"Disappearence of Sword and Buckler Men" Topic

Why did the Sword and buckler men disappear when they were so effective against pike formations in the early 1500s? Pike formations continued in use through the English Civil War.

Certainly, shot increased in effectiveness but melee was still required to finish off pike blocks. It seems sword and buckler would have still been very useful even during the English Civil War.

So any thoughts on the disappearance of sword and buckler troops well before the disappearance of the pike block?

Just spitballin' here, but the English Civil War took place about the same time as the rise of the rapier and the associated thrusting styles. Is it possible that it just became too difficult to recruit traditional sword-and-buckler types?

Sword and buckler was a common for personal defence, however by the 1640's it had largely fallen out fashion as a companion to either sword or rapier, even dagger was falling out of common usage. As such I would suggest that you would not have a pool to draw on, so without training over time, you are better off training people in the use of weapons that function quickly as a team, fire arms and pike.

Sword & Buckler men began to disappear in the 1520s. They didn't go completely until much later, but their role was diminishing.

They started life in the condotierre armies of Michelleto Attendolo (or was it Braccio da Montone) in Italy in the early 15th century. And for similar reasons, storming castles, etc., in the Reconquista armies of Spain at the same time.

There are real questions to be answered about how effective they were, and whether or not they deserved the publicity they received in the early 16th century. Macchiavelli has a lot to answer for.

In fact, you've probablay answered your question yourself. Because if they were really successfull, why did they die out?

What Phillius said, My information is that the Spanish use of S&B men were a relic from their need during the reconquista that ended in 1492 for storming castles and the subsequent jump into the Italian Wars before the army could reorganize.

Plus their use in the Americas?

Do Scots Highlanders with sword and targe count?

They were still used in the late 16th Century War in the Netherlands and there are contemporary prints showing them in combat. I agree though that they were something of a specialist troop type, useful in the siege warfare of the Dutch Revolt

I also recall reading that the bucklers or targets became increasingly heavy in order to withstand the shot

"Buckler" is a classic example of 19th Century historians using a period word the wrong way. A buckler is a small steel shield while the Spanish used the much larger 'adarga' (made of hardend leather) which was replaced by the wood (later steel) 'rondel' which was a common shield in Italy. The English name for that style of shield was 'targe' and the swordsmen were called "targeteers"

Targeteers were only effective against pikemen in certain circumstances i.e when the pikemen had been disordered by terrain or field obstacles. They were also be usefull i skirmished and sieges but in open terrain they did poorly against pikemen and were almost defenceless against cavalry.

Like the soldiers armed with two-handed swords they were too specialised and resource demanding to be fielded in large numbers but tradition and their usefullness in some circumstances meant that they lingered for a long time in small numbers. For example both Dutch & English companies in the Netherlands often had 3-5 targeteers on their muster rolls.

There were some armies which experimented with large numbers of Targeteers fairly late in the 16th Century. For example Swedish King Erik XIV equipped 25-30 men in each company with round steel shields ("rundelar") and pistols but this expensive equipment disapeared after 1570 due to cost and the limited usefullness in the ongoing war with the Muscovites.

malatesta1500 wrote: "They were still used in the late 16th Century War in the Netherlands and there are contemporary prints showing them in combat. I agree though that they were something of a specialist troop type, useful in the siege warfare of the Dutch Revolt
"
Those that did not rot from the damp climate, were used as serving trays by the Dutch as at the relief of Leiden.

Groetjes, (Cheers)

The English in Ireland used targeteers pretty much up until 1604 and of course their Irish opponents used them them too.

I have a copy of a contemporary picture map of the Yellow Ford. At the point that the English pike are begining to disintegrate and the shot have been beaten it shows a swarm of Irish targeteers closing in.

I guess they were good against disordered pike and chasing off shot and skirmishers.

Another big thing is that the use of the pike changed pretty considerably over that time frame. When the Dutch system came into common use pikemen were not an attacking formation as much and eventually not at all. They were used to defend against cavalry.

So by the time of the English Civil Wars there would not have been much of a use to break up a pike formation.

Bang for buck I would think. Like the longbow, it's a specific skill set requiring a lot of training. You can get someone to fighting effectiveness quicker with a pike or a matchlock etc.

Swordsmen with shields were probably most useful in siege situations (where suspects they were often simply re-equipped pikemen). Some of their positive reputation was likely due to the Renaissance rediscovery of the classics; the targeteers were fairly analogous to the way the Romans fought, and they had a good track record for defeating pikemen.

I like the rock/scissors/paper aspects of swordsmen on the battlefield form a game standpoint, and I have them in my own rules, but I suspect their numbers and effectiveness have been greatly exaggerated.

I am not sure how much of the reputation of the sword and buckler comes from Machiavelli, who liked them because they used the weapons of a Roman soldier (as he imagined them); and who also thought gunpowder was a passing fad.

Montluc, interestingly enough and IIRC confirms what Gonsalvo says; he only writes of using a sword and shield combination when storming a breach.

