For today’s exercise in Historical Combat 101, we will follow a path that weaves from the American Frontier Rough and Tumble strategy of “attacking the buckler” to Viking archeology and even some chicken-or-the-egg bragging rights over which came first, a French martial art or one from the Emerald Isle. We’ll end with my thoughts on what all this hindsight has to do with modern-day approaches to self-protection.
LET’S START THE JOURNEY on the American frontier, a rough-and-tumble land that spawned a fighting style of the same name. The style was all- encompassing and vicious in war but a bit more restrained (but still mighty vicious) in “friendly” competition.
THE EARLY DAYS of frontier survival called for ready skills with the musket, the tomahawk and whatever else was nearby. When nothing was close at hand, the violence fell to the hands themselves plus other natural weapons of the human body.
The Rough and Tumble style began as a hybrid of boxing and wrestling systems that originated in far-off lands but ended up in the melting pot of America. It became a bit more than that because necessity and exposure to different ways always spark innovation. One such spark was the concept of “attacking the buckler.”
A buckler is a small shield worn over the forearm of the non-weapon-bearing limb — perhaps by a warrior wielding a sword, pike or ax. The warrior’s lead hand took care of the offense while his buckler-protected arm took care of the defense (although offense with the buckler was not off the table).
The buckler was held by sliding the forearm through a rope loop or leather thong in the center of the unit and then gripping a second hold toward the inside edge. If you were to forgo the buckler and adopt a mock “holding a buckler” stance with both arms, you’d be in a good approximation of a boxer’s stance.
When a weapon was used against a buckler-bolstered brawler, the buckler was not always ignored. That’s because striking it with force could occupy the bearer and upset his balance, opening the door for a follow-up strike aimed elsewhere.
When things went empty handed, this same idea of attacking the buckler was often used. That is, rather than treat the empty-hand encounter as we do in modern sportive applications in which one regards the defending arms (twin bucklers) as obstacles to be surmounted or worked around, the Rough and Tumble style saw the buckler as a viable target.
As such, attacking the buckler is a strategy well worth reviving — as is the opposite strategy of “ignoring the buckler.”
LET’S TALK VIKINGS for a moment. The sagas of these legendary Norsemen are filled with battles and gore, and the ardent reader will come across more than a few descriptions of amputations that occurred in battle. A fair number of those amputations involved the legs or feet. But the sagas are stories, not histories. Just how accurately do they relate to what occurred in Viking battle?
In 1905 on the island of Gotland near a town called Visby, Oscar Wilhelm Wennersten and Nils Pettersson began an archaeological dig to uncover the aftermath of the Battle of Visby, which was fought in 1361. Approximately 2,000 bodies were subsequently exhumed, and the examination of the wounds suffered by the combatants was illuminating, to say the least.
Wounds incurred by cutting weapons (swords and battle axes) were found on 456 skeletons. Of those, only 15 percent involved wounds to the arms. One would presume that the use of shields and bucklers kept this number low.
OK, with that 15 percent in mind, does it mean head wounds took the lead? Not by a long shot. Wounds to the lower extremities made up 65 percent of the total.
Although the aforementioned accounts are rife with words pertaining to the tactics of chopping shields and bucklers to bits, it seems that an effective and perhaps the preferred method of attack was to ignore the buckler.
THE STRATEGY of ignoring the buckler can be taken into the unarmed realm — or used as an adjunct in the armed realm — if we look at low-line kicking in combat, which in essence uses the same approach. One’s reason for choosing to use a low-line kick might be that it’s better for maintaining balance, it’s more appropriate for the terrain or it’s sometimes better to avoid an opponent’s defenses.
There are many references to low- line kicking in Frontier Rough and Tumble, but let’s keep this on the other side of the pond for now as we continue to follow the Vikings. As the Norsemen raided — and, in many cases, built allies, intermarried and settled down — along the coasts of Ireland and Scotland, an ignoring- the-buckler strategy developed among the various Celtic tribes. It involved both weapons play and the use of low kicks.
The Gaelic word speachoireacht (pronounce it “spacker-okt” and you’ll come close) refers to a method of low-line kicking that targets the shin as seen in the purring kick of Welsh and Cornish traditions, the oblique kick of Filipino pananjakman and the coup de pied bas of savate. The methodology involves using the shin as the striking surface.
Here’s the chicken-or-the-egg portion of the show: The mentions of speachoireacht stretch back to the Norse invasions, whereas savate literature had its heyday in the 18th century. Who borrowed from whom matters to many — but not to us. In the martial arts, the logic of a wise borrow outweighs the dubious brag- ging rights of “I was here first!”
It’s revealing that while there was a form of speachoireacht practiced by two participants who only kicked, it was primarily used in conjunction with boxing and wrestling. However, one can easily imagine it coming into play in times of sword, ax and shield battle.
IT’S CLEAR that our bellicose ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic didn’t see bucklers or defending arms as puzzles to be cracked, obstacles to be avoided or impediments to intended attacks. They wisely chose to make a target of what was supposed to be a defense — and sometimes to go beneath that defense altogether.
So whether our influence is American Rough and Tumble, the Viking way of combat, French savate, muay Thai or any other source, the historical lesson is not how a particular technique was used; it’s that the strategies of attacking the buckler and avoiding the buckler both can bring about victory in combat.