Tortuga

[Crispvs]

I remember Rosemary Sutcliff portraying a testudo as being strong and cohesive enough to burst through an enemy line, something which I very much doubt would ever work in reality. It was clearly a strong enough defence against missiles of various sorts but I doubt it would survive the effect of enemy troops pulling on the shields or poking weapons through the gaps above the front row of shields.<br>
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To demonstrate the defence against missiles and to make it more real for the audience our archers normally shoot redheads at us. These rarely penetrate the formation and if they do it is only below the lower rims of the shields and through the gaps above the front row of shields. Of the few arrows that do pentrate the teastudo, we find that it is rare that any of the twenty men forming it actually recieve a hit to the foot, shin or arm, with most of them either stopping on the ground between people's feet or passing through from the front and out of the back. Obviously redheads have different properties to bodkins but the exercise is still quite instructive.<br>
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We form the testudo on the march and find that although this is easy to do we have to take small steps to avoid treading on each other's feet. This makes it impossible to charge, and as Derek says, I think it would be very difficult to hold it together at anything above a slow but steady step.<br>
We have experimented a few times with breaking the testudo up and charging as a double line close to the audience (who are effectively in the same position as an enemy would be) and as we have got better at this I have become increasingly convinced that even if we cannot guarantee that we are doing it correctly, it could have been used to cover a unit's advance accoss a field towards an enemy which was hanging back but able to project missiles, before charging into the enemy from close range. I still feel though that the primary function of a testudo was to allow men and equipment to be brought safely up to walls and gates in siege situations. I hope to be able to experiment this year with carrying tools and planks within a testudo.<br>
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Crispvs<br>
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