I recently read an interesting short article about the evolution of armour though the ages, it made me wonder when was the last recorded instance in history where someone took to the field of battle wearing full plate armour? Someone had to be the last after all, or maybe it was a group of knights and not one person?
I’ve tried googling this but it just came back with references to the movie ‘The Last Knight’…
All I can tell you is plate armor continued for many years in jousting long after it had stopped being used in war. After France’s King Henry II died horribly from a jousting accident in 1559, the sport quickly lost popularity. So circa 1560 is when plate armor was relegated to museum-type displays only.
Some WWII Japanese brought their Samurai armour to battle. I assume it was a personal choice.
https://goo.gl/images/wAZPu7
“The development of powerful rifled firearms made all but the finest and heaviest armour obsolete. The increasing power and availability of firearms and the nature of large, state-supported infantry led to more portions of plate armour being cast off in favour of cheaper, more mobile troops. Leg protection was the first part to go, replaced by tall leather boots. By the beginning of the 18th century, only field marshals, commanders and royalty remained in full armour on the battlefield, more as a sign of rank than for practical considerations. It remained fashionable for monarchs to be portrayed in armour during the first half of the 18th century (late Baroque period), but even this tradition became obsolete. Thus, a portrait of Frederick the Great in 1739 still shows him in armour, while a later painting showing him as a commander in the Seven Years’ War (1760s) depicts him without armour.”
I think some mention of Haselrig’s Lobsters is called for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_lobsters
The “lobsters” were probably the last unit to fight on English soil wearing full armour, and one of the last in Europe. 1643-44.
The Polish Winged Hussars were probably Europe’s last true heavy lancers. They fought in full armor as late as the Siege of Vienna in 1683.
And yes, “winged” was not a euphemism.
Legend has it that the Khevsurs in the Caucasus turned up in chain mail to enlist in the Russian army for World War One.
Thanks for the answers everyone, its interesting reading 
Examples are given along a continuum of post ca. 1600 less than full suits of armor. The Lobsters wore 3/4 suits, as did some Winged Hussars but other depictions and surviving suits of the Hussars have just breastplates and helmets. Cuirassiers with those two remaining pieces of protection were seen through the Napoleonic Wars. So what’s ‘full’? And the Winged Hussars in the heyday of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth arguably qualified as ‘knights’ since the nobility was heavily represented in their ranks, but the Lobsters were a typical early modern military unit in social composition, not knights.
They wore chainmail, not plate but the Ottoman Sapahi heavy cavalry survived until the 1820s.
I remember reading something that it was the crossbow, not the firearms, that made armour less useful. Joan of Arc, for example, was shot through the shoulder through her armour by a crossbow. As demonstrated at Agincourt(?) even ordinary longbows could penetrate armour sometimes.
That makes no sense - crossbows had existed in Europe from well before the development of full plate. It was definitely improvements in firearms that lead to the decline of armour.
Maybe because it took years (a lifetime) to train a longbowman, while any fool could fire a musket after a couple of hours learning by rote. Crossbows were never popular because they were heavy and slow to reload.
This topic has been chewed over at book length, or substantial parts of books anyway, forever. It’s complicated I think.
But one point is that ‘musket’ originally meant a heavier higher muzzle velocity shoulder arm than an arquebus, and a pistol was less powerful than an arquebus. IOW part of the reason common use of firearms and armor (including actually full suits) coexisted in the 16th century but not as much in the 17th where armored heavy cavalry units (albeit in 3/4 or half suits not actually full) became notable for still being armored, was gradual advances in firearms, like musket instead of arquebus. Though eventually ‘musket’ had a broader meaning.
You can often see the ‘proof’ marks in museum piece armor suits from 16/17th century, where they fired bullets at them to prove they could resist. But what kind of bullet? Same issue down to today, body armor to resist pistols, normal long arm ammo or special high performance AP long arm ammo are different propositions.
Since we don’t seem to be talking about full plate anymore, or even knights for that matter, I’ll point out that French cuirassiers went off to fight the First World War still wearing their breastplates.
Let’s not forget that in pre-industrial times, a suit of armor was incredibly expensive.
So it’s not just a question of military effectiveness, it’s a question of military effectiveness combined with cost.
Equipping, training and maintaining a fully armored heavy cavalryman is extremely expensive. But if that heavy cavalry is much more effective than poorly equipped infantry, then it’s worth it.
Add firearms to the mix and suddenly light infantry becomes much more effective. It’s not that muskets can easily penetrate armor and so knights can’t survive on the battlefield, is that a knight is worth 20 guys with spears, but not worth 20 guys with muskets.
It’s never a question of “Would I, as an individual warrior, be better off if I left the armor at home?” It’s a question of “If I’m paying to equip an army of thousands of guys, how much should I spend on fully armored heavy cavalry, and how much should I spend on other things?” If you’re being shot at by guys with muskets, armor doesn’t make you bullet proof but it does offer quite a bit of protection against the low velocity muskets of the black powder era. But it was ruinously expensive.
And by the time the industrial revolution rolled around and we could have turned out cheap steel plate armor by the job lot, firearms and artillery had improved by so much that it just wasn’t worth it. They often tried steel body armor in WWI trench warfare, but it was only good against pistol rounds and fragments. If it can’t stand up to rifle or machine gun fire, then how much weight are you willing to carry around with you?
It’s also that in the past, that guy in the expensive armour literally owes me his existence, so he provides it himself. Sure, I pay him more than a footsoldier, but really, he should be providing for himself from the land I grant him. But now (well, now=1500s on) we have more professional armies, not tied to feudalism in the same way. My soldiers expect me to provide most of their equipment.
Yes, crossbows had been there, but they saw tremendous development over time, as well. A 15th - 16th-century heavy, windlass-spanned steel crossbow was a completely different weapon compared to the early Crusades-era organic crossbows. The former did penetrate plate armor, puncturing plate armor was a test used by the crossbowmakers, and modern testing has shown that period crossbows could do that at a distance, too.
Naturally, firearms developed fast at the same time, and of course they turned out to be the definite armor (and crossbow) killer.
This doesn’t really answer the question, as muskets were also heavy and slow to reload, while crossbows didn’t require the lifetime of learning and practice that the longbow needed.
Which means the question is what’s the difference between a knight and a cavalryman. The latter continued to wear helmets and cuirasses for some time.