How come weapons play just as much an equal role defensively as the shield when wielding both?

[LegateLivius]

My medieval buckler replica, made through old school blacksmithing by a HIstorical European Martial Arts (often abbreviated as HEMA) group, just arrived by mail today. It reminds me of a statement I saw a HEMA practitioner made........

Quote

 

Weapons are often used in tandem with shields for this reason. The shield bears the brunt of most the attacks, but even then the weapon does a lot of defensive work. If all you have is a weapon, it has to do double duty. Because contrary to what you might think, when you're legally justified to use a weapon, it's because someone is trying to kill you.

 

I am curious, why is the weapon just as important as the shield is in defensive action? I cannot tell you how people often think of using sword and shield as simple as "wait for the enemy sword to land on your shield, let the sword bounce from impact, and you immediately follow with a strike against your now defensive enemy who's still trying to recover his grip on his sword from the impact".

Seriously popular media portrays it this way from movies such as 300 to video games such as Legend of Zelda and live TV such as Deadliest Warriors. Even and educational sources and serious academic studies portray it this way. Can't tell you how many times I seen the History Channel have people test the effectiveness of a shield by banging swords, warhammers, and other heavy weapons against them and there are videos of university experiments you can see on Youtube where they test a shield's effectiveness in precisely the same manner.

So I am confused.What is meant by the above quote? I mean if scientists and historians with PhDs are saying a shield is enough for defensive action and the sword is pretty much a purely offensive weapon, why is there a need to learn parries, feints, blocks, etc as you stated in your earlier post? I mean real university experiments portray defensive moves with sword and buckler as merely "let it land, bounce off, than follow up with a sword cut or thrust) as universal standard when it comes to discussing about defensive actions!

Is there more to it than simply putting your shield to cover the area that you anticipate will be hit and simply awaiting to hit it while standing still like a stop sign on an intersection?

 

Since Roman sword and shield go hand in hand in Roman swordsmanship reconstruction, I thought to ask here in this forum.

[caldrail]

It's a question of style and the relative qualities of the sword and shield. To cover all possibilities would require an entire book, but regarding Roman soldiers, we have men fighting almost shoulder to shoulder thrusting in the gap between shields, which were normally rectangular and large (oval shields were in common use too but mostly with auxiliaries). In Roman fashion the shield takes the brunt of defence because the sword is restricted in movement, and in fact the shield becomes a useful blunt instrument too if required.

The thing is, when we get to the imperial era, we're told that legionaries swung their swords as much as thrusted which suggests open order fighting and relying on armour as much as a shield. This would free up the sword for more creative use, including parries and so forth,  but requires more skill, and typically a Roman legionary was only taught a basic set of moves "by the numbers" ands practised relentlessly if the legion was up to par.

This is where a shortsword begins to lose its primary advantage and given the gladius was slowly shortening on average along with gladiator weapons (the development was informally linked), little wonder the legions began adopting the longer spatha (cavalry sword) in order to keep an enemy further back, especially as the Centurionate withered and weaponry skills declined.