This week, we’re going to talk about armor effectiveness, comparing the value of body-armor before gunpowder with what gets portrayed in fiction and broader pop culture. What does it take to defeat armor? What weapons were effective at defeating armor – and what kinds of armor were they effective against? I should note that I am going to focus here on armor-types common in Europe (c. 200 BC – c. 1600 AD), because that is where I specialize, but the basics of this analysis could also be applied to armor elsewhere (at least for armor made of textiles, iron and steel).
Let’s begin with the trope as presented in media. Pop-cultural depictions of armor often show plate armor being defeated by arrows:
Or by spears:
Or sword thrusts:
Or…sword cuts?
Or axe blows:
I trust I have made my point. If you truly do need more examples, TVTropes will provide.
I suspect we can all recognize these examples as a bit silly. Armor obviously wasn’t this useless, or no one would have worn it. But accuracy here is a narrow path with traps to both sides – just as much as I have had students assert armor penetration from weapons which probably couldn’t (particularly the longbow, to which we will return in a moment), I have also had students assert armored invulnerability in situations where it probably wasn’t. So where does the truth sit?
In simple terms, there are two main variables here: the type of defense, and the type of attack. Armor in the Middle Ages was often worn in layers, with a textile defense base layer (a gambeson), then a flexible metal defense (mail), followed by surface rigid defenses (plate, coat of plates, brigandine, etc) – don’t worry if that doesn’t make much sense, I’ll explain the layers a bit as we go on. We’ll look at how each layer performs against a range of potential attacks. That’s going to be math-and-example heavy, so if you want, at the end of each section, I’ll have a paragraph labeled UPSHOT in all-caps and bold like that, where I’ll sum up what it means.
Also, I am going to refer quite a bit to one work, Alan Williams’ The Knight and the Blast Furnace (2003). For the sake of brevity, I’m just going to note it as Williams (2003) (or just Williams) from here on in. It represents some of the best and most recent work on the metallurgy of armor and features an extensive section on defeating armor. Alas, it is not the sort of book priced for mortal men or that one can find outside of university libraries. That said, we will part ways with it on a few points.
Alright, with that preface done: onward!
Bottom Layer: Textile Defense
Alright, first, what do I mean by textile defense? A gambeson (also called a padded jack, arming doublet or aketon and possibly the same as the Roman subarmalis) formed the base layer of effectively all medieval armor. For very poor soldiers, this may have been the only defense available to them for the body; for wealthy knights, their gambeson would have attachment points for the rest of their armor (this is what would make it an ‘arming doublet’). A gambeson was made by sewing together (quilting, really) several layers of thick textile (usually linen or wool).
This construction poses two obstacles to an attack: first, any kind of piercing or cutting attack has to defeat multiple layers of textile before reaching the body. Second, the tiny air-pockets created in the quilting, along with the textile itself, creates a cushion against blunt force trauma and also serve to absorb some of the energy of a blow.
(Note: There are other forms of textile defense. Most notable for me is the Greek ‘linothorax’ (on which the best book by far is Aldrete, Bartell and Aldrete’s Reconstructing Ancient Linen Body Armor (2013)), which was probably a layered, laminated textile armor. Unlike a gambeson, it had no air-pockets, and was quite rigid. I’ll talk about it more in a future post.)
Williams (2003) is less focused on organic defenses (horn, leather, textile), but his experimentation with them still provides a solid starting point for discussing the gambeson. Williams measured armor resistance in terms of the energy of impact (measured in joules, J) which resulted in defeating the armor (defined as a 40mm penetration minimum).
I want to stop for a moment and discuss this method, because on the one hand it is some of the better documented testing done in print, and on the other hand, it has some limitations. The largest of these is that Williams has broken his tests down by the type of weapon used (blade, lance, arrow, bullet), using simulated blows where the precise energy of impact could be assessed (meaning he did not hit them with actual weapons, as I understand his method). This is good for data, but it must be noted it presents those weapons with what are essential ideal penetration circumstances – the armor is not moving, struck dead on, etc.
Also, because of Williams’ research focus (on metallurgy, especially for plate armor), the number of tests of mail and textile were understandably fairly few – they served mostly as a benchmark against which to assess plate defense. Fabrics other than linen (wool, silk) were not tested, nor mail with different join methods (riveted against end-abutted or welded mail) or ring-sizes. Given that his book is already near a thousand pages, we ought excuse him for not having gone further!
Against a blade, Williams rated 5mm leather armor at only 50J, buff leather at 70J and proper cuir bouilli (all at 5mm thickness) at 90J. In contrast, a 16-layer linen padding (suitable to be worn under armor), rated 80J, and a heavier 26 layer quilted jack at 200J. For comparison, Williams estimated the normal force of a sword or axe blow around 60-130J, which suggests that a sword or axe may or may not defeat a gambeson with a cutting attack.
(As a side note: this should quickly put to rest the idea of using normal, tanned leather as a primary defensive material (as so often appears in fantasy games), or that leather armor which did work was ‘light.’ Cuir Bouilli is not like the leather in a jacket – it is thick and hardened to the point of being little more flexible than an iron plate. It is also fairly heavy. That, not modern biker-wear, is what ‘leather armor’ generally consisted of – with some room for exceptions, of course.)