Rings true, Lentulus …

Originally I thought the disappearnce of sword and buckler was probably linked to changes in the tactical use and size of pike blocks. But as I read all these ideas, I can't disagree with a single one. Perhaps there were multiple reasons for the disappearance. Although it is interesting to see that sword and bucklers were still around here and there as late as the early 1600s.

There was ONE battle where "sword and buckler" were allegedly very effective, which was Ravenna, 1512. The "French" landsknecht there (actually Imperial on loan to the French) suffered pretty high losses against the Spanish infantry. Macchiavelli wrote 1513 under the impression of that battle and naturally assumed that this kind of encounter would always work this way.

Despite this "success" the Landsknechts and Spanish clashed undecisively until the French Gensdarmes won the day, so the effect must have been limited.
It seems that there were some specific circumstances that played a role, probably because the Landsknechts were on the advance and thus disrupted (sources are not entirely exact, despite several reports on Ravenna).
Other speculative reasons are that the Landsknechts were insufficiently equipped with close combat weapons or the groups of helbardist were already occupied otherwhere.
Anyway, the reported "success" could not be repeated. Full units of "sword and buckler" were not effective on contemporary battlefields.
In supportive roles the weapons were still effective, since they offered mobility, offensive and defensive capabilities – mainly when the combat became individualized. So for sieges and the "small war" these were still the weapons of choice, with shields petering out due to their uselessness against firearms and swords later gradually being replaced by reliable handguns.

Well, first at all, pardon with my "spanglish".
In the spanish Tercios, I think the "rodeleros" (sword and buckler)disappeared (in open field, I mean)at some moment between the last campaing in Italy with Gonzalo Fdez. de Córdoba and the Milan campaing.
Why? It was a difficult (and dangerous) task, to attack a pike block with sword, and the firearms could do the same work, with less risk.

About the big success of the rodeleros:

"The sword and buckler men had a major impact on the first Italian campaign. They won the battle of Atella in July 1496 practically singlehanded. Pushing their way into the body of the Swiss pikemen, protecting themselves with their shields and breaking up the enemy formation with their swords, they put the famous Swiss mercenaries to flight. "

"The Spanish Tercios, 1536-1704"

How large was the battle of Atella? I am not particularly familiar with this particular action.

link
especially
PDF link

A wonderful work on "The conquest of Grenada" by William Prescott cites on Atella: "In ‘The Great Captain's' successful Siege of Atella (1496), it was his skilful employment of both jinetes and stradiots that sustained the blockade and forced the surrender of the French under Montpensier."

Actually he does not mention the actual battle, but this and other sources (Potter, Mallet) indicate that the French forces where already starved pretty low before the battle commenced.

BTW: Tercio Idiaquez
May we assume that you are Spanish? Is your source the Osprey book, or the Almena book on "Los Tercios en las Campanas del mediterraneo"? I have the Northern African issue, but was unable to get the one about the Italian campaigns…

Yes, I´m spaniard.
Well, I´m one of the authors of Osprey book. I don´t remember the original source for this battle (I would have to look my bibliography).
link
Here I have written the Atella battle, 73 and 74 page, in spanish I´m afraid, but I can´t answer any doubt about the translation.

For the italian campaing (Great Captain) I suggest this book
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T"los tercios en las campañas del Mediterraneo", it starts with the 1521 campaing.

Sword and Buckler infantry were still in use in the 1630s in Imperial armies, apparently as front rank soldiers.

My only source for this is the Men-At-Arms book: "Imperial Armies of the Thirty Years' War (1): Infantry and Artillery."

Yes, the sword an buckler were in use, but in a lesser extension that in the beggining of the XVI century.
In the Tercios, the theory marks that the third part of the soldiers were sword and buckler, but this proportion was abandoned when the fire arms fulfilled the task with less risk.
But for storming fortress, fighting at sea and several other tasks, was an useful "tool"

Well that particular Osprey is filled with errors not to mention plagiarising other works notably Delbrück. There is not a shred of actual evidence for the use of targeteers by the Imperial army, they are not mentioned in the "Bestellungen" which laid down the details of organisation and equipment for each unit nor is there any evidence of shields being purchased for use by the Imperial army during the TYW.

To give the benefit of doubt, there are Landsknecht targeteers depicted in the 1519 Maximilian triumph – though together with other weired and tournament weapons, not with the combat veterans who wield, unsurprisingly, just pike, helbard and arquebus. I have never seen a shield (buckler or target) on a contemporary depiction of a battle or camp scene, neither with Landsknechts nor Swiss.

@Tercio Idiaquez
Thanks for the link. My Spanish is terrible, but with the aid of several translators and some basic knowledge of Latin I usually can decipher the meaning – or with a lot more work the details of a short text.
We are all prone to put selective information into the pattern we already have (see eg. Taylor, or Ranke) and thus come to different conclusions from the same information – so infos on the original sources would be most welcome. Atella seems to be an almost forgotten engagement, which incites my curiosity…

EDIT: Found a writeup of the campaign by Havemann, who mainly cites Jovius and Guiccardini as sources. Coming from Germany he concentrates on the fate of the Landsknechts and Swiss and notes that especially the Landsknechts in French service defected (to the Landsknechts in Gonzalos service) after not having received money for roughly a year and food for well over a month. Sadly, while he writes of the tactics of the light cavalry to cut off the French (harassment and retreat into the range of prepared fortified positions), the duration of the siege and its diplomatical fallout, and the situation of the captured French army after their surrender, he failes to manage the engagement at all. :-(

I am no expert on the classical period, but didn't roman sword and shield consistently beat pikes? If so, it seems sword and shield should still be effective against pikes in the renaissance even as just a supplement to the core of pikes.

