WHAT the MEDIEVAL TARGE SHIELD was ACTUALLY used for

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]For much of the Middle Ages, medieval soldiers and knights relied on the shield as one of their primary defenses.

[00:00:07]And if we go back to the early medieval period, pretty much the most common type of shield was the boss gripped circular shield as used by people like the Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and of course the Vikings. And as we enter the Norman era, we start to get these long teardropshaped shields, sometimes known as kite shield, which are strapped by N arms holding the arm onto the back of the shield instead of boss grip. And these morph in shape and gradually become smaller as we move into the classical high middle ages of the medieval knights. But alongside that, we also have something called the buckler, which is a small circular shield, which is boss script, a bit like a miniature version of Viking or Anglo-Saxon shield.

[00:00:45]And these were often carried by lightly equipped soldiers such as archers, and they could wear them on their belt. But I'm guessing that quite a lot of you didn't know that there's also another more obscure type of shield, which is a tiny little shield like this, a nightly shield, but very small. Let's have a little look at what these were.

[00:01:08]Hi folks, Matt here. Scholar Gladiator.

[00:01:11]Now, this is the typical so-called heater shaped shield cuz it's shaped a bit like an iron for ironing your clothes. It's a Victorian term and doesn't have any historical real uh basis at all in the middle ages. But anyway, it's the nightly shield and it's this typical shape that most of you will be familiar with. Even from heraldry, for example, it's the standard shield shape. I think most people, certainly in the Western world, if you say shield, they think of this shape. It's even like a plaque that you would have animal heads on or something like this. It's just the typical default shield shape.

[00:01:43]But in the late middle ages, well certainly by the 14th century, these start to adapt. They start to get smaller. And that's largely connected to the introduction of plate armor. And one of the first things that we see start to happen, as well as it getting smaller, is a cutout being formed over here in order to put the couched lance through.

[00:02:04]Now, by the time we get to the second half of the 14th century, nightly shields are not as popular as they had once been. We've done videos about this, even one recently actually. Why did shields become less popular at this time? It's largely because of the introduction of full plate harness for knights. That's not to say that shields went out of use. They were retained in use. As we've mentioned, little shields were retained right the way through the middle ages and into the Renaissance for lightly equipped, lightly armored soldiers like archers and such like as a sidearm and used in civilian dueling as well. But equally larger shields like pavvises and indeed the nightly kind of typical shield shape was still being used sometimes by knights on foot or on horseback and also in jousting. And that's where we come to this shape here with this little cutout originally for the lance but as you can see this is really tiny and look it has a buckler type grip on it. We're going to come back to that in a second. So this type of shield can go by various names. I won't get into the go into the weeds of of the nomman clature for these but essentially we'll call it a jousting target or tage. Okay. So it's a form of taj not to be confused with the later highland tage. Okay. So we'll call it a tage but it did have other names in in period literature. Now these are a curious thing because they are not always held like an earlier shield. So, let's just remind ourselves here. The normal shield has a couple of straps on the back, but those straps, as I've dealt with in videos about a year ago, actually, I did a series of videos looking at this. We start to see a revival in the 15th century of bossed shields. And I actually put a boss on this shield for that purpose. However, I concluded and looking at the period art that a lot of these bossed shields were actually boss gripped. They were boss gripped much like an earlier Anglo-Saxon shield. So they have a grip in the middle or indeed like a buckler of the time. Why should this be? Well, when you're wearing armor much like the armor I have a 15th century uh full plate harness, your arms have quite a lot of projections and indeed your gauntlet cuffs and the size of the gauntlets make it very difficult to get through the strapping of a conventional shield like this. So we start to see boss shields start to come back, including for the Pavis, which is also essentially a boss grip shield. Well, it doesn't have a boss so much, but it has a grip on the back um that you hold in your hand. And I think part of this is because of the nature of the armor of the time. It's easier to pick them up, to drop them, and everything else. And when you've got full arm harness, like just so happens I have some of here. When you got full arm harness, it's a bit more difficult to get that through straps, and it's more likely to get tangled up. Moreover, as we've seen, fully plated uh knights of the 15th century often just don't really need a shield, but sometimes they wanted a shield for various reasons. One of those reasons was jousting. So, we start to see tiny shields in a traditional shield shape that essentially comes from the late 14th century mounted onto their armor. And this is fundamentally in a jousting context often seen as a target.

[00:05:10]Yes, it provides some extra protection, impact protection when that's a prime target when you're jousting at an opponent, but it also is essentially a a target to a mat for the other person.

[00:05:21]So, it's almost got a sporting application. So, we start to see little tares like this sometimes attached to the armor. Now, the way that they usually attached is by two methods. One is by ge, which is a strap which goes around the neck. We sometimes see that.

[00:05:37]And the other way is by having a horizontal strap on the back which literally straps onto the arm. So essentially it's in front of your left armor, in front of your puldron, and you've got a hand free here. You can hold the reins of the horse or do whatever you want to do with your left hand, drink some wine or whatever else, and the shield just stays there, and that's the target for the opponent to aim at. But this is something a little bit different. So where does this come from? Well, first of all, this actual replica. I need to give a shout out to my friend Kindred at Cal Caledonian Craftsman. And I'm going to put a link down below where you can get these from.

