 --> 0:20:01.119 shield walls. And that is because fiction's off and revolve 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:04.080 around some sort of novel and exciting solution to a 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:08.320 tactical problem, when in reality, quote, like most tactics, shield 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:10.760 walls are effective but not particularly clever. 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.520 Right in reality, the so called shield wall is not. 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:18.680 It's not a trick. There's nothing especially clever or counterintuitive 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:22.600 about it. It's like lining up your infantry, your heavy infantry, 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:25.000 in a formation where it would be hard to get 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:25.480 through them. 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:31.720 Yeah. Yeah, I was watching an episode of The Studio, 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:35.960 which is a comedy about the movie industry. Has nothing 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:38.919 to do with shield walls, but there's a part in 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.080 one of the episodes where they're saying, look, they're telling 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.560 this young promising director, we're not going to tell you 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:45.320 how to make your movie, but we have a formula 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.119 that absolutely works and makes money, and we'd like you 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:50.920 to keep that in mind. It's basically what's going on here. 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:54.960 This is not the exciting ideas make for on the battlefield, 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:57.200 make for great stories, but at the end of the day, 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:01.000 there's a formula that works, and nearly those generals are 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:02.640 going to stick to it as much as possible. 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:07.600 Okay, so what were most real shield wall infantry formations 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:09.240 like and why were they like that? 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:13.080 Well, devro gets into more detail, but basically like, you're 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.440 just gonna have more space because I mean, this is 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:18.560 the big one. You need space to move around and 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:21.040 wield your weapon and wield the shield, because remember what 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:24.240 we were talking about, the shield is a more active 0:21:24.280 --> 0:21:27.399 defense than it may seem in like a still photograph 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:30.679 or in some of these movies. You know, shields were 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:33.840 mobile and permittive fair amount of coverage when utilized properly. 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:36.800 Shields were also large again and could cover an individual 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:41.200 quite well, even against incoming arrows which he drives home. 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:44.040 Were not as plentiful and rapid fire as films make 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:48.560 it seem, so troops could and did advance against incoming 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:51.600 arrows like arrows, like it's not just you know suddenly 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:54.000 that it's raining arrows and the troops just can't move 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:54.879 for five minutes. 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:58.399 Our arrows will blot out the sun. That's hard to 0:21:58.400 --> 0:21:59.359 do in real life. 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:02.960 Yeah, and then something will definitely come back to in 0:22:03.000 --> 0:22:06.040 a bit. Super Tight formations tended to just in general 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:09.400 make troops slower and less effective at fighting, which kind 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:11.080