I’m almost certain this has been asked before, but I can’t seem to find a thread about it… and I don’t remember the answer.
You’re a well-to-do knight preparing to do battle against your enemy. Your attendants have helped you suit up, and you are on your horse, ready to engage. You have your lance and shield, but for some reason there is a delay in the action. Perhaps your opponent is having trouble getting it together. So you sit there expecting to take off at any moment.
It’s an unusually hot day, and even when you are in the shade the air temperature is stifling. Are there vents you can open in your suit of armor that can relieve some of the heat?
You’re actually one of a group of knights ready to attack another group of knights. Once you begin battle how do you communicate with the rest of your group? Taking off your helmet and shouting doesn’t seem practical in the middle of battle.
You’ve been fighting for almost an hour and you need to urinate or defecate. How exactly do you do that in a full suit of armor? Do you have to go back to your camp and take everything off? I can’t believe nobody ever thought of this ‘problem’.
Sorry if this is a repeat of something someone has answered recently.
I wonder how much of the medieval armor we’re familiar with was actually intended for “real” warfare rather than jousting or ceremony. I imagine the real stuff sacrificed a lot of protection for mobility and comfort, and included a lot of ugly field modifications. These less ornate, but more pracical suits were probably more likely to be scraped rather than preserved when they were no longer needed or damaged.
Usually nothing that elaborate. Heat exhaustion could in fact be a problem.
Mounted couriers when appropriate. Hand signals, flag/banner signals, horns and drums were all used for mass command and control.
Not as difficult as you might think. Generally you weren’t wearing the equivalent of metal pants. It’s more like leggings, with an overhanging skirt of armor and/or a detachable codpiece. And you weren’t really always wearing pants as we know them under that - it was often leggings again and some sort of underwear.
Depends on the exact time in history. Full plate armor was only around in western Europe from around the fisrt quarter of the 1400’s through the first quarter of the 1500’s, and then only for the best equipped horse mounted troops (Knights). It was expensive and was usually provided by the individual, not normally the “government” (monarch).
Having said that, it would be custom made for the intended wearer and should have fit fairly well. It would have allowed a remarkable degree of mobility and agility.
Somewhere —and I can’t cite it presently-- I read that a fully (plate) armored knight would have carried less of a load into combat that a fully equipped enlisted infantryman in the First World War.
Before the 1400’s, armor for the torso and limbs was lighter, principally mail with some plate in key parts.
My thought is that in those days, despite longbows, crossbows, and arquebuses,
the idea was that combat would have quickly come to blows at close quarters and battles would have been short, sharp afairs --at least that would have been the intention.
Heatstroke, heat exhaustion, and thirst were especially serious problems for the Crusaders, and form a recurring theme in their struggles. One particularly noteworthy example is the Battle of Hattin, in which the noble ideals of the Crusades eventually came down to a desperate struggle over water supplies.
My own experience in SCA mock battles, wearing realistically heavy metal replica plate armor, is that heat buildup is a MAJOR concern. We fought battles early in the day to avoid the full heat, and the safety officials (“Marshals” in SCA parlance) constantly made everyone take off their helms and drink water whenever there was a delay of any kind. I once went to a winter event that was VERY cold, and I saw people suit up in armor and bask in the sun like lizards as a specific response to the cold. This Scientific American article alleges
Note that they’re specifically talking about full plate circa 1415. I wore a replica of the 1415 White Plate, pretty much exactly the sort of thing they tested. Other types or armor (and there were many variations) probably performed somewhat differently.
If it’s the eleventh century you probably have an open-faced helmet, and mail armour, so not too bad. If it’s the fifteenth century you might need help and a special tool just to lift the visor on your helmet.
You’re an ill-disciplined rabble unlikely to obey even direct orders from the king, as at Crecy for example and during the third crusade, so you don’t bother with communicating, and barely bother to listen for signals from the leader of your army.
If you’re on a horse you don’t need arse-armour as you’ll be sitting down. If you’re standing up you might have some, but if worst comes to worse just shit in the suit and have a servant clean it out later.
I know a lot more about the weapons than the armor of the period, but I’ll give you some second hand and first hand accounts of dealing with period replica armor. Stuff created by smiths working in conjunction with museums in London and Germany.
Heat - removing your helmet or raising your visor is certainly a possibility while waiting. No one is going to be wearing tournament style armor to an actual battle. Still, metal armor would have readily absorbed heat from the sun, the weird thing is, once you’re hot, and sweating, the padding becomes soaked and helps to cool you off a bit. So unless the conditions are really bad: you’re a crusader marching through the middle east in armor and without proper supplies, you just need to take some precautions.
Communication - banners, standards, coat of arms, horns, yelling out commands, as has been stated. Wearing a closed helmet would definitely have limited your field of vision and possibly hampered your hearing. I wouldn’t be surprised if most knights would have raised their visor whenever not being engaged by missile weapons, or when trying to get their bearings.
I think this is one of those problems commanders struggled to solve. Once the melee breaks out, it’s probably damn near impossible to have the troops respond cohesively to commands - it’s all about military training at that point.
Period armour wasn’t an airtight Iron Man suit only articulated with itself - it was usually lots of different bits tied on to the gambeson (padded undergarment) with points (laces), with lots of spaces, so you could get some little air circulation. And it was always worn with a gambeson, usually linen-lined, which would hopefully wick the sweat right off you (or satin-lined, not sure about Medieval satin’s wicking properties as it was silk). Some gambesons might also have had holes cut in them to allow airflow, if written description from How A Man shall Be Armed is to be believed. So heat exhaustion was definitely a problem, but they were aware of this and did take measures to address it.
The surcoat did evolve from sun-protective clothing picked up on the Crusades, from their enemies. The mantling worn on the helmet evolved for the same reason.
Define “fully equipped.” It is true that infantrymen carried very heavy loads in their backpacks… Which are immediately discarded when fighting begins. No one in their right mind would try to fight with their rucksack on.