Shields

“ From the end of the 16th century, one frequently sees the shields supported by supports and holding, overcome sometimes cimiers, stamps, and being detached on lambrequins.
The support is a tree, to which the shield is suspended; holding are one or two figures of men-at-arms, knights, forks and spoons of their armours and the coat armoyée with the weapons of the shield. ”

“ In earlier times, the shield, as we have seen, was represented as merely suspended against the tomb by a thong, or if sustained in any other manner, still its form was simple and undisguised. Men in those days used their shields in war, and therefore there was no need to add dignity to their form by external ornament. That which, through day after day of mortal danger, had borne back from them the waves of battle, could neither be degraded by simplicity, nor exalted by decoration. ”

“ Nor can we suppose that one scale of size, or indeed one exact shape of shield, reigned universal at any one period; every knight had his own fancies as to which best suited him; and at length we find many illuminations of the sixteenth century in which knights appear jousting and fighting without any shields at all. They were hung up, to show the heraldry, on their tents, and the massive body-armour alone was considered sufficient protection. ”

“ The British method of impaling two coats of arms upon one shield to signify marriage is abroad now wholly discarded, and two shields are invariably made use of. These shields are placed side by side, the dexter shield being used to display the man's arms and the sinister those of the woman's family. ”

“ All the others grant his boon, and, despoiling the corpses of their shields, they arm themselves with them instead. The men within the town had mounted to the battlements, and, recognising the shields, suppose that they belong to their party, never dreaming of the ruse hidden beneath the shields. ”

“ It will be seen subsequently, in tracing the history of the shield, that in the rudest condition of savage life, this weapon of defence has a history of its own; that both in Africa and Australia it is derived by successive stages from the stick or club, and that the broad shield does not appear to have been developed until after mankind had acquired sufficient constructive skill to have been able to form shields of lighter and more suitable materials than is afforded by the shell of the turtle. ”

“ One man made the safety of the inner shields to every hundred that came, and that one in a hundred multiplied, added to those already there, until the shell of murderous energy swelled of its own incompressible contents of Loard-vogh material and men. ”

“ The Shield:—its Parts, Points, and Divisions.—Their Shield, which the knights of the Middle Ages derived from the military usage of antiquity, and which contributed in so important a degree to their own defensive equipment, was considered by those armour-clad warriors to be peculiarly qualified to display their heraldic blazonry. And, in later times, when armour had ceased to be worn, and when shields no longer were actually used, a Shield continued to be regarded as the most appropriate vehicle for the same display. ”

“ To a coat of arms no man, literally speaking, has pretensions, who is not the representative of somebody that bore arms in the old English wars; but when the necessity for military virtue decreased, arms gave way to the gown; and shields had honourable, but fantastic augmentations, for the peaceful triumphs of lawyers and statesmen. ”

“ The shield, therefore, became an encumbrance to the mounted knight, while so perfect was his case of steel, and so admirably fitted and designed, that the shield was no longer required. We notice that this general discarding of shields by mounted knights begins about the latter half of this fourteenth century among the wealthy and powerful, who could procure expensive and perfect suits of mail. ”

“ The marvellous set of chessmen found in the Isle of Lewis afford us a most interesting series of shields of this century. They are fully illustrated, Archæologia, vol. xxiv. They give us the long Norman pear or kite-shaped No. 3, the Norman convex No. 4, also a flattened convex with rounded corners, and these shields are all long and narrow, just wide enough to cover the body. There are many instances of exactly similar shields. In Harl. MS. 2803, a Bible, written about 1170, Goliath of Gath bears a shield exactly resembling them ”

“ In works of art, such as engraved rings and a bronze dagger (Fig. 2) with pictures inlaid in other metals, the shield, covering the whole body, is of the form of a bellying sail, or a huge umbrella "up," and pinched at both sides near the centre: or is like a door, or a section of a cylinder; only one sort of shield resembles a big-bellied figure of 8. Ivory models of shields indicate the same figure. {Footnote: Schuchardt, Schliemann's Excavations, p. 192.} A gold necklet found at Enkomi, in Cyprus, consists of a line of models of this Mycenaean shield. {Footnote: Excavations in Cyprus, pl. ”

