I have written a small essay surveying what little we can know about armored sword and shield combat in the High Middle Ages. In it, I discuss how the efforts at interpreting sword and shield combat by other authors have been deeply flawed by their reliance on specious connections between unarmored Fechtbuch techniques using dissimilar equipment. I also examine what we are capable of extracting about how the sword and shield form was practiced by considering the non-Fechtbuch iconography of the period along with analyses of certain chronicles. The article can be found here:http://www.schlachtschule.org/instruction/SwordandShield.pdf
