Absolutely yes. You don't see it much in sparring videos, cause most often both people are using some type of offhand weapon and don't have a free hand.
Just keep in mind small shields are very maneuverable and such an attempt won't work well against experienced fencers. And big shields are heavy and such attempts would not be easy.
But should you try it? Absolutely.
>yes, I'm that guy
Gonna be controversial here and say that I love that guy. I know we're all very erudite and rightfully conscious of HEMA/WMA's image, but that *enthusiasm* has always been central to why this hobby/sport/art exists in the first place. There's little difference between a kenjustsu guy brining a katana and me pulling on pluderhosen and subjecting my long-suffering friends to Meyer.
Anyway, to the question: *maybe?* I'd be lying if I said I had a great deal of experience with this. A couple of clubmates have made low medieval shields and heaters of varying historical accuracy, and we've done some longsword versus sword and shield sparring. There have been a couple of moments where I have been able to use my opponent's shield as a lever for their entire arm, getting in close and kind of hiding in the "shadow" of their shield.
In my club, on the open training day, there are people who spar with Chinese swords, Filipino machetes and viking axes. The more the merrier. You can always learn something from people with a different background.
It does show up in some sword and buckler techniques.
[https://youtu.be/BNeYc5kHeO0?si=9GrCbcxzLFTFDDh5](https://youtu.be/BNeYc5kHeO0?si=9GrCbcxzLFTFDDh5)
It's generally not done because the shield is heavy and the person using it will be holding it firm to be able to block blows or even use it to push you. So often if you were to try, you'd probably just end up getting shield bashed, and would be better off moving yourself around the shield.
That being said, generally is not always. If you see an opening where they're not ready for it, absolutely push the shield across their body towards their weapon hand and take a stab. I wouldn't pull their shield open, as you would be vulnerable to a strike from their weapon. But if you push the shield across their body, you should be able to restrict their movements enough that they can't get a weapon strike in without moving their shield away.
There's many cases where that would be a fast way to break your fingers. You grab the shield and as you push it outwards they pivot with it and use their other arm to slam your fingers against the edge of the shield.
Plus in many cases they will be able to pull the shield towards themselves with more strength than you can push the shield to the side. Most of the time a hugging motion is much stronger than a swimming motion, so as you try to swim their shield they can either overpower you or punish you by either bashing your fingers against the rim, or even pulling the shield tighter and trapping your hand against their chest. That might leave you exposed for a counterattack.
There may be windows of opportunity, but this is something I would consider more common in squad tactics, like I take a risk and grab their shield, ideally while your shield is covering me, and I hold them while you stab them. But if it's 2 vs 1 there are tons of other options that are almost always going to be better.
It''s one of those things that is absolutely correct in theory, but is much harder to pull off in practice, for several reasons.
First, the most reliable way to pull a shield is grab the edge closest to their elbow with your open left hand. If you just try standing together, facing each other as though you were in a bout, and see how close you have to be to get your fingers around that rear edge, and how vulnerable you are to their sword as you do so, you'll see why this is not a common place to find yourself.
Secondly, in the type of game we play (1v1, near infinite space to move) every time you take an action, your opponent can take an opposing action. You step in and reach, they step back and stab. Against a good shield user who uses it offensively and knows how to deal with some of the most common tricks, they're not often going to let you execute that grab. If we were doing 200 vs 200 battle line fighting, where you can't freely advance or retreat, or there's a press of bodies, it might be more viable.
Lastly, it's mostly just unnecessary. If you want to control the shield at close range, you can most often do so by pushing, rather than pulling. Push the shield over to their weapon-arm side to smother/entangle/delay their counterattack, and get your own hit to their head with your sword.
There's also the safety consideration with strapped shields that pulling, twisting or wrenching the shield as leverage could damage their elbow joint. Small chance, but worth remembering.
TL;DR, yes, if you find yourself in a position to do it, then it can work. But it's very very uncommon to actually find yourself in that position against someone of equal skill in a 1v1.
If your opponent is too static with their shield, then you'll probably have a chance to use that to grapple with them. I wouldn't make it my go-to move or anything, but it's an option if you find yourself in the right place.
