Postby Jay Vail » Sun Dec 25, 2005 7:05 am
The fight between sword and shield and longsword can be very challenging for the longswordsman, though it is not impossible for him to defeat the shield man, as I have done it many times.
However, the fight is artificial in that the rules generally adopted for such a contest in today’s world assume that the men are unarmored. This, any touch with the sword on any part of the opponent’s body constitutes a hit. But the likelihood of such a contest taking place in the Middle Ages/Renaissance was remote. People didn’t walk around carrying shields just for the fun of it back then (carrying swords around was also not usually done either, until the Renaissance). Shields came out of their closets or off the walls only during war time or for practice. Therefore, such a contest would have occurred on the battlefield, if at all, and then both men would have been armored. The longswordsman used that weapon because he was attired in plate and had dispensed with the shield altogether, since he no longer needed it. Thus, the shieldman could bash away at the longswordsman who can simply take the blows. Unless you have seen Shane and Matt go at it fully armored, you cannot fully appreciate the protective qualifies of a full harness of plate. Plate armor really changes in the fight and gives the longswordsman the advantage, I think, over the shieldman. Certainly it nullifies much of the advantage conferred by the shield.
