It seems based on appearances alone that the heavy suits of armor worn by medieval knights (specifically the plate armor) must have been heavy as fuck. How heavy, exactly, were these suits? And also, were the knights who wore them really strong from moving around with the suits on? I’d think that having to fight in battles with such heavy suits of armor would strengthen the muscles over time to a great degree. (It must have been an insane feeling to take all the armor off, after having worn it for a long time, and walk around.)
About 40-50 pounds.
Someone will be in with more detail but they were indeed heavy as fuck (at least the plate-type stuff)-- you would not walk around in it, but would be basically lowered onto a horse with a crane mechanism. People were know to fall off into puddles and drown, unable to lift themselves.
This contradicts other things I’ve read–for example that people could do somersaults while wearing armor. What’s your source?
From wikipedia: “A full suit of medieval plate is thought to have weighed little more than 60 lb (27 kg), on average lighter than the equipment often carried by today’s armies which averages at around 90 pounds”
also:
" It should be remembered that an armoured knight would be trained to wear armour from his teens, and would likely develop the technique and endurance needed to comfortably run, crawl, climb ladders, as well as mount and dismount his horse without recourse to a crane (a myth probably originating from an English music hall comedy of the 1830s, and popularised in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court)."
The bit about the crane was pretty much made up out of whole cloth by Mark Twain.
A knight who was useless off of a horse would have been a bigger liability than an asset on the battle field.
Maybe if they were incapacitated, but do you seriously believe that anyone would go to war with an army whose soldiers were dead if they tripped?
So are we to assume that these knights were generally pretty huge, by the standards of an average male back then? Surely someone who was trained from a young age to wear such heavy armor would be, if not as tall as modern man, at least very strong?
Like they say in wikipedia, the weight of armor was less than the weight of packs carried by regular soldiers in our army. Our soldiers are fit, but they’re not huge or what I would consider “very strong.”
Dunno if Kinthalis is still around but this seems to be his specialty (there are previous threads on this and similar topics).
IIRC medieval knights had a much healthier diet (what they ate and how much) and they were raised as professional soldiers from early on so they may have been a bit taller than average (from better diet) and they were probably carrying a lot more muscle mass around than average due to both diet and exercise/conditioning. I doubt that they were giants though. Compare your average Marine to the average office worker. Maybe a bit bigger, definitely a lot stronger and in better shape.
Fiction about not being able to stand up in armor aside, wearing a lot of well-distributed weight isn’t that bad, as anyone who has done a lot of backpacking knows. I’ve seen videos of men in full plate demonstrating how agile they are, doing cartwheels and whatnot. In that kind of combat, being slow=being dead. Armor weight is very well distributed and it’s made to allow freedom of movement.
Yeah the whole crane needed to lift into horses/unable to get up if knocked down is nonsense.
It’s hard to give a weight to articulated plate armor as a whole mostly because it varied by style, by quality, by time frame and by purpose. It’s like asking: how much does a car weigh? Well, are you talking about a mini coop or a suburban? There’s a big difference.
But roughly speaking a high quality suit of articulated plate armor in the early/mid 15th century meant for a knight fighting on foot would weigh anywhere from 40-70 pounds. Modern soldiers carry a heavier kit and remember that this weight is evenly distributed around the body.
Restriction of movement and heat is really more of a problem than weight.
Diet would play a bigger part in the size of any particular individual. The nobility having access to more protein tended to be taller than the lower classes.
I don’t think office worker to Marine is the right comparison. I bet most people of that time worked hard physical jobs, like farming. Most people who grew up on farms are pretty damn strong. I could see the argument for better nutrition = bigger, but I bet the strength differential wasn’t that great.
The Detroit art Museum has 4 or 5 suits of armor. When I was about 12 I was amazed how small they were. They would have fit me then and I was little.
I remember reading that a lot of the display pieces you see were miniature “demonstration pieces,” made to show off the armorer’s skill, like a 4/5 model car. People during that period weren’t much shorter than they are today:
"A recent study conducted at Ohio State University, based on skeletal data from 30 previous studies, reveals that men living during the 9th to 11th centuries had an average height of about 5 feet 8 inches. Average height then steadily declined until it reached a low point of 5 feet 5.5 inches in the 17th and 18th centuries, rising again through the 19th century and only reaching prior heights in the first half of the 20th century. "
There was also special armor and saddles for jousting. I could easily envision that armor made for this one purpose could have been much more restrictive.
Whether that would have necessitated a crane of course, I have no idea.
True, SOME Jousting armor during the renaissance was much heavier and restrictive and really would never have been used in combat. But it still did not require a crane. As far as I know there are no contemporary accounts of cranes being used to haul knights on horse back.
There is nothing in the historical record to lend credence to the idea that these medieval knights were supermen of any sort. They were much smaller on average than people today, and lack of medicine and proper nutrition made it even worse.
No one really wore full plate mail like we think of today, but there was a lot of plate strapped on over chainmail-type armor. So the knights were able to get around, and weren’t too encumbered*. However, during battles like Agincourt, many of the french knights that fell in the deep mud were unable to get up, and some drowned in their armor. So while these guys were mobile, they were by no means agile. Nor were they invulnerable – at battles like Crecy, many knights were killed by arrows punching through vulnerable spots in their armor.
There is a lot of mythology built up about how badass knights were on the battlefield, but a lot of it is the same as the hype about samurai – a combination of self-serving historical record, nostalgia, and “good old days” sentimental thinking.
Also, the modern soldier does not fight generally fight with a full kit on, and that also includes several pounds worth of weapon. Field packs are often left at a base camp when infantry is going into action, so the soldier is not dragging along a bunch of extra equipment.
- The tournament armor that knights in the later medieval period wore was heavier and offered more protection for jousting and other types of exhibition maps. These suits were sometimes indeed winched onto horses. This armor would have made the knight fairly invulnerable to attack, but at an extreme cost in mobility. In battle, they were less protected.
Your assertion is contradicted by the evidence:
Average height of 20 year old American male: 5’ 9.4"
Average height of 9th century male: 5’8"
So that doen’t seem to support your contention that they were “much smaller.” Also, from other comments in these threads, knights would come from the nobility, and would have better nutrition than the average person. Therefore, they could be expected to be taller than average. I bet there’s data out there showing average heights for nobility, and I wouldn’t be surprised if on average the nobility was taller than average man today.
I looked up the battle of Agincourt, and the account says:
That sounds like pretty packed conditions, with people pressing from behind you, in knee-deep mud. I bet people would have been pressed below the surface even without armor. So it wasn’t the weight of the armor that caused the drownings, but the other conditions. I know 50lbs wouldn’t keep me from standing up, but if there were dead bodies piled above me, that might do it.
Yeah, at Agincourt it was the press of the men and horses all funneled down that narrow muddy field that cause most of the deaths. Armor or no, those conditions were a disaster waiting to happen.
Also, I’m not sure what you mean with this:
Uhm, yes they did. Have you visited a museum lately? That early version of plate armor where mail was supplemented with plate pieces was common through out the period, yes, but fully articulated plate was certainly used as well.
Oh and Of course Knights were badass. They were the warrior caste of the period and they were prized and honored in their time. That wasn’t so because they didn’t know how to fight.
I’d like to see a cite for that. I’ve seen at least a good two dozen full armor suits that lasted until modern day, and from that would say for certain that they were significantly smaller. I’d guess an average height comparable to modern, American women.
– Point in fact, this Wikipedia page lists the mid-19th century height for England (which is somewhere in the middle for European countries) as ~5’4". I doubt that nutrition was particularly better in the 12th century than the 19th.