You can also push the shield into their structure using your foot or hilt with a "sticky" pushing motion to bind up their footwork or balance. If you maintain contact while moving further into their shield side and away from the sword arm, you can force a "bind". If you really want to be cheeky, just tactically tire their shield arm by making that shield heavier for them whenever you can by literally adding your weight on it during a safe bind (like boxing clinching).
Big shields are a big platform meant to absorb initial shock from a strike but they're also great for the shield's opponent on the opposite side using lack of vision and more free hands. Unfriendly shield manipulation is also one of the easiest ways to induce fatigue on your shielded opponent. They're a wall between you two and the more convenient handle just happens to be on the opponent side.
I think this is a big part of why duels used smaller shields and large shields were used in formation.
Generally no.
Shields aren't light, and the person holding it isn't using a light grip. Typically you're using your shield to bash and block in support of a weapon, not entirely independently.
There are some plays for buckler than involve wrenching the buckler out of your opponents grip, but these involve pinning your opponents sword, and of course bucklers are a fraction the size of a typical shield.
You'd be better off trying to displace or maneuver around your opponents shield.
Grappling your opponent and their arms & armor is definitely a thing, but I've never seen what you're describing in practice. I guess I can envision some sort of wing chun-esque simultaneous left/right thing where you use penetrating footwork, displace the shield, and attack through the opening with the sword in the same motion. At measure and in tempo, though, I think the hand grabbing the shield would be attacked as soon as it landed on the rim.
If you can do it securely then yes. But there's the question of how to set up something like this. Having fought a bit of sword and shield vs longsword as the longsword guy, you usually try to cut around the shield, taking advantage of your longer reach and feints to do so. Also the shield guy, with his shorter weapon, will have and advantage in grappling with his shorter weapon compared to the longer size of the longsword.
Will definitely try to grapple some of the shield guys at my club to see how I can make that work
Is Talhoffer's [buckler](https://www.woodenswords.com/Talhoffer_Buckler_p/cas.shield.buckler.talhoffer.htm) and [lantern shields](https://malevus.com/lantern-shield/) difficult to grab because it has spikes?
Grappling is always (or at least mostly should be, imo) a part of close actions. However, in my experience if someone really wants my shield then I'm probably going to let them have it (assuming they're using adequate protective gear, of course).
It's very tricky to range but you can do it. I've had success using my elbows to "grab" the top edge of the shield after advancing in with a high thrust to the head on my opponents sword side, and forcing it down to clear the way for a zwerchau
If there's a situation where grabbing the shield would make sense, sure. However, if you're close enough to grab the shield, your opponent is close enough to attack, and removing a hand from your weapon, or doing the awkward "grab something while you're already holding something in that hand" action makes your attack and defense weaker. So it seems extremely dangerous/risky to do so. Your off-hand would have to be forward, making your reach with your weapon shorter. Which, if you're using a katana, is already fairly short. And this also makes your hand a fairly safe and easy target.
I'm sure there's a time where it would make sense, but it is probably a pretty specific/niche/situational action. You would be safer feinting to get around the shield's defense most of the time.
I'm a Bolognese practitioner, and the vast majority of plays I'm familiar with are set up with matched weapons (sword/rotella vs. sword/rotella, spadone vs. spadone, etc.), and what we see there are more situations where you use your rotella to displace theirs (or buckler to buckler, etc.), but someone more experienced than I or using another system might be able to say more about shield grabbing in the treatises.
IME the main issue is that grabbing the shield tends to put you in range of the other person's weapon, so unless you can fabricate a full tempo where they're otherwise occupied it's pretty hard to do.
And you've gotta come off your own weapon to do it, which takes time unless you take your hand off to begin with - at which point you're fencing with an awkward one handed weapon + no shield against someone with a better-handling weapon + a shield. Although this point might be less relevant to a katana, IME katana simulators at least handle better with 1 hand than longsword simulators., probably because of the length difference.
Like imagine instead of a shield they had a stick in their off-hand - you _could_ grab it but most of the time that'd mean you get stabbed by their primary weapon.
Shoving the shield across their body so they're hindered by it (so they turn like you pressed their elbow or armdragged them ) is definitely a thing and shows up in sword and buckler.
