I ask because all of the examples of full-body plate armor look pristine-no nicks, dents,etc., that you would expect from being in battle!
I understand that the complete body armor was quite expensive, and took many months of labor, by skilled craftsmen to make.
A while back, I saw a British-made documentary, in which the resistance of plate armor to arrows was tested. They determined that the best plate armor, from ca. 1400, could be penetrated by a longbow arrow at a distance of 200 ft. or so.
Also, accounts of medieval battles (such as Crecy) suggest that a fully-armored knight was next to helpless (once unhorsed). apparently, by that time, the armor was so heavy that combat on the ground was impossible.
So, the beautiful pieces of armor that we see in museums today- were thry actually ever used? Or were they made for ceremonial display?
I also remember reading that the first English colony on America (Jamestown, 1580), ar,ed their soldiers with helmets and breastplates-which hadn’t been used in Europe for over 100 years. Of course, against the indians, these items offered good protection.
It was used, but I think the examples that you see in museums were ceremonial suits-- very complex etching and decoration, etc., for special occasions-- procession, portraits, etc. I think it was only particular group that wore it in battle anyway-- your average ground troops didn’t, just a few guys on horses, leaders, etc.
During WWI, there were sporadic attempts at using metal (steel, I would guess) cuirass’, to help counter the effects of artillery fragments. Proto-flak jackets.
Was the armor used (back to your original question)? Sure. Plenty. But more for show and tourney then battle.
Full plate armor is heavy as hell, but it is incredibly ‘flexible’. Those smiths knew their craft. And they charged for it; Plate was wickedly expensive.
In this instance, armor lost in the eternal battle of armor vs. armament. Too many weapons could penetrate or nuetralize plate armor, which when combined with its cost, made it more of a status symbol then a practical peice of battlefield kit.
Most full-plate armor, while fairly heavy, was evenly distributed over the body enough that it didn’t obstruct the wearer too much (There was one account of a king, one of the Henrys, I think, who would leap up onto his horse in full plate). Tournament armor, especially for jousting, was usually much heavier, since the wearer didn’t have to be as combat capable, and would often require a good deal of assistance to get onto the horse (Up to small cranes to lift the warrior onto his steed).
I don’t think it was untill the earliest gunpowder weaponry came out that the “average” full-plate set picked up enough weight that it became too heavy to really be combat effective, though that was probably a trend that started with the proliferation of crossbows (Or even longbows).
Well, remember that these suits were often repaired and repaired endlessly, if the owners were a noble family. And as time passed, some of the “utilitarian” suits were further engraved and embellished.
With regards to the time…I can’t believe how hard it is to make chainmail, especially the sort which uses riveted links. Great Goddess, it took me forever to make a 1-foot square of steel links. I would actually think that plate armor would be easier - that the hardest part would be the making the unfinished plates themselves. However, there is a lot of chainmail that goes into a suit of plate armor as well.
What can you say about Crecy, and Poitiers? The French had a certain “brain disconnect” - to go charging up a hill into a storm of arrows, with the slopes lined with traps and barriers. textbook freaking stupidity, that ended tens of thousands of lives.
That having been said - back wayyyyyyy back when I was in the SCA, I did see several examples of people with near-full or half-plate armor, and they were quite flexible in them. One fellow enjoyed showing off by doing a backflip in his nearly full-plate armor. Now, at the end of a long day of battle, or even an hour or two, all that extra mass would really bog you down, so I don’t doubt it was a hinderance overall.
IIRC, and I have no cites available to back this up, most of the fancy armour seen in museum collections today was not even made to be worn.
Armourers would create a 3/4 scale “window display” suit to show their patrons what could be done. The full-sized production models are few and far between today because of use, abuse, and wear.
The display of reduced show pieces of armour also led to the widespread belief that people are much larger today than they were then. The nobility ate well, and contemporary records show that they were no smaller on average than folks today. Again, no cite, but I believe Barbara Tuchman covered this in A Distant Mirror.
