Shieldwalls 

============================== [Dark Spirit Lindybeige has invaded!] ==============================

THIS IS WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS, MORE THAN ONE OF THEM.

I think your ideas are spot on, but I also just love this particular video because having the "assistant" was so damn funny. It didn't expect the guy on the left to "get killed" in the demo.

Your channel is absolutely amazing, nothing makes me laugh as hard while it teaches me things.

@OMGWTFBBQ357 Depth is an advantage in many ways. You can resupply the front with fresh troops more often, you are more intimidating, less likely to run away etc. Eight people pushing against a stationary fence is enough to kill through asphyxiation. That number pushing both ways would kill the front couple of ranks of both sides. I doubt that extra ranks add much pushing power after a while.

Bernard Cornwell has written few good books about that era and shield walls. I totally agree that pushing match is ridiculous and pointy spears isn't a thing you want to push against. But when you did get close enough knifing your enemy is much easier than pushing against him. If anyone interested, I would recommend The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell.

While I have already completed my history requirements, I want this guy as a military history professor. I would totally take his class as an elective.

Dear Lindybeige, in what dimension did you film this? You look like a dead jedi ghost! :D

Spartan swords were really short, more like a dagger because ancient Greek battles involved a lot of pushing. The combination of the large shield, with the helmet and the chin down towards you chest for protection would make stabbing quite difficult for the opponent.

An army of Lloyds... That's an army I'd want to join!

They didn't push if I had to guess, the men in front defended while the second line attacked with spears around the front line. This would explain how Alexanders units came to be.

0:56 "You've got a very, very long thing in you hand..." nice.

This gave me a huge headache, because the greenscreened loyd was in the foreground but smaller than the background-loyd who was larger. So the guy further away from the lens was standing further towards the lens

The overlap of multiple lloyds

I think initially he is correct, they did not have the pushing match but rather fought at a distance with spears. I do believe, however that when a charge occurred to break the ranks that would be when the pushing match came into play. The front row would be attempting to keep the chargers from breaking through the ranks and routing them. I don't know though just an idea. Many historians believed that battles would end when the losing side suffered about 15% casualties and order a retreat. I would figure if they were shield to shield for the entire battle then the mortality rate would be much higher.

Hey man, nice videos :) I've seen a few lately, and talking about this shield formation, what to you think of the "vikings" series, they have a shiell wall formation, and I also found someone in the lets say modern times doing so, I know it's not greek but the strategy is alike well I think :s

the design of that hoplon is glorious! where can I get one like that?

My view is that the shield wall itself wouldn't do much fighting it's purely defensive, they'd be low down behind their shields (for protection as well as leverage) trying to push the opposing shield wall back. Behind them would be a looser formation of spearmen fighting over the top of the protective front rank. The battle would be pretty much a stalemate until one shield wall broke

What if the front ranks wore armor, especially plate?

wouldn't a shieldwall be more effective with tower shields and spears?

Wouldnt it be more beneficial if the second row and so forth put there shields up to stop arrow volleys from approaching the enemy, part of war is intimidation so this could of been used to demoralize the enemy and as well to get the troops into close combat with few casualties

For military engagement its a pretty high percentage its just people see the holloywood version of this and think 95% of people are dying.

THIS CHANNEL IS A GOLD MINE Thank you for all you have done.

You should really cut down on the uranium. Starting to glow there.

I like the idea of Lloyd stood alone in his front room for those 35 seconds making strained noises while leaning against his imaginary self. Would be very funny to look in on. Then again, now I think about it, all of these videos are just him on his own so perhaps it's not too great a departure from the usual content...

Quite dangerous to be a demonstration assistant on this channel . . .

"...I would turn around, and I would knife YOU, Sunshine...." Oh good GOD I laughed my ass off.

LOL I actually thought it was his twin at first!

It would be an interesting part of a film where the front lines are all dead, but the bodies are stuck standing up by all the people pushing in, so the protagonist is just squished against all these dead guys for days until one army decides to leave. Because if you're going to be historically inaccurate, you might as well follow it to its logical conclusion. In the sequel, the protagonist can defeat an army of female soldiers by stabbing them in the cleavage. With fire arrows.

I was wandering why the green screen ahahahah

@maaderllin Yes, if everyone were pushing shield-shield, then the whole might rotate, but it would be unlikely to shift left or right. however, the shifting I think would then lead to rotation...

In the fantasy book ''Left Hand of God'' there's a battle between a heavily armoured army and an army of warrior monks wielding shields. The knights are so confident they'll win that they simply charge in, and are stopped by the shield wall. The monks then proceed to drag soldiers through the wall and kill them with hammers (or mallets, don't remember correctly), while the opposing army is forced forward by the pressure of the confident fools in the back, so nobody at the front can escape. Perhaps not very accurate, but an interesting scenario.

