{"id":19697,"date":"2025-09-27T14:40:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T14:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=19697"},"modified":"2025-09-27T14:40:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T14:40:03","slug":"why-did-hand-guards-on-swords-get-bigger-in-the-medieval-period","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=19697","title":{"rendered":"Why did HAND GUARDS on SWORDS get BIGGER in the Medieval period?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Swords for a long time didn&#8217;t have long cross guards because shields mostly covered the hands, even while striking. Long cross guards grew as the use of strap-shields grew. With the shield strapped to the arm, it couldn&#8217;t cover the hand as well, so a cross guard was more useful. Basket guards that covered the whole hand became popular once the sword became a side weapon and unarmored hands were needed to operate firearms.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Why did HAND GUARDS on SWORDS get BIGGER in the Medieval period?\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Jvp8AuQQWtU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Swords for a long time didn&#8217;t have long cross guards because shields mostly covered the hands, even while striking. Long cross guards grew as the use of strap-shields grew. With the shield strapped to the arm, it couldn&#8217;t cover the hand as well, so a cross guard was more useful. Basket guards that covered the whole hand became popular once the sword became a side weapon and unarmored hands were needed to operate firearms. <\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Jvp8AuQQWtU<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[770,1055],"class_list":["post-19697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-history","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19698,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19697\/revisions\/19698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}