I wonder whether part of the reason for the decline of plate was the ‘rediscovery’ of uniforms - compared with full armour, the Romans, the Turks and Cromwell’s model army were all fairly lightly armoured.
Heavy plate strikes me as ‘individualistic’, standing out from the crowd would be necessary when leading an undisciplined mob, but with professional well trained soldiers the disadvantages of being ostentatiously ‘a leader’ could outweigh the additional protection.
Just to suggest a theory for the decline of plate armor entirely out of thin air, but how about the idea that colonialism ended heavy armor? That is, that the focus of most European wars moved from inter-European battle to fighting over dirt in other continents. And, simply, between smiling bandit’s suggestion that the things were too expensive, coupled with space restraints on a ship, the need for bulk guys to go conquer far lands, the technology difference between the natives and the Europeans, etc. it just wasn’t feasible nor really necessary to have small groups of elite, well-armed warriors. You would do better to manufacture and sell a few thousand guns to natives, give them a cheapo uniform, and have them fight for you.
@Sage Rat
While I appreciate the sarcasm, you might have something of a point.
The UK got rid of fancy uniforms as a result of the Boer War
I guess you do know that in India the British took over an existing army ?
The Sirdar was a locally owned bunch with mercenary European officers and modern weopons, the British defeated it and hijacked it.
I would also be a bit wary about the use of the word ‘Colonialism’, UK colonies were places where large numbers of people emigrated and stayed - USA, Canada, Australia - India was never a colony, it was a private enterprize operation that got out of control and had to be nationalized after the Mutiny. Similarly there were not many UK colonies in Africa.
I was thinking more in terms of the 15th century on (and I can’t think of anywhere where I mentioned the UK.) Conquistadors and such did have the big pigeon-breast breastplates of course, but still you can see that by that point in time, already full-on plate armor was in the decline, and standardized uniforms moving up.
Nitpick: there’s no such thing as “platemail”; it’s an oxymoron. There’s plate, and there’s mail.
Also, I think you’re making a false distinction. If the advent guns as a major player on the battlefield (which took over a century of slow development) required impracticably expensive armor, then, yes, guns ended the plate era. Actually, of course, it’s not that simple.
Incidentally, even in the American Civil War, some soldiers privately purchased armored jackets that would allegedly stop a Minie ball. They had inserts of tough spring steel; might possibly save your life.
That sounds quire reasonable, actually. A noble requiring platemail, a set of chargers to carry him, maybe a squire to help him kit up, and a lifetime’s worth of training, had to be supported by a large-ish estate. With the decline of feudalism that just wasn’t feasible. Once nationalism led to the evolution of mass armies, and industrialisation started to equip them, it became nonsensical to basically pitch a few hundred millionaires up against tens of thousands of conscripts.
I don’t care what people then called it. Today, people call it platemail. Barers wore plate and mail under it.
Same thing. You could use the same argument to say that the Chinese a thousand years ago ended the plate era. I’m pointing out a more proximate cause.
In any event, I disagree. Platemail would have gone the way of the dodo even without the invention of guns; expanding technology in other areas would have allowed for mass armies anyway.
Soldiers still do. Modern bullet-proof vests often have slots for inserting metal reinforcing bullet shields. But this is not platemail. It’s a cuirass. And not much of one.
Oh, that’s nothing. I can also testify that digging a ditch in full roman plate is no problem whatsoever. Getting back out of the ditch was a bit more trouble, but then, I’m clumsy.
Well, if period movies are any kind of accurate representation, it was traditional for soldiers to completely remove their headgear when entering into close combat
No, in D&D we call it full plate or half-plate or breastplate. There are also various kinds of mail in D&D: chainmail, scale mail, splint mail, and banded mail, though I understand that the terms “scale armor”, “splint armor”, and “banded armor” are more correct than the “mail” versions.
Something to keep in mind about the SCA stuff is that their safety rules often prescribe a thicker gauge of metal than used in most historical armor. Those rules, along with the increase in cost of having plates of variable thickness – as could be the case for some of the better harnesses – lead to SCA armor being even heavier than armor in use in the past. If guys who do this as a hobby on occasional weekends can wear the stuff all day and fight in several small “battles” during a day at a tournament, it would be no great feat for a man who trained for combat as his livelihood, and who had a much more active everyday life than most of us even dream of, to fight for quite a long time in armor.