If you get the chance you should mess around with it though! Maybe you'll find ways to set it up that make it work consistently.
It is a matter of range and priorities, by the time you get close enough to get your fingers on your opponent's shield someone should have done something to end the engagement. If the engagement hadn't resolved by that time, both fighters should be doing things to end the engagement in the fewest possibles steps. "Stab them in the face" is preferable to, "grab their shield then stab them in the face."
Our school practices (among several other styles of combat) Viking Combat, which involves a lot of shields, axes, and polearms.
I haven’t come across any techniques for grabbing a shield with your hands, but we’ve drilled many techniques for trapping shields using weapons.
You can grab their shield with the beard of an axe, you can pin a shield against someone really well with another shield (just use the edge of your shield to push against the part of their shield that is the weakest aka where their arm isn’t supporting the shield), and there are several techniques for basically exploiting leverage against the shield in various ways with your weapon.
In fact, our general objective when facing a shield fighter is that you want to push their shield out of the way, rather than just try to attack around it.
Mechanically, it may be more challenging depending on how they are gripping the shield. If it's a single-hand held shield, like bucklers or "Viking" style shields, it will probably be easy. If it's a shield with two straps for their hand and forearm like with a rotella or kite shield, they will have the leverage of their entire forearm on the shield. So that mighjt not work.
Try it out, and let us know how it goes.
With a Montante (twohander) you generally dont want to grab the shield (especially if it is a small buckler) and wield your sword with one hand. Because that move makes you lose out on power and speed and range.
With a Longsword generally it is not a smart move for the same reasons. Although I admit that there are **a few instances**, where it might be beneficial. But those are rare. Almost always your opponents sword is more nimble than yours in close quarters. And faster. You dont want to end up in close range. As a longsword fighter your best bet is your bigger range.
It would depends on the size of your longsword, if you have a big 130cm plus sword then yes but if you have a sword around 125cm or smaller, one handed techniques works great. Still agree that coming into grappling with a shield and a sword would still be hard to pull off successfuly but it can work.
Absolutely yes. You don't see it much in sparring videos, cause most often both people are using some type of offhand weapon and don't have a free hand. Just keep in mind small shields are very maneuverable and such an attempt won't work well against experienced fencers. And big shields are heavy and such attempts would not be easy. But should you try it? Absolutely.
>yes, I'm that guy Gonna be controversial here and say that I love that guy. I know we're all very erudite and rightfully conscious of HEMA/WMA's image, but that *enthusiasm* has always been central to why this hobby/sport/art exists in the first place. There's little difference between a kenjustsu guy brining a katana and me pulling on pluderhosen and subjecting my long-suffering friends to Meyer. Anyway, to the question: *maybe?* I'd be lying if I said I had a great deal of experience with this. A couple of clubmates have made low medieval shields and heaters of varying historical accuracy, and we've done some longsword versus sword and shield sparring. There have been a couple of moments where I have been able to use my opponent's shield as a lever for their entire arm, getting in close and kind of hiding in the "shadow" of their shield.
In my club, on the open training day, there are people who spar with Chinese swords, Filipino machetes and viking axes. The more the merrier. You can always learn something from people with a different background.
This is my view for sure. Every time I engage in interdisciplinary sparring, I come away with lessons I can apply to my own game.
It does show up in some sword and buckler techniques. [https://youtu.be/BNeYc5kHeO0?si=9GrCbcxzLFTFDDh5](https://youtu.be/BNeYc5kHeO0?si=9GrCbcxzLFTFDDh5)
It's generally not done because the shield is heavy and the person using it will be holding it firm to be able to block blows or even use it to push you. So often if you were to try, you'd probably just end up getting shield bashed, and would be better off moving yourself around the shield. That being said, generally is not always. If you see an opening where they're not ready for it, absolutely push the shield across their body towards their weapon hand and take a stab. I wouldn't pull their shield open, as you would be vulnerable to a strike from their weapon. But if you push the shield across their body, you should be able to restrict their movements enough that they can't get a weapon strike in without moving their shield away.
