Eisentstein’s classic Alexander Nevsky has one of the greatest battle scenes ever, The Battle on the Ice. This scene influenced every other great battle scene you’ve ever seen in talking pictures. (The vid link is too short, but is to the looming tension and gathering of forces. The whole film is on YouTube, BTW).
The bad guys, the Teutonic hordes, are led by, among others, these guys. One has on his helmet a giant “U” thing with horizontal spikes; one a vertical closed-finger hand; a third, jagged horns of no animal I’ve ever seen (closeup); the last, metal branches of a bush.
Although it sounds silly, the characters by their visual appearances alone are quite terrifying–the primeval point of war masks, of course.
The knight on the right was wearing a giant gilded bird foot on his helmet. The TK’s were made to look both menacing (when they were burning children in Pskov) and silly (the cringing priests; the trumpet played with its bell in a bucket of water as the knights go under the ice).
As visual intimidation fine. As practical helmets, no. Those horns would result in a broken neck for the wearer in any melee. Too much leverage for the enemy.
Many of those helmets would have been impractical in battle because of the leverage on extended pieces. I doubt they’d consider constructing something intended to break off. Overall those helmets don’t look like the real thing. Many of them are based on example of decorative armor that wouldn’t likely be worn in battle. The trash can type helmets and a lot of the conic ones all look too seamless for something really used in battle on top of the impracticality of the added weight.
I’d suggest the trashcan helmets may have been real trash cans, and many of the others were stamped out in a production line just for the movie.
The heraldic crests would be worn in parades and tournaments, not in battles.
I think the Battle of the Ice may have been a little bit too early to see great helms in any large numbers. In the wikipedia entry, you can see an illustration from a 15th century manuscript, which depicts everyone on both sides wearing conical helms (like the Russians wear in the movie).
The idea of adding things to your armor that make it easier for the enemy to grab you is a spectacularly bad one. Pretty sure such things are ceremonial rather than functional.
Us SCA folk have plenty of crests and such decorative protrusions on helmets and we get hit in the head, hard, ALOT. No epidemic of broken necks. Granted I too would see such decor as unneeded and potentially making a bigger target of your head is never a good thing.
The Polish Winged Hussars. (Wiki) No cite in wiki as to specific purpose beyond display (noise?-even that secondary result), but definitely worn into battle.
Honda Tadakatsu, the Horned Samurai, looks like one of our guys in Nevsky. I thought at first it was for single arms solo fight at stand-off distance (maybe some cowboy in the Old West wore a horned hat), but apparently he wore it in the thick of things and survived. It could happen.
Saw both of these in Cracked.com today, which in item #3 has a good picture of his armor.
When I was in Windsor Castle in 1991, there was a helmet in St. George’s chapel that was obviously decorative. It had a small holstein on the top. Obviously it was historical, meant to be a bull; but by 1990 the Far-Side type cow jokes were in full swing and it just looked silly (like Camelot?). In 2000 I was back there and it had been removed.
I suspect there were cermonial display helmets (and armour) and working models. There was a suit of armour for Henry VIII in the Tower that had room for his larger girth and a very extended codpiece. Based on the polished finish, I don’t think it was intended for real combat and of course a 300-pound guy with a gamey leg was not likely to be involved in combat with a 100-lb suit on anyway.
I suspect Eisenstein used the decorative helmets because they “looked cool”. Plus, those were probably more likely to survive in museums as examples of what the armour “looked like” and therefore what people expected to see pretentious foreigners wearing.
SCA doesn’t engage in full-tilt, all-out melees either. Rattan swords wielded by people looking to score points in a tournament is a lot different from cold-hearted professionals trying to kill each other with live steel. On horseback. In a crowd.
From what I’ve read, the point (sorry) of those 20-foot pikes was to stop the horsemen. The front lines would brace them and lower them so that they formed a wall of spikes. Horses can only be trained so well, they’re not stupid or suicidal, and the front row would balk rather than impale themselves. The pikes were long enough that the horsemen could not reach the front men with swords, and milling about those same horsemen were sitting ducks for arrow barrages from immediately behind the pike line. Not sure why the horsemen manage to penetrate the line unless the helmets work and a few pikemen are scared and run away.
I will give you the horseback, but nobody is pulling any punches. I have dents made in my steel helmet made with rattan weapons. We do fight in a crowd :D.
Very elaborate helmet crest were somewhat popular in tournaments. They were quite fragile, made of wood and leather and intended to break off if hit.
Metal crests were purely ceremonial. If a lance hit a metal crest, it would snap your neck.
AFAIK, crest used in combat were even softer, usually feathers and horse hair.
At least in the age of powder, sometimes this happened when a horse is charging and gets hit right as they are about to balk. So instead, they get hit and fall down and roll right into the line of pikes, creating an opening the other horsemen can exploit. Not sure if arrows produce an instant enough incapacitation for this to happen in the age of arrows as well.
I read a pretty thorough analysis–by the military historian Kagan, I think (no cite)–about the Battle of Agincourt, which used the pile-up of bodies as the central factor in incapacitating the defenders.
So it can work the other way. Unless that is exactly what you just said.