I've never liked the "push match" version of ancient warfare and this argument makes complete sense; it also explains why people clamored to be on the front row and how they often survived entire battles there (Leonidas or Epaminondas being two examples). Not just for the obvious reason of glory, but because they had the chance to make a lot of damage and test their prowess; they didn't think of themselves as merely crush spacers for a push match, but skilled fighters.

yes, I do have this really long thing in my hand

This is getting out of hand. Now there are two of them! Well 'now', ten years ago, whatever...

"You've got this very long thing in your hand" I know Lloyd, but can we talk about shieldwalls

3:36 oh my god, he multiplied

thank you lindybeige for making a playlist. it makes it easier to watch several videos in a sitting. lindybinge, if you will.

"Long stick with spike on end" has been used in warfare since forever, and I seriously doubt that means they used them in such close quarters, no matter how short they were. The whole point is to get "him over there" before he gets you.

There were battles where the rear ranks pushed the front ranks. A famous example was Agincourt, and the result was a slaughter of the front ranks who got pushed.

It is more difficult to get a large formation to run away, and a large formation can replace casualties for longer, and replace tired men at the front. It is also intimidating by its mere presence. If you can see three times as many men in front of you as are in your own unit, how would you feel?

This is how battles of today should be fought, but with politicians in the front row.

@zhonggao84 Green screen. Shot my spiel against the screen, then shot the background shot which had me in it as my assistant. I didn't time it at all. I just came on, pretended to push for a bit and then fell over. In the edit I used a freeze-frame most of the time for the background and just brought in my other self when needed, and extended the footage to fit by reversing some of the movement.

For the same weight of shield, a flat shield protects a wider arc. I suspect that the curve was for strength.

*Gets in time machine to observe hoplite battles, returns to 21st century Dr. Who style* Turns out it was mish-mash of underarm and overarm spear usage. :P

I recall having heard that the romans used their large shields and short gladius for something like the situation you describe, but to their advantage: By forming shield wall, moving in close, real close to the enemy, to immobilize and keep them from using their spears, for the reason yuo sdescribe here, then stabbing with their gladius. Is this feasible?

My reenactment experience and historic documentation supports you on this. In our melees we generally end up with both lines squaring off at spear length and sniping with spears or doing pulse charges (small parts of the line advancing then immediately retreating) until the other line is weak then performing a shield charge to break the enemy line. If you go right in for a charge the enemy spears weaken your charge and even though you usually gain ground, you lose manpower.

Crowds who shove cause someone to fall over, such as football crushes or religious festival tragedies. Nasty. And they can see well. Soldiers with helmets and shields can't see their feet very well at all. Result? Chaos. Nope, no shoving. Also, ritual and display. Not all battles were going to start off deadly, surely. There was show, name calling, challenges. Running away (me especially). People were scared and it all depended on politics and just how serious the argument was. And how popular the bosses were. Every battle would have been unique....terrain, causes, whatever. Watch hunter gatherers have a fight with spears in New Guinea in recent times (rare now,sure but it happens) it can get ugly fast or end in lols and beer. But there is always a lot of show and theatre first.

Reenactors provide some clue as to how these fights may have gone. Yes, they will often have a clash where both sides slam into one another, but then they tend to back off. When I was doing Viking reenactment we fought a little more than arm's reach apart - too far for knives, but just right for swords and axes. Swordsmen would stab over the shields, axemen would hook shields to open up the enemy, while spearmen in the second rank would be close in trying to poke through gaps, distract people or going for the shins. This is possibly where the "shoving match" comes in. It's not so much about physically pushing as it is making the front rank back up. If the front rank starts pulling back, the second rank has to get out of their way, which means they aren't fighting. That might give you just enough breathing room to lop off a few heads, break a hole in the line, and all of a sudden you can turn a flank and wipe out a big chunk of the enemy shield wall! So, how does this tie in with armies being many ranks deep? Well, if you've got 3-4 ranks of soldiers, then odds are your next two ranks aren't going to be physically pushing the first two - they'll be slightly further back, ready to move up and plug holes. Or, in the case above, to form a second shield wall and force me to repeat the fight all over again. Only this time my shield wall might have enemy shield walls to either flank, forcing me to either give up the ground we've made, or be surrounded and destroyed in turn. And knowing the enemy has reserves might well change your initial tactics. If you know the moment you turn to surround a foe a fresh mob of enemies will run in and murder you, then you can't surround people - you have effectively been "pushed back", and must instead hack at the front rank of enemies until their reserves are depleted, or you can break through in so many places you won't get crushed in a counter-attack. This, finally, offers some light as to what may have allowed ancient battles to go on so long. If both of our shield walls have essentially 2-3 more shield walls close behind, then once the first wave gets tired they can just slowly pull back in good order and let the next lot have their turn. Thus, when the enemy starts pulling back to replenish, you do the same. Ultimately, victory wouldn't be won the moment a single block of infantry are broken; you need to break them, then have the men and stamina remaining to break several more blocks in quick succession - something that is probably not going to happen until either late in the day, or as was commonly the case, when your cavalry can ride around the back and wipe out the shield walls waiting in reserve, thus denying the front rank any means to safely retreat!