I’ve done some research into castles and what they have on display. From this I gather that outside of the ceremonial suits of armor talked about here, there are very very few complete suits of armor to be found anywhere. Most on display are composite suits or have reproductions of some pieces. (Some are complete reproductions, but they don’t like to talk about those…)
Armor was also hand-crafted to fit the individual wearer, so suits would not be passed down to heirs to be reused as other goods were. Keeping a used suit of armor around for centuries after the original wearer had no use for it had no real purpose. You wonder why anybody did so.
I also wonder when the display of suits of armor as objets d’art came into fashion. Probably it was as recent as the Victorians as with so much else of what we think of as ancient British traditions, but I don’t know for sure.
When I toured the Tower of London many eons ago, there were several suits of armour there that had been, say, hit with a cannonball or something and were seriously damaged. They said that people were wearing them at the time.
Three thots to add, the furst mundayne:
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Ya don’ see nicked up battle armor, because it was a bloody mess, and people were anxious to either a) bury it, or b) steal it.
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I’ll bet dollars to pounds that the Brit documentary took a modern arrow and shot straight in the center of the armor. That would be a pretty lucky shot, in the heat of battle.
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N-e-e-a-r-ly off topic. At a conference I happened to run into a WWII glider pilot convention. They were happy to have a “young guy” show interest, and invited me in. One of their main beefs was that the D-Day gliders didn’t even have armor plating under the pilot’s seats.
As above, yes indeed it was used, then reused. Where it was not able to be turned into an “improved” and better fitting (for the new user) version of personal protection, then it might have been turned into other items such as knife blades, pots and pans, nails, etc.
But then… “I also remember reading that the first English colony on America (Jamestown, 1580), armed their soldiers with helmets and breastplates-which hadn’t been used in Europe for over 100 years.” No, not true. Your history is off. Jamestown was (IIRC) 1605 and on. But if you think armor wasn’t used then or later in Eurpoe, then you need to look to the 30 Years War, the English Civil War, and the various French Wars of Religion.
That said, the nicer armor tended to be made for those with money (nobles, etc.) and they may have been inclined by their station in life to take less personal risks. So the nicer armor might well have taken less abuse and been passed down in the family estate as a token of valor and struggle against the bad guys. The fact that it was better grade production tends to bias the surviving sample; little of the everyday rank-and-file material survives intact.
Interesting bet, given that the pound is worth more than the dollar. (I have heard it before as dollars to donuts).
Anyway, you lose.
Modern sports and hunting bows draw at 60-65 lbs at 28" in the top ranges.
The ‘English’ longbow, as used in battle, drew nearly 200 lbs at 28-30" and had much greater penetrative power than today’s weapons.
It is difficult to be precise about this as so few bows of the period survive in any form. The 200 lbs. was derived from a fragment recovered from the moat of an English castle in 1955. A more recent find (upon which the BBC documentary may have been based) supported this “ballpark figure” using more modern scientific techniques to estimate its original power.
The longbow in these islands was initially developed in Wales (specifically Gwent), and we have a contemporary account from Giraldus Cambrensis which describes arrows which missed their target and drove through “the oak doors of a portal, although they were the breadth of four fingers in thickness”.
More relevant to the virtue of plate armour against the longbow is the battle of Halidon Hill in 1333 - preceding Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt. The Scottish army was led by the regent, Archibald Douglas, who had the finest suit of plate arnour that could be had in Europe. The English force was led by Edward III. In this battle (as at Dupplin Muir in 1332) the archers were placed on the wings of the defending forces and were virtually ignored by the attacking force until they opened fire.
At Halidon the Scots losses were in excess of 4000 including over 500 lords, knights and squires. The English lost 14.
Douglas was mortally wounded, and his fine armour had been pierced by more than 20 arrows.
