Shield wall

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Barbarian soldiers in the shield wall formation, as portrayed in the Rome: Total War (Barbarian Invasion) computer game, copyright 2004 Creative Assembly and Activision.

The formation of shield walls is a military tactic common to many cultures, with slight variations of the tactic being called by different names at different times. Walls of shields are formed by soldiers standing in formation shoulder to shoulder, holding their shields so that they abut or overlap and each man benefits from the protection of his neighbour's shield as well as his own.

There was a large amount of brute pushing as there was little room to swing a weapon if one arm was holding a shield that covered the entire front of the body. The shield would likely have pressed against the body with the sheer force, requiring the second rank to do most of the fighting over the shoulder of the first rank with longer weapons aiming for the heads of the front ranks of the opponent. The later ranks would just be pushing forward and killing any wounded enemies they walked over.

During the battles between Alfred the Great and the Danes only a small percentage of the Saxon army would have been properly equipped, these troops would be the professional warriors in the front few ranks, so if the shield wall was breached and the surrounding troops were killed too, the entire line would be quickly carved in two as unarmoured peasants with farm tools try to combat professional warriors with proper weapons and armour and in a shield wall. The shield wall proved superior to troops in no formation but generally had many disadvantages: it was unmanageable, and the troops were so tightly packed they had difficulty looking down, so the advancing shield wall would stumble on the corpses. The flanks of the shield wall were especially vulnerable so a smaller army would have to spread its troops thinner to prevent immediate outflanking. The shield wall did not work well in woodland areas (it was possible to make a large number of small shield walls which could move between the trees) and the tightly packed troops were vulnerable to missile fire. The powerful weapons of the time, like big swords and axes, were too big to swing, so the more effective weapons were short swords maybe a foot long which could be stabbed under the opponent's shield into his groin or leg. This led a lot of professional warriors in Alfred the Great's army to carry two swords. Two-handed weapons were out of the question in a shield wall.

This tactic was used by many ancient armies including the Roman legion and the Greek hoplite phalanx formation.

Notably used during the early medieval period in England to refer to the main method of Anglo-Saxon warfare, and also clearly visible throughout the Bayeux Tapestry.

Shields, and the 'shield wall' began to fall out of use due to improvements in armor; as plate armor became more readily available, the utility of large shields declined. Improvements in missile weapons, such as the crossbow and longbow, also decreased the effectiveness of shields.

By the time of the English Civil War, open pike formations had replaced the closed shield wall. The ranks of pikes would provide protection from cavalry charges.

The shield wall was commonly used during the 8th and 9th Century by Vikings, and by Anglo-Saxons from kingdoms such as Mercia, Wessex, and Northumbria.