@noobler9 "Lizard killer" and it was a sharply pointed thing. It was supposedly used for finishing off men on the ground that you walked over (N.B. if so, this only works if you are using a spear underarm), and it was a back-up point if the main head was lost.

What is your opinion on Benard Cornwell way of describing a shieldwall battle? When I read The Saxon Chronicles, the battles seemed quite real, not the usual "several duels" battlefield so often depicted.

Hey, here's a thought, rather than make your own shit up, why don't you read some actual historical sources such as Herodotus and the like. The rugbee idea is exactly what happened by almost all accounts, because of 2 points you clearly decided not to think of. 1, everyone is fighting in CLOSE formation in order to better absorb shocks from enemy charges, especially Cav. In order to hold the spear in any way other than overarm would just result in friendly troops behind you getting hit in the gut or head. We know that overarm MUST have been more widely used because of both historical sources and because of how we understand crowding works from studying it today. Humans naturally group and bunch together in dangerous situations as we are social animals, think like how buffalo bunch together against a pride of lions. 2. Heavy front line infantry was only ever, at most, about 75-80 % of an army, usually more around 60%. any which exceeded this amount were very quickly defeated. This is because the whole purpose of front line heavy infantry is to act as FIXING forces, not killing forces. This fixing of the enemy into position did not win battles. What did, was other troop types, such as cav, light infantry and missile troops moving around the flanks and attempting to SURROUND and opponents forces. Fixing forces held the enemy in place while maneuvering forces moved around behind the enemy to kill. This is true of almost every single non-siege battle ever recorded. The battle of marathon, the battle of alesia, the battle of Hastings, even right up to battles in more modern times such as the battle of camden (not as depicted in "The patriot", that movie is garbage) and the battle of Waterloo. Even now, this still applies. Heavily armed infantry fix the enemy in position with LMG's and Assualt rifles, while fast moving vehicles or aircraft flank and kill the enemy. The concept is called light infantry doctrine, and is well documented. Still, I encourage you not to take my word for it, go out and look up sources from all of these time periods, you know, google and the like.

Lloyd, you should make a commentary video over what the troops on the sides and rear of a phalanx did when faced with opposition. In Hellenistic Era depictions of pike phalanxes, even the men on the last row held a pike, what would they do if attacked from the side or behind? Abandon their phalanx, drop their pike and draw a sword? Hopefully you have some insight on this

Is that what they meant with the pushing match thing? I'd never seen it illustrated, honestly. I always thought they meant pushing match as a sort of metaphor for each side trying to push away (aka by basically making them break formation since they don't want to be stabbed in the face with a spear) the other side with a wall of spears. And that that's why the huge macedonian spears were that good. Because you'd have an even larger amount of spears aimed at the enemy at once. And I'd always thought that that's why Hoplites were so formidable. Because any non-hoplite or heavily armoured individual without a tight formation would be like "fuck that, I'm not marching into that." But other hoplites would be wel armoured enough and be covered enough by the shield to make it harder for that to work.

There is a lot of historical evidence that a too close formation is totaly lethal for an army. Just think of Hannibals greatesd victory. As he incircled the roman legions with his army, the lines of the ligenears became so tight that they coulnt move anymore and where just sloughtered of the spot.

Volunteer Lindy is my favourite Lindy

@sakarauka1 Do you mean infantry boar's snout? Well, if the enemy quailed, as was the hope, then the men in the front would live. If the enemy held fast, then the few psychos at the point of the wedge would die, but the bulk of the men not. The whole formation does not consist of points. If you mean wedge like Alexandrian cavalry, then this was probably just for manoeuvre, and not for charging into formed units.

I think the confusion might come from a very different sort of shieldwall, of the sort employed by Norsemen and their ilk. Formations of men with shields pushing up against one another, but much more sensibly. Of course the point wasn't to push and crush eachother to death, but rather to both protect your fellows and get in close enough for your short weapons to do damage to your enemy. The idea that men would voluntarily crush their fellows to death in some sort of mad frontal press is one that would never be employed by any sane general.

@OMGWTFBBQ357 Herodotus says that Marathon was the first time that hoplites had ever charged, and that was against non-hoplites. You wouldn't want your spear to go through a shield, because that would lose you control over your spear. If the left was reliably weaker, then why didn't they realise this and reinforce it?