"I am no expert on the classical period, but didn't roman sword and shield consistently beat pikes?"

Only when the pikes were disordered, taken in the flank or whatever. Face to face, all things being equal the Romans found it difficult to have an impact. Flodden, a pike defeat, is very interesting in this respect and then we are not talking about veteran Macedonians or Swiss but Scots with fairly average training. Not that I'm an expert either.

Puster,
That part of the Triumphzug is probably one of the most misunderstood due to the men often being shown out of context and almost never with the captions intended to accompany the images. The men are actually civilian martial artists showing of a particular style of martial art such as sword & buckler fighting or messer fighting (the men with the larger shields), the men are mixed in with men equipped for mountaineering and a group of men with "federschwerter" that is blunt training swords.

The 3 groups of actual Landsknechts form a distinctive part of the Triumphzug and all are clearly equipped for war with armour, primary arms and sidearms.

Daniel, what really intrigues me about this part of the Triumphzug is the fact that such styles of fighting actually existed. It never ceases to amaze me how many different tournament styles are shown (many of whom are also frequently mistaken as contemporary battle equipment). I assume that these styles were for common folk events on tournamnets.

@Jagger
>didn't roman sword and shield consistently beat pikes?

Well, "sword and shield" as used by Persians obviously did not. The classix time Phalanx did not prevail so long because nobody got the idea to use sword and shield against it, and to be honest the Romans won against all types of armament, and probably not due to their equipment but rather their training – and failing that, their logistics.

While also a form of sport when part of a tournament most of the figthing styles present in thw Triunphzug were highly efficent and lethal martial arts used for self defence, judical duels and to some extent in war. Europe had a wealth of martial arts that have been forgotten for a long time.

I assume that the early introduction of the pistol made many of these skills obsolete, with only the fanciest (or should I say: fenciest) surviving where style mattered as much, or more, then the actual kill.

I am no expert on the classical period, but didn't roman sword and shield consistently beat pikes?

Kinda-sorta. There are a couple of advantages to the Roman way of fighting beyond the sword-and-shield. Part of it had to do with superior unit articulation -- when a hole would open up in a phalanx (either because of bad terrain, or losses from pila), the Romans could exploit the crack and make it much worse.

That's what made the Romans different from the Persians, who didn't have the superior articulation, or the trained/experienced NCOs to carry it out.

The Osprey Imperial 30 Years War booklet that Daniel mentions, I think, references the following Snayers painting, which seems to show targeteers in front of an Imperial (or maybe Spanish ?) Pike block at the relief of Thionville in 1639 …

Just how much useful knowledge can be gained from Snayers' TYW depictions is unclear …

Snayers is rightly regarded as the great battle painter of the TYW period, he and his workshop produced stunning battle and siege scences using a birds eye perspective. He also produced a series of paintings of smaller skirmishes, cavalry melees, raids on villages and ambushes.

He is rightly known for his attention to detail both regarding the dress and equipment of the troops as well as the topograhical detail of battle or siege.

But he was only as good as his sources since he was not an eyewitness to any of the events he painted. For example his painting of Lützen is far superior to that of White Mountain when you look at how accuratly the battlfield and unit deployments are depicted. For the first he was mostly likely given information from Piccolomini who comissioned the painting, for the later he relied on hearsay and printed newletters.

He also makes extensive use of artistic licence in order to get a good painting. Units are frequently shown with far more pikemen than they ever had, in the White Mountain painting units are 80% pike or more and even his later paintings such as Lützen at best show a 1-2 ratio of pike to shot.

Like all painters of the period he painted contemporary troops rather than those actually present in the battle, the Lützen painting shows fashions of 1642 rather than 1632 and his early paintings made when still based in the Netherlands show local Spanish and Dutch military fashion and leaves out some military clothing used in Germany.

Units are painted too deep, as with the pikes probably to get the sense of massed troops. Units are shown without proper distances between them and front and reserve lines are shown much too close together, all in order to make the battle fit on to the canvas. Artillery batteries may be reduced in size or removed altogher to prevent them from cluttering up the painting and so on.

The units with "tageteers" are Spanish, Thionville fought by a combined Imperial-Spanish force and Snayers does show men with shields in some of his other paintings showing Spanish troops in action such as his painting of the battle of Fleurus 1622 (Which is mislabled online as being the battle of Wimpfen) The men with shield are probably officers and NCO's rather than actual targeteers, Snayers other paintings show such men in typical command poses and positions rather than as rank and file.

Snayers even shown 'officers' with shields as part of Swedish army at Kircholm 1605 – most probably to point them out as officers, as Daniel already mentioned. See second photo under link:
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