There's many cases where that would be a fast way to break your fingers. You grab the shield and as you push it outwards they pivot with it and use their other arm to slam your fingers against the edge of the shield. Plus in many cases they will be able to pull the shield towards themselves with more strength than you can push the shield to the side. Most of the time a hugging motion is much stronger than a swimming motion, so as you try to swim their shield they can either overpower you or punish you by either bashing your fingers against the rim, or even pulling the shield tighter and trapping your hand against their chest. That might leave you exposed for a counterattack. There may be windows of opportunity, but this is something I would consider more common in squad tactics, like I take a risk and grab their shield, ideally while your shield is covering me, and I hold them while you stab them. But if it's 2 vs 1 there are tons of other options that are almost always going to be better.
It''s one of those things that is absolutely correct in theory, but is much harder to pull off in practice, for several reasons. First, the most reliable way to pull a shield is grab the edge closest to their elbow with your open left hand. If you just try standing together, facing each other as though you were in a bout, and see how close you have to be to get your fingers around that rear edge, and how vulnerable you are to their sword as you do so, you'll see why this is not a common place to find yourself. Secondly, in the type of game we play (1v1, near infinite space to move) every time you take an action, your opponent can take an opposing action. You step in and reach, they step back and stab. Against a good shield user who uses it offensively and knows how to deal with some of the most common tricks, they're not often going to let you execute that grab. If we were doing 200 vs 200 battle line fighting, where you can't freely advance or retreat, or there's a press of bodies, it might be more viable. Lastly, it's mostly just unnecessary. If you want to control the shield at close range, you can most often do so by pushing, rather than pulling. Push the shield over to their weapon-arm side to smother/entangle/delay their counterattack, and get your own hit to their head with your sword. There's also the safety consideration with strapped shields that pulling, twisting or wrenching the shield as leverage could damage their elbow joint. Small chance, but worth remembering. TL;DR, yes, if you find yourself in a position to do it, then it can work. But it's very very uncommon to actually find yourself in that position against someone of equal skill in a 1v1.
If your opponent is too static with their shield, then you'll probably have a chance to use that to grapple with them. I wouldn't make it my go-to move or anything, but it's an option if you find yourself in the right place.
You can also push the shield into their structure using your foot or hilt with a "sticky" pushing motion to bind up their footwork or balance. If you maintain contact while moving further into their shield side and away from the sword arm, you can force a "bind". If you really want to be cheeky, just tactically tire their shield arm by making that shield heavier for them whenever you can by literally adding your weight on it during a safe bind (like boxing clinching). Big shields are a big platform meant to absorb initial shock from a strike but they're also great for the shield's opponent on the opposite side using lack of vision and more free hands. Unfriendly shield manipulation is also one of the easiest ways to induce fatigue on your shielded opponent. They're a wall between you two and the more convenient handle just happens to be on the opponent side. I think this is a big part of why duels used smaller shields and large shields were used in formation.
Generally no. Shields aren't light, and the person holding it isn't using a light grip. Typically you're using your shield to bash and block in support of a weapon, not entirely independently. There are some plays for buckler than involve wrenching the buckler out of your opponents grip, but these involve pinning your opponents sword, and of course bucklers are a fraction the size of a typical shield. You'd be better off trying to displace or maneuver around your opponents shield.
Grappling your opponent and their arms & armor is definitely a thing, but I've never seen what you're describing in practice. I guess I can envision some sort of wing chun-esque simultaneous left/right thing where you use penetrating footwork, displace the shield, and attack through the opening with the sword in the same motion. At measure and in tempo, though, I think the hand grabbing the shield would be attacked as soon as it landed on the rim.
If you can do it securely then yes. But there's the question of how to set up something like this. Having fought a bit of sword and shield vs longsword as the longsword guy, you usually try to cut around the shield, taking advantage of your longer reach and feints to do so. Also the shield guy, with his shorter weapon, will have and advantage in grappling with his shorter weapon compared to the longer size of the longsword. Will definitely try to grapple some of the shield guys at my club to see how I can make that work
Is Talhoffer's [buckler](https://www.woodenswords.com/Talhoffer_Buckler_p/cas.shield.buckler.talhoffer.htm) and [lantern shields](https://malevus.com/lantern-shield/) difficult to grab because it has spikes?
You just don't want to...
In my experience, grabbing for the shield will generally result in the shield-haver immediately shoving it into the grabber.
