Shields were essential in the opening stages in battle as both sides locked with each other in primal contests of will and were then paired with the sword, spear, or axe to break open the defenses of the enemy. Once decorated, it conveyed the user's identity or loyalty, and was sometimes painted with runes or symbols to bring victory. The shield was both a defensive and offensive weapon. Thus, the shield was perhaps the most indispensable tool the Viking carried. Not all Vikings had access to armor, and even the best armor of the era would not stand up to many direct hits. But again, the fact that you see hand held shields in Japan too means that they were perfectly capable of dealing with them with polearms and heavy armor.The battlefields of the Viking Age were terrifying places where a warrior faced hails of arrows and multiple attackers armed with all manner of deadly weapons. The Same goes with Ming and Joseon, although by that period the pike and shot tactics deployed by the Japanese made them deadly at a range in which shields didn't work that much. In any case they were familiar with the concept of hand held shield so yes they didn't have any serious problem in dealing with it. The Samurai were quite armored by the 13th century and the majority of soldiers deployed by the Mongols were not skilled at all I would say. A shield offers a great advantage if you are skilled with it and if your enemy is not heavily armored. It might be that during some close quarter fight, they may have faced hand held shields too. These were the kind of shields that the Japanese used too. As far as Mongol invasions are concerned, the majority of shields deployed by the invaders according to the Moko Shurai Ekotoba were pavise like shields called Fang Pai (防牌). Hello and welcome to my blog! I'm glad that you were able to learn something new with it. However, firearms and hand held cannon were able to destroy and break the old types of Tate shield, and new designs were used to cover the ranged units on the battlefield.Īlthough old model were still common they were often made with iron, and thick "rolled bamboo bundle" called Take wa ( 竹把) or Taketaba ( 竹束 ) were used to protect from gunfire in lieu of the older wooden version. With the Sengoku period, Tosei Gusoku armors started to emerge and the brand new infantry units, the Ashigaru ( 足軽), were issued with pikes, arquebus and bows weapons that precluded the use of hand held shield, even if their armor wasn't as good and as protective as the one used by the Samurai. However, instead of relying more on hand held shield, like in Europe, they developed a more comprehensive armor system, which was able to cover head to toe with lamellar, plate and mail. The mounted archery was left behind and the Samurai started to operated as various form of horse units, from mounted infantry to shock cavalry. Within the course of the 14th century, warfare started to change in Japan much more emphasis was given to the infantry and fighting on foot became more common. To be able to use effectively the bow, the samurai didn't use hand held shields the lack of defense was compensated by the way the Ousode ( 大袖) in their armor worked: There were exceptions to this rule, for example in the late 14th century, polearms started to replace bows for some cavalry warriors, and there is at least one 13th century iconography depicting a Samurai carrying a Tate shield on horseback ( like his western counterpart). Within this context, the powerful Japanese Bowwas the perfect weapon. It is in fact a widespread misconception that Japanese armies didn't rely on hand held shields, at least to some extent.Īlthough it is not arguable that hand held shield didn't play a major role anymore, for the reasons I'm going to explain, among the Samurai class, this type of defensive tool was still used by infantry and others warriors.Įarly Samurai, from the 11th to the late 14th century were mainly mounted archers, since training with bows and horsemanship were the main martial activity of the upper class.Įven if the warfare of these centuries is a topic for another article, the main role of these mounted forces was to charge and "storm" the enemy ( be it on foot or on horseback) while engaging from mid to close distance and then retreat, usually without running straight against enemies formations but rather stay on the flanks of the enemy.
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