Shield Wall Fighting - how would you model it?

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

That's is probably fairly accurate. The point was a comparative one. Horses will not impale themselves to break a formation. A man will if brave enough. More important, even when horses had brestplates, they did not know what they were for. A man with a heavy shield and breastplate and comrades on either side similarly equipped could crash into an enemy formation.

Are we accounting for full-bodied stallions of lines that are bred especially for ferocity and truculence?

Much of the last experience with wide scale hand-to-hand fighting was from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which there were weapons but no armor. While there is plenty of reportage from that, it is not quite applicable to eras when there was plentiful armor.

It's also an era in which lines, squares, and columns are effective because of the equipment. In a setting where the pike and musket are not central themes, I don't think lines and squares are going to happen. I don't think, for example, that a great deal of infantry fought shoulder to shoulder for any degree of time, the risk of asphyxiation is just too great.

Be that as it may it is true that a lot of shock was simply psychological.

Oh yes to this.

Mind you, I'm not sure we're necessarily disagreeing alot here, I'm just saying that I think the "line" of battle was much more intermingled, rather than an actual line. I think most battles involved many widespread small scale combats between the bravest of warriors, perhaps less than 10 men involved in total. As one side of another began to gain an advantage in these small conflicts, I think the less brave individuals of either should would rush forward to "help", which may increase the combat's side, but it'd slack off as the men lacking bravery would scatter back to the wings.

If you've ever been to an SCA event, you've seen what looks like a real battle. No, ignore that first part, where the human waves are crashing into each other, wildly flailing their swords around their heads. Instead, wait for the parts where the line has devolved into the knights going head to head, while all around them you see men halfheartedly walking or waving their weapons around, with small pockets of earnest fights, trailing off to guys who huddle in masses.

That, Imho, is probably more like what warfare and battle was like than the heroic, epic scenes of two great lines of men crashing into each other. Just how many people picture modern war as involving alot of shooting and explosions, when it's really alot of walking, riding, talking and waiting, punctuated by sudden bursts of violence. Almost every combat vet I've talked to expresses the same answer, and I'm starting to wonder if perhaps we've been fed so much hollywood about how thigns were in a simpler, "braver" time...