However, against a piercing or penetrating attack (like a lance or an arrow), the organic defenses fared much more poorly. The 16-layer padding managed to resist only up to 50J behind a spear-point, while the cuir bouilli failed at just 30J. This is a real problem against things like arrows and crossbow bolts, which might arrive at anywhere from 80 to 200J, well above the defensive power of the gambeson.
You can actually see a set of tests that produce consistent results to these done by Youtube Armsman Skallagrim here. Dull swords and poor strikes fail to penetrate the gambeson they are testing, but solid blows from sharp swords cut through and often deeply. Thrusting attacks penetrate deeply and with ease.
The UPSHOT: If a gambeson was all you could afford, it was a lot better than nothing. Assuming you kept moving and made yourself a hard target, there was a good chance that this kind of armor would resist a sword cut or an axe-blow, or at least limit the depth of the cut to something less than lethal or debilitating.
On the other hand, there was also a good chance a solid cut would cut through and open a nasty laceration. Moreover, the chance of a gambeson stopping a well-placed spear-strike or a lucky arrow was very low. This in turn, starts to hint at why shields were so important to medieval combatants – arrows are very hard to armor against (as we’ll see), but a solid shield could offer protection against missile fire.
So, if you are planning your fantasy or historical fiction series and you have someone in just a gambeson who falls in battle, you can bring him down in almost any way – but a thrusting attack from a spear or sword is more likely to do the job than a cut. But unless you have a legendary hero delivering the cut, the blow ought not take a man in half if he’s wearing a gambeson – it does offer significant resistance.
Middle Layer: Mail
Mail – sometimes called chainmail or ringmail (note that when I say mail, this is what I mean – terms like ‘scale-mail’ and ‘plate-mail’ are modern creations, inaccurate and confusing) – is armor made of interlocking metal rings, typically arranged in a 4-in-1 pattern, alternating solid rings with rings that are either riveted or ‘end abutted’ (meaning open rings bent closed). Mail armor was developed in Europe during Antiquity (by the Gauls), so it predates the European Middle Ages – it was, in fact, the preferred armor of the Romans for the period of the Late Republic.
(Note that for this and the following section, I am assuming iron or steel as the material. The Romans did make copper-alloy (read: bronze) mail armor. Some armor rings of this type were recovered from the Roman camps at Numantia, for instance. But most mail was made from iron, so that’s what we’ll look at.)
Mail was, however, expensive. Constructing a mail shirt might require producing as many as 40,000 (or more) iron rings, which then had to be joined by hand. This is quite labor intensive. Any kind of worked metal in the pre-modern world is likely to be expensive when new, as the forging process required not only skilled labor, but also a lot of fuel. Adding labor intensive construction only increased cost. Mail’s advantages were considerable though: the armor is flexible and not too heavy (c. 4-8kg for body armor covering from the shoulders to knees).
Mail armor is likely to fail in a very particular way: the rings can be split. On the other hand, cutting mail is functionally impossible in combat conditions. Williams (2003) conducted experiments with two pieces of mail, a modern replica and a 15th century mail gusset. In both cases, the energy required to defeat the mail with an edged weapon (like a sword or an axe) exceeded the roughly 130J upper limit for hand-held cutting weapons. Indeed, the mail was somewhat damaged but undefeated by a 200J blow from a halberd. A warrior will sooner inflict blunt trauma through the mail than he will cut it – and indeed, this is exactly why weapons like maces became popular as mail armor became more common during the High Middle Ages.
(Note: I have heard and read reports or mail armor rings being burst, which is not quite the same thing as cut. Here what I’ve seen reported is that the force of a sword-blow has burst the rivet in a riveted mail ring (or several), opening the rings and thus weakening the armor. I should note the word ‘reported‘ – I have not seen this form of damage done with an edged weapon myself. It’s not clear to me that this damage would allow the weapon through.)
On the danger of splitting mail, however, we must part ways (at least a bit) with Williams (2003). Williams places the energy required for a spearhead to split mail at 140-200J, noting that his simulated lance was unable to really defeat the mail decisively. This would suggest mail was a very solid defense against a spear. From a historical perspective, this seems unlikely – spear-points penetrating mail are well reported in the historical record (e.g. Plut. Aemilius 20.4). Lance strikes through mail are also fairly common in medieval artwork. Moreover, a number of members of the enthusiast HEMA community have also tested this, and have produced mixed results, but quite a few clean penetrations which would have done serious harm (e.g. tests by Skallagrim, ThegnThrand, and Roland Warzecha).
In this case, I am quite curious as to the shape and design of Williams’ simulated spear point (he calls it a lance point), as well as the treatment of the iron. For penetrating mail, hardness (as in the metallurgical trait) matters a lot – a soft metal will blunt or bend more readily, whereas a harder metal will hold its shape better, forcing the ring to resist more energy or split. Shape also matters a great deal – note in the videos above how much more successful Skallagrim’s 12th century ‘winged’ spear is than Thrand’s ‘Celtic’ spear – the former has a narrower, more sharply tapered tip and thus can get through with a lot less energy, because it has less material to push out of the way.