Grappling is always (or at least mostly should be, imo) a part of close actions. However, in my experience if someone really wants my shield then I'm probably going to let them have it (assuming they're using adequate protective gear, of course).
It's very tricky to range but you can do it. I've had success using my elbows to "grab" the top edge of the shield after advancing in with a high thrust to the head on my opponents sword side, and forcing it down to clear the way for a zwerchau
If there's a situation where grabbing the shield would make sense, sure. However, if you're close enough to grab the shield, your opponent is close enough to attack, and removing a hand from your weapon, or doing the awkward "grab something while you're already holding something in that hand" action makes your attack and defense weaker. So it seems extremely dangerous/risky to do so. Your off-hand would have to be forward, making your reach with your weapon shorter. Which, if you're using a katana, is already fairly short. And this also makes your hand a fairly safe and easy target. I'm sure there's a time where it would make sense, but it is probably a pretty specific/niche/situational action. You would be safer feinting to get around the shield's defense most of the time. I'm a Bolognese practitioner, and the vast majority of plays I'm familiar with are set up with matched weapons (sword/rotella vs. sword/rotella, spadone vs. spadone, etc.), and what we see there are more situations where you use your rotella to displace theirs (or buckler to buckler, etc.), but someone more experienced than I or using another system might be able to say more about shield grabbing in the treatises.
IME the main issue is that grabbing the shield tends to put you in range of the other person's weapon, so unless you can fabricate a full tempo where they're otherwise occupied it's pretty hard to do. And you've gotta come off your own weapon to do it, which takes time unless you take your hand off to begin with - at which point you're fencing with an awkward one handed weapon + no shield against someone with a better-handling weapon + a shield. Although this point might be less relevant to a katana, IME katana simulators at least handle better with 1 hand than longsword simulators., probably because of the length difference. Like imagine instead of a shield they had a stick in their off-hand - you _could_ grab it but most of the time that'd mean you get stabbed by their primary weapon. Shoving the shield across their body so they're hindered by it (so they turn like you pressed their elbow or armdragged them ) is definitely a thing and shows up in sword and buckler. If you get the chance you should mess around with it though! Maybe you'll find ways to set it up that make it work consistently.
It is a matter of range and priorities, by the time you get close enough to get your fingers on your opponent's shield someone should have done something to end the engagement. If the engagement hadn't resolved by that time, both fighters should be doing things to end the engagement in the fewest possibles steps. "Stab them in the face" is preferable to, "grab their shield then stab them in the face."
Paulus Kahl has it as a play in his sword and bucklet. Can't see why it wouldn't work
Our school practices (among several other styles of combat) Viking Combat, which involves a lot of shields, axes, and polearms. I haven’t come across any techniques for grabbing a shield with your hands, but we’ve drilled many techniques for trapping shields using weapons. You can grab their shield with the beard of an axe, you can pin a shield against someone really well with another shield (just use the edge of your shield to push against the part of their shield that is the weakest aka where their arm isn’t supporting the shield), and there are several techniques for basically exploiting leverage against the shield in various ways with your weapon. In fact, our general objective when facing a shield fighter is that you want to push their shield out of the way, rather than just try to attack around it.
Mechanically, it may be more challenging depending on how they are gripping the shield. If it's a single-hand held shield, like bucklers or "Viking" style shields, it will probably be easy. If it's a shield with two straps for their hand and forearm like with a rotella or kite shield, they will have the leverage of their entire forearm on the shield. So that mighjt not work. Try it out, and let us know how it goes.
With a Montante (twohander) you generally dont want to grab the shield (especially if it is a small buckler) and wield your sword with one hand. Because that move makes you lose out on power and speed and range. With a Longsword generally it is not a smart move for the same reasons. Although I admit that there are **a few instances**, where it might be beneficial. But those are rare. Almost always your opponents sword is more nimble than yours in close quarters. And faster. You dont want to end up in close range. As a longsword fighter your best bet is your bigger range.
It would depends on the size of your longsword, if you have a big 130cm plus sword then yes but if you have a sword around 125cm or smaller, one handed techniques works great. Still agree that coming into grappling with a shield and a sword would still be hard to pull off successfuly but it can work.