Lots of longbows were recovered in good condition from the wreck of the Mary Rose - Henry VIII’s famous ship. If I remember correctly, reproductions of the bows found, confirm a draw weight of up to 200 lb - with significant variation from bow to bow.
It takes a life time of practice to use a bow like that - which is why regular practice was required by law in England. I have often been told that the law is one of those odd ones that is still on the statute…
G. Cornelius is quite right about the haul from the Mary Rose, but those examples were from 1545 - two hundred years after Halidon Hill, and over a hundred years after Agincourt.
I once got to catch a travelling exhibit of highlights from the Graz Armory. Graz was a real, enormous weapons and armor stockpile that eventually evolved into a museum.
There were several examples of armor that looked as if it had been patched or reinfoced, especially under the arms–a vulnerable spot in most armor and a common target.
You wouldn’t dare wear damaged armor back into combat. It would be both uncomfortable and dangerous. Fortunately, all armies in medieval times were accompanied by an equally large contingent of “camp followers,” and among the more important of these folks were the mobile smiths. Since armies in those days spent a lot more time avoiding or observing one another rather than actually fighting, there was probably plenty of time to fix up or recycle damaged gear.
Recycling seems to be an obvious explanation for the lack of wrecked armor. To the victor went the spoils, and one of the most important spoils was the raw material needed to make weapons and armor. Usually, bodies were quickly stripped of anything useful.
Sometimes, however, the armor could not be collected before the bodies inside them began to bloat and putrify. These were buried. From the few examples we know of, medieval armor was hardly impervious to the weapons of the day. If I remember correctly, Charles the Bold was exhumed and his helmet (and presumably whatever was under it) was found to be cloven in two by a Swiss halberd. It other words, it was scrap metal.
(… **** Snatches at fraying thread ***** …)
The OP: “Was Medieval Plate Used?”
My commentary, with incredibly worldly experience from one nine-week class on archery: The Brit documentary probably shot at armor under ideal circumstances. Good bow. Good arrow. Non-moving target. In the open. Beautiful sunshine.
The bow wins? A can opener wins! Immaterial to the question, which is was plate used? In less than ideal conditions, plate could be very effective. Against an attacker who didn’t have a bow, for example.
The longbows in use at Agincourt were generally less sophisticated, and less powerful than bows found later. They lacked the extremely deadly short-range (direct fire) punch that later bows (such as found on the Mary Rose) possessed. It didn’t matter. In the tactical situation, with the French Chivalry bunched, bogged, and exhausted by a long charge through deep mud, the plunging fall of arrows was more than sufficiently lethal, even though the bows of that era were usually incapable of penetrating head and torso armor at a distance. Instead, the mass of plunging arrows crippled or killed horses, and wounded knights, resulting in a horrible chain-reaction wreck, killing and crippling still more horses, killing knights, and stopping the charge well within range of the archers, whom continued to fire. Under those circumstances, i.e. Ideal tactical situation, massive casualties are certain.
The longbow was at it’s most deadly when used in plunging fire, at a distance, en-mass. It was the anti-personnel artillery / machine gun of it’s day.
Yes, the English longbowman was the best archer in the world. However, it took years of practice to train a man to be a competant bowman with the longbow. The alternative was the crossbow…presumably, just about any yokel could use a crossbow with a few day’s practice? So why didn’t it catch on? At Crecy, the French employed Geonoese (Mercenary) crossbowmen, but the accounts I read suggest that they were ineffective against the enemy. Now, I can vouch for the penetrative power of a crossbow bolt-I built a crossbow as a teenager (I used a leaf spring from a car). That sucker drew 300 lbs.!..and I could shoot a bolt through an oak door. I would expect plate armor to be very vulnerable to crossbows, but they don’t seem to have been used much-why?
Quote from
Quote from .this page.
“Their greatest detractors were their slow reload ability, inaccuracy, and considerable weight.”
(emphasis added)
[nitpick]
Archers don’t open fire when they attack, they loose.
[/nitpick]