(Pedantry note: ‘Celtic’ is terribly imprecise – on the problems and limitations of this term as used to describe these people, note S. James, The Atlantic Celts (1999). It is true that the Greeks classified a broad swath of peoples living from Anatolia to Spain as keltoi (Celts). But those ‘Celtic peoples’ did not have a single material culture or a single set of weapons (weapons in Spain and Britain look quite different, in fact). In this case, I think using the archaeological term for this material culture group – ‘La Tène’ – or the geographic term – Gaul and Gallic (which, yes, is what the Romans called them and has its own problems) – is probably more appropriate and precise. In either case, Thrand’s spear looks to be a faithful reproduction of a La Tene Type IIIb (following Brunaux and Rapin’s typology from the deposit at Gournay-sur-Aronde (1988)). That type was never very common, but most popular c. 300 to c. 200 BC.)
It is interesting to see how the variables in these tests – the force of the blow, the quality of the mail, the spear-head shape, and the resistance of the target – impact penetration. Notably, penetration seems to be much less likely for a target that can ‘give’ behind a blow like a human would be likely to, as it robs the thrust of much of its power. Unsurprisingly, heavy blows (either striking from above or with two hands) perform better, as do narrower spearheads. In any event, the tests do confirm that a spear could penetrate mail, although it was by no means guaranteed to.
The other threat to splitting mail came from arrows and crossbow bolts. Williams (2003) notes that using a simulated bodkin arrow, the rings were split at 80J, at 100J, they were split with enough force to penetrate the padded jack underneath and at 120J, the mail failed utterly. Such hits are within the capacity of the bows and the crossbow Williams tested, although the bows he used – at 80lbs pull – would be by no means the hardest hitting of war bows.
It’s worth noting that arrows can carry more than one kind of point (technically the point of a war arrow is in fact, a warhead). Against textile or flesh, the standard arrow point was a ‘broadhead’ – often with barbs to make it difficult to remove. But precisely because this was broad, it wouldn’t split the rings of mail. Instead, the ‘bodkin’ point – a narrow, square-sectioned (think ‘railroad spike’ shaped) sharp point was designed to defeat mail. As armor got stronger (see the section below), another arrow-tip type, a shorter, less sharp version of the bodkin was developed – we’ll talk about that below.
For more detail on arrowhead types (including crossbows), I strongly recommend this video as a great quick primer.
I want to come back to questions of aerodynamics and range in next week’s post, so I won’t dwell overmuch on those questions here. Likewise, I’m not going to deal with guns here, check back next week!
I do want to note that there is considerable room in mail for quality differences as well. Mail constructed of smaller rings (you will need more of them) puts more material in the way of an incoming strike and is thus harder to defeat (but much more expensive). Riveted mail is much stronger than mail made of end-abutted rings, which can simply be bent open. A strike which lands on a riveted ring, compared to a solid ring, is also more likely to succeed, though this is mostly a matter of luck. Finally, the quality of the metal also matters a great deal.
UPSHOT: As Williams (2003) notes, a man completely armored in mail (like a knight of the 11th or 12th century) could content himself that he was largely immune to cutting attacks. Against penetrating weapons, he was more vulnerable – a solid spear-thrust or an arrow or crossbow bolt at close range was a danger to him. At long range (we’ll talk about this next week), he could be much more assured of safety.
As will become clear, when we talk about things like bodkin arrowheads and crossbow bolts as being ‘armor piercing’ it is this ability – to split the rings of mail, that we mostly mean. Given that threat, is it no great surprise that knights of this period do not yet abandon their large shields. The knights of the Bayeux Tapestry, for instance, are fully armored in mail, yet continue to carry their heavy kite shields.
I should note here that as mail becomes more common again in the Middle Ages (it had become somewhat rarer after the fall of the Roman Empire), weapon design shifts to challenge it, with swords tapering to finer thrusting points and narrower spearheads designed (probably) to defeat mail. This is a common thread in weapon design: weapons and armor evolve in relation to each other.
So if you are designing your historical fiction or fantasy battle, and you need to be bringing down a load of bad guys in mail armor, what we’ve learned is that your hero shouldn’t be cutting them. Thrusts from swords or spears, arrows or crossbows – or good old bludgeoning attacks from a mace – these will be your best bet. But the edge of a sword (compared to the point) will do little against mail armor.
Plate Defense
I am going to compress a number of plate-type defenses into one category here. The full plate harness of the Middle Ages developed out of transitional armor types that consisted of a number of smaller plates (coat-of-plates or the brigandine). But the defensive principle remained largely the same: a solid plate of iron (or steel).
Plate defenses varied wildly in thickness, along with the quality of material. Some of the thickest cavalry armors of the 17th century were as much as 8mm thick (this was ‘armor of proof’ designed to resist musket fire). On the other end, ancient armorers generally contented themselves