“ Those who were prisoners were praying for their lord, for to God and to him they entrusted their succour and deliverance. Then the combatants without delay make all the people stand aside; then they clash the shields with their elbows, and thrust their arms into the straps, and spur at each other so violently that each sends his lance two arms' length through his opponent's shield, causing the lance to split and splinter like a flying spark. ”

“ It should be borne in mind that theoretically all shields are of equal value, saving that a shield of more ancient date is more estimable than one of recent origin, and the shield of the head of the house takes precedence of the same arms when differenced for a younger member of the family. A shield crowded with quarterings is interesting inasmuch as each quartering in the ordinary event means the representation through a female of some other family or branch thereof. ”

“ Covered by the shields of three powerful young men - for missiles of every description were flying from the battlements - he went up close to the walls, encouraging his men, giving the necessary orders, and, what did most to stimulate their efforts, observing with his own eyes each man's courage or cowardice. ”

“ Squadrons on squadrons cloud the dusky plain:
Men, steeds, and chariots shake the trembling ground,
The tumult thickens, and the skies resound;
And now with shouts the shocking armies closed,
To lances lances, shields to shields opposed,
Host against host with shadowy legends drew,
The sounding darts in iron tempests flew;
Victors and vanquish’d join promiscuous cries,
Triumphant shouts and dying groans arise;
With streaming blood the slippery fields are dyed,
And slaughter’d heroes swell the dreadful tide. ”

“ It was not at all uncommon for the fighter on foot to have a man with him who carried a large shield, which covered them both. I imagine that an arrangement of that kind is meant when we read, as we do in the Bible, of the "shield-bearer." For a man to carry a shield of such size as this with any ease, it had to be a light shield, and we know that the shields were commonly made of osier, like our baskets, and covered with the skins of oxen or other beasts. ”

“ Some of these bark shields are of considerable size, and are so wide in the middle that, when the owner crouches behind them, they protect the greater part of his body. As the comparatively thin material of which they are composed prevents the handle from being made by cutting into the shield itself, the native is obliged to make the handle separately, and fasten it to the shield by various methods. ”

“ The good name of many a respectable family has been ruined by the bend sinister introduced through the ignorant determination of some stone-carver; while in glass, colours are altered, and impaled shields have been turned round and so reversed; while, in the particular subject under discussion, viz., the exact shapes of shields which obtained at various dates, we find in both stone and glass that their shapes follow the necessities of the rest of the design, and are made to fit into them. ”

“ The origin of the expression ‘a coat of arms’ we have already seen, as also the cause why heraldric ensigns are borne upon a shield. Shields have been made of every imaginable shape according to the taste of the age or the fancy of the bearer, with these two restrictions, that the shields of knights-bannerets must be square, and those of ladies in the form of a lozenge. The most usual, because the most convenient, shape is that which is technically called the heater-shield—from its resemblance to the heater of an iron—with some slight variations. ”

“ Across the inside of the boss a handle was fixed, and the shields, which were thus held out almost at arm's length, as represented [2] in many ancient MSS., must have been most cumbersome. It is hard to see how the sword or lance could have been conveniently used. The round shape must have interfered greatly with the view of one's opponent, and a bungler would inevitably slice pieces from off his own shield while attacking his enemy. ”

“ There were many other kinds of shields, made of leather, wood, basket-work, etc., employed up to the introduction of fire-arms, when they became practically useless, although some savage nations employ shields at the present time. ”

“ There were two kinds of shields in use in ancient warfare—one smaller, carried upon the arm, and which could be used, by a movement of the arm, for the defence of threatened parts of the body in detail ”

“ Our examples of shields show very few varieties, nearly all seem to follow the long kite shape or "Norman pear" Nos. 3 and 4. The great seals [12] of William I., William Rufus, and Henry I. all show this shield, also that of Ilbert de Laci [Archæological Journal, vol. iv, p. 249] , while the Bayeux tapestry, worked at the end of this century, represents them exactly. Seeing, as we do in the seals of this date, which mostly represented mounted horsemen, the inside only, it may be noticed that all seem to be strengthened round their edges. ”

“ To return to the size of the shield. In a feigned tale of Odysseus (Odyssey, XIV. 474-477) , men in a wintry ambush place their shields over their shoulders, as they lie on the ground, to be a protection against snow. But any sort of shield, large or small, would protect the shoulders of men in a recumbent position. Quite a large shield may seem to be indicated in Iliad, XIII. 400-405, where Idomeneus curls up his whole person behind his shield ”

“ The most singular shields that I know are those made by the Australians, which are so shaped that no one who did not know their use would take them for shields. They are about three feet long, four inches wide at the back, six inches or so thick in the middle, tapering towards the ends, and coming to an edge in front. They are held by the centre with one hand, so that they can be rapidly twisted from side to side, and so serve to parry the spear or stop the boomerang. The weight of the shield enables it to withstand the shock of the boomerang, which whirls through the air with terrific force. ”

“ As the sound of woodcutters in some forest glade upon the mountains—and the thud of their axes is heard afar—even such a din now rose from earth-clash of bronze armour and of good ox-hide shields, as men smote each other with their swords and spears pointed at both ends. ”

“ The most dangerous are Thark, who is my problem, then Senior Adepts Valla and Kainor, who I am afraid will be yours and perhaps Colonel Greggson's, if his shield is as strong as I first thought."
"We should have some element of surprise with shields, shouldn't we? From what you said, they won't be expecting even that much."
"True, but even shields will give only a temporary advantage. They will adapt quickly, and they are powerful. You will have to use the few seconds the shields give you to stun or kill them. ”

“ In order to enable them to ward off these various missiles, the natives are armed with a shield, which varies exceedingly in shape and dimensions, and, indeed, in some places is so unlike a shield, and apparently so inadequate to the office of protecting the body, that when strangers come to visit my collection I often have much difficulty in persuading them that such strange-looking objects can by any possibility be shields. As there is so great a variety in the shields, I have collected together a number of examples, which, I believe, comprise every form of shield used throughout Australia. ”

“ Seal of Queen's College, Oxford, 1341, with well-filled shields.
Fig. 29. Shield with a griffin, from a brass of 1405 at Boughton-under-Blean, Kent.
Fig. 30. Seal of Peter de Mauley IV (from the Barons' Letter) , showing a simple well-balanced shield.
Another point that may be noticed in all old work is that in shields containing several similar objects no two are exactly [Pg 78] alike. If the charges be, for example, three roses or three roundels or three lions (fig. 32) , two will be placed in the upper and the third in the lower part of the shield. ”

“ In Iliad, II. 388, the shield (aspis) is spoken of as "covering a man about" ({Greek: amphibrotae}) , while, in the heat of battle, the baldric (telamon) , or belt of the shield, "shall be wet with sweat." The shield, then, is not an Ionian buckler worn on the left arm, but is suspended by a belt, and covers a man, or most of him, just as Mycenaean shields are suspended by belts shown in works of art, and cover the body and legs. This (II. 388) is a general description applying to the shields of all men who fight from chariots. ”

“ And again:
'Neath eagles' claws the king's foes Sank at the Clash of Göndul. XLVIII. "Weapons and armor should be periphrased in figures of battle, and with reference to Odin and the Valkyrs and host-kings: one should call a helmet Cowl, or Hood; a birnie, Sark, or Kirtle; a shield, Tent; and a shield-wall is termed Hall and Roof, Wall and Floor. Shields, periphrased in figures of warships, are called Sun, or Moon, or Leaf, or Sheen, or Garth, of the Ship; the shield is also called Ship of Ullr, or periphrased in terms of Hrungnir's feet, since he stood upon his shield. ”