I’ve tried on some pieces of armor before. It’s a little bit clumsy for a while until you get used to it. Properly-fitting armor will allow enough freedom of movement to let you do just about anything you could do unarmored. I’d bet that once you are conditioned by using it and wearing it, it wouldn’t be any more of a burden than carrying a pack for miles like modern infantry does sometimes, but I don’t know that from personal experience.
(Incidentally, this is a study on the average gear weight for infantry is with the conclusions of some historical studies for reference.)
Actually, “Platemail” is an old (and no longer current) D&D term for the transitory armor of the 14th century, in which breastplates and other armor pieces were worn over chain. In the earliest editions of the game, it was the only plate armor available. “Field plate” and “Full Plate” came along later, covering the fully articulated suits we’ve been talking about in this thread.
Hijack - I’ve wondered a bit about mail armor. It’s very ancient - it was worn by the pre-Marian Roman legions - and then, it seems to me, it more or less disappeared, only to resurface around the time of Charlamange, when it became the predominate European armor. What’s the story with that?
This is going to sound like a WAG, but there is some truth in it.
The Roman Empire split into two, the Western bit declined, but the Eastern bit was in Constantinople and it carried on just as before - it finally got taken over circa 1400.
Old established technology trickled back to the West possibly via the seafaring nations, possibly over land. We have the curious phenomenon of Vikings settling in Normandy and suddenly becoming state of the art.
Well, historians and people who really know the subject don’t call it “platemail”.
You seem to be disagreeing with your own argument. This is fine; I disagree with it as well. Hundreds of years after the fact, this is still a good subject for debate, and a lot of people start out with one opinion and gradually change it.
Sleel makes a good point about thickness of metal – even pretty decent SCA armor today tends to be made from commercial sheet steel of uniform thickness. A good armorer in 1400 Solingen or Milan, on the other hand, might hammer out a breastplate that varied considerably in thickness, from a maximum thickness in front to much thinner on the sides, heat-treated and polished to be springy and have a hard, mirror-smooth finish. A lot of people who handle period cuirasses are suprised at how light and springy they are.
Don’t know about the rest of the world, but the romans went from mail to plate for several reasons.
It’s cheaper.
It’s faster to make. The speed record in my group is putting together a finsihed suit from ready-cut steel plates in eight hours, although the finished product wasn’t all that pretty. 30 working hours or so is about standard, and I doubt the romans were slower that that (I used more than 40 hours on mine, but I had to start from scratch, and had no experience.) Chainmail is easier to make (anyone can learn in minutes), but is very time-consuming.
The Segmentata (roman plate) is much lighter than roman chainmail (Hamata?)
It’s easier to make to a uniform standard.
It offers better prottection from stabbing and crushing.
It’s easier to get in and out of fast. Putting on roman plate is like putting on a large vest. I am completely unable to put on and take of chainmail without help.
But it’s not like the romans stopped usins chainmail altogether, auxilaries still wore chainmail. It was simply legionaries who stopped using it.
Didn’t the Romans use another form of chain mail? Ithink it was made of overlapping metal discs, which were sewn onto a leather garment. What was the name for this type of mail? It must have been heavy, but probably was easier to make than chainmail.
Mail/maille (no “chain”) IMO, should strictly refer to chain only, given the origins of the word. Damn Gygax & TSR for their usage.
Japanese chain was mostly very different to the Western kind - often used to join plates, and featuring horizontal and vertical links rather than the angled ones of 4-in-1. But Japanese armour was mostly laquered leather and silk cord, BMaliion. I can see myself swimming in that a lot easier than in steel plate.
If you’re interested, Sengokudaimyo has more on Japanese armour than you might want to know.
hijack:
My Bolding.
Say What? “Cape to Cairo” mean nothing to you? Half of Africa was UK colonies. So was India. Trying to play games with the definition of “colony” doesn’t make it any different.
Do you mean *lorica squamata * (scale armour)? If so, they are not discs, but more rectangular, and thin. I don’t know about weight, but they were only worn by specialists IIRC, like standard bearers and the like.