[00:06:14]And this is where I got this. So, we've just finished the smaller of our two hem events, which is called Skirmish here in Surrey. Um, and that was this weekend just gone. That's why I have some uh I have some, you might notice some bruising on my face, but also my voice is quite rough. It's been an energetic weekend. Let's put it like that. But anyway, um, so this is a particular type of small shield which initially looks like a jousting shield and functionally could be. However, this is specifically inspired by a treaties which we know these days as the gladiator group.

[00:06:50]Gladiator as in scholar gladiators is the exact same word. And these are a set of German treatises.

[00:06:58]And as you can see here, they show a jiu-jitsu duel where sometimes a little shield like this is used. And they are shown with a grip on the back exactly like that. Now, we'll come back to that grip in a second. They're also sometimes shown with little uh what's probably a ge in fact we know is a ge because one of the images actually shows the ge around the uh neck of the helmet. Um so they could be hung here. So there are a number of ways that these are essentially used, but I have to mention a bit of context. So in the Gladiator uh images that you see here, this is a nightly duel. In the nightly duel, they have a set of weapons, primarily the spear on foot. You could call it a lance, but on foot spear, a long sword, a rond dagger, and a little shield. Now this is indeed the treaties where to end someone rightly meme comes from throwing the pummel, all of that kind of stuff.

[00:07:54]But basically, they had a weapon set and they had to use all of those weapons.

[00:07:57]So, they had to throw something. So, they usually throw the spear or if they've got an unscrewable WML, they throw that. They have to use a shield because that's part of the tradition.

[00:08:05]They've got a sword and a dagger because knights for a long time have had a sword and a dagger. So, that's their weapon set. And what the treaty shows is using that weapons weapon set in a variety of different ways. So, we actually see this type of shield used in a number of different ways. One way is simply suspended here as an extra bit of protection. Uh, and we see it being worn with a geese, as I mentioned, a strap which goes around the neck. The other way we see it being used is like a buckler. Okay? Because functionally, as you can see, they've both got a grip on the back. They're actually a roughly similar size shape. So, anybody who knows what to do with a buckler, pushing aside the lance or uh parrying a sword cut or whatever else, can do exactly that with this. And interestingly, the shape of the grip here is particularly suited to armor and opponents wearing gauntlets because it's big enough to get a gauntlet into. Additionally, the other way is actually to put the wrist through here. So, we sometimes see the loop um actually around the wrist. This would be difficult with the gauntlet on, but in Gladiator actually show them the gauntlets off. What this enables you to do, of course, is to have that hand free either for grabbing and grappling or indeed for using a two-handed weapon because you've got your hand free there.

[00:09:17]So, you can have the shield at the front and be using the spear at the same time or indeed you could have a weapon in each hand. If I just grab my long sword over here. So, if you're holding your three weapons, you can have the um shield around your wrist rather than around the geese around your neck. You can be using your sword and you can even be parrying with the spear or even attacking with the spear at the same time as using the sword or the dagger.

[00:09:38]And indeed, it's not just this context which you see these little jousting shields in this case not used for jousting used. We do see it in other period art. We see it used on foot uh for example in a duel with long pikes, long spears. We also see them used in battlefield scenes just basically used exactly like a buckler. So sometimes a person has a little one of these and a sword. Equally, as I mentioned, because you've got this big loop here, you can actually hold a weapon, be it a pole ax, a spear, a sword, whatever, at the same time as holding the shield. Or if you can get your wrist through it, then you can have the hand free and have it mounted like that. Or as we've mentioned, you can have the geese and you can have it permanently attached in front of the breast here. although that I would say is the most restrict probably the most protective but the most restrictive option because you can't get it off easily mid combat. So the examples we see in the gladiator um uh treaties in the kind of judicial trial judicial combat that we see there nightly combat perhaps we see them with St. George's crosses quite topical as we've recently had St. George's Day uh painted onto them here. This is a blank one which I will paint up. I'm probably going to paint it with the same arms as we see featured here. Um, from my good friend Gabriel, incidentally, so shout out to you. Uh, which is the arms of Sir Roger Kinston, who is the person I sometimes portray at various events. So, I might put that coat of arms on there.

[00:11:06]I might do the St. George Cross. I haven't decided. What do you think I should paint on it? Should I paint the Scholar logo on? Uh I can paint whatever I like on it, but these were usually made of wood, usually with canvas over the top, sometimes with leather as well, and sometimes something called gesso um uh and kind of um to give a 3D effect essentially. So you can rather than just painting a flat image, you can if you were doing St. George cross for example, you actually do a raised cross and then you paint that. And some of these would have been very fancy. They would have had gilding in addition to the paint and various other things. Anyway, a funky little thing. So, did you know that tiny shields like this existed? Um, and or did you know, did you just think they were jousting shields? Did you know they were also used on foot, also in duels, also on the battlefield? I think they're a really interesting thing. And hopefully in the future, you'll actually see this in use because I intend to put this into use both in and out of armor, practicing some of the techniques from Gladiator, and just seeing how fun it is to use. Um, and I chose one with a particularly big grip so that I can use it with my gauntlets because obviously if you're wearing steel gauntlets, you need a bit of extra space to get the particularly mitten gauntlets to get them in there. Anyway, also big shout out and thank you to Kindred Willow at Cal Caledonian Craftsman. Again, link down below if you're interested in these. He also makes other things like Highland Tajes, single sticks, and a load of other things. So, great business to check out and add to your favorites.

[00:12:34]And uh, yeah, there we go. Let me know.

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[00:12:45]Cheers, folks.