The Strangest Medieval Weapon Ever Created: The Lantern Shield

Just after the Dark Ages the planet was thrust into a two hundred year period of remarkable creativity and development named "The Renaissance". This inventive force of time brought around some excellent masterpieces. It as well brought us some definitely quirky and odd concepts. One particular of these concepts was the lantern shield.

The Lantern Shield originated in sixteenth century Italy. This was a time of the late Renaissance when creativity was at its maximum and significantly of points have been getting made. One particular of the standard tenets of creativity is that of fusion exactly where factors are added collectively to build a new issue. The Lantern shield is a superior instance of this fusion - taken also far. It attempts to build a thing that has defensive qualities, offensive qualities and even a bit of psychological warfare!

What is a Lantern Shield?

It is a compact shield in the shape of a buckler and frequently around a foot in diameter. And this standard shield was turned into a veritable swiss army knife of a weapon by the addition of a wide variety of other points such as a gauntlet with serrated blades. These serrated blades have been theoretically made use of to break an opponent's blade. There was as well a extended blade attached to the shield that ran parallel to the customers shield arm. This could be applied to thrust at an opponent. The shield too normally had spikes protruding from it which could be made use of as piercing weapons. But the most uncommon issue around this weapon, and the issue that provides it its name, is the lantern. It had a hook in the middle of the shield exactly where a lantern could be attached and generally occasions there was a leather flap covering this lantern. The theory was that if attacked the wielder could throw open the flap and the light from the lantern would dazzle and confuse the attacker. It was a bit of psychological warfare thrown in to the mix.

The use of the Lantern Shield

Commonly, the lantern shield is believed to had been employed not for combat but for walking about Italian cities at evening. It was protection against ruffians and robbers a lot more so than against combatants in battle.

How successful was it as a weapon?

The effectiveness of the Lantern Shield in actual combat is questionable but in the context of walking about a hazardous city at evening it does warrant some intriguing conclusions. Very first off, it was almost certainly extremely ominous seeking and any would be robber was most likely inclined to just move on to the subsequent victim. And if a combative circumstance arose the entire contraption was likely reasonably efficient at staving off injury significantly in the identical way as a porcupine does! The addition of the lantern was too a powerful deterrent against attack since any nighttime robber would just stay away from the illumination and exposure. So as a genuine weapon it was possibly not pretty fantastic but as a deterrent it was most likely reasonably helpful. Any robber or ruffian seeing a person carrying this point would most likely just move on to the subsequent victim.

Will Kalif is the author of two epic fantasy novels and is an avid fan of all items fantasy and medieval. For a everyday dose of these subjects pay a visit to his weblog at: Heroic Dreams – All Issues Medieval and Fantasy Weblog

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