I didn't... know people actually thought of the phalanx pushing match as a LITERAL pushing match, whenever I had it explained to me as "a pushing match" I always thought of it in a metaphorical sense since they'd have their spears out front and the two sides would be presenting this "armored porcupine" formation to each other, and your side would be trying to push your porcupine into the opponent without getting impaled on their porcupine, thus the metaphorical "pushing" that I always envisioned, and also the reason most phalanx battles had extremely low casualties because tbh having an "armored porcupine" of spears shoved into your face and your guys start dropping would be goddamn terrifying

The Greeks did take note of who fought in the front rank. Possibly the success of the Thebans and Macedonians was due in part to their tactics' ability to make use of less skilled fighters.

are you recruiting assistants from a cloning vat?

@Spartiatai300 Romans didn't stand and push. They tried to smash into an enemy formation and rout it, or else they fell back, swapped ranks, and tried again with fresh men and pila.

People were actually killed doing formations like this in rugby, and that is why rugby has offside rules, Amercan football has the forward lateral pass, and both have rules against holding.

@OMGWTFBBQ357 The main problem faced by men training an army today and then was how to stop men from running away. A formation 24 deep is far less likely to run away.

Listen to 3:45 to 4:22 with your eyes closed... Your welcome ;)

@peacebuntou Frames, yes. I found them, lensless, in the street. Clearly they had been run over by a car and I thought that they were amusingly pathetic.

@PaulkyArcher When someone is within arm's reach, the shorter the weapon the more lethal, as long is it is long enough to reach to an artery.

Are you in front of a greenscreen where the background is just some random institutional wall?

@OMGWTFBBQ357 It's a balance between these opposing forces. The trick is to pick the best balance in the context of what the enemy is doing.

I always wonder how those Macedonians with those huge spears managed to stab a dude dead with those things. Obviously, it must have worked. They conquered half the world with it. I just don't quite get how. The Roman method I get. You get a short stabby sword and you stab the guy dead. Simple but those Macedonian things were like 16 feet long I think.

Not sure what you mean. Pompey and Caesar? They used shock troops with pilum and gladius. Not much waiting around there - get stuck in!

How come LindyBeige is greenscreened on such a simple background?

@Luciffrit The Macedonians were using very long pikes, which would have out-reached the hoplite spears no matter which way they were held.

YOU GOTS A TWIIN? :O ERR MAH GAD!

@Spartiatai300 Homer tells of armies of men armed with large shields and spears, and these we see pictured on frescos from the bronze age.

I broke three ribs in such a scrum at an event. They do it every bloody time. The people, that is, not my ribs. Luckily.

@chicoulatas12333 And just trust the men in their front row not to slit your throat? Could work, if they look like kindly types.

300 wasn't even based on history. It was based on a graphic novel.

@kaindrg Yes.

"getting 2 groups of men to form up, walk at each other, and almost certainly die." Well, that's a pretty good description of war, isn't it?

Well, the Romans did beat the Greeks. The Greeks would be very foolish to charge in poor formation against legionaries.

Then again, many people didn't go into battle hoping to defeat the enemy: They hoped to stay alive, so logic would say you stay behind the shield as much as possible. Also you would think the goal of a battle on that time was to conquer land, which could then be used as a leverage when the negotiations for peace should happen. So trying to push the enemy seems logical... for an IT programmer and internet expert like me with zero knowledge in historical warfare.

@ForeverNoobie Most men given the options of certain imminent death and probable delayed death will pick the latter.

I think the whole point of war is to kill the other dude. If the life expectancy of an enemy in the front rows isn't long, then mission accomplished right?

@OMGWTFBBQ357 The shape of it makes sense without this extra purpose. It makes it strong and balanced.

@PaulkyArcher Getting low is dangerous. It is easy to reach over a shield and go for a vital part...

@ImEternalWanderer Yes, which is why they removed all the barriers at the front of sports stadia.

@300warrior300 In fights between Greek city states hoplites often fought against other hoplites.

@BloodfromtheAshes We don't know. I may be doing a video about this, but not very soon.

Yes, shallow formations were used, but deeper ones have higher morale and stamina.

@kaindrg A Greek hoplite phalanx was a type of shieldwall.

@ROCK1337ful Are you sure that it wasn't a magenta screen?

Either that or I have an identical twin, who is an idiot.

@maaderllin Yes, you fear being outflanked to your right.

@GTFOVevo Well spotted. You can probably guess why.

WW1 tactics were used in the Falklands in he 1980s.

@archis84 She ran off with a rock star, alas.

@MrCattlehunter That's 'hilarious'?

But the early modern "push of pike" was real and well-documented, no? A literal shoving match in which nearly all the men on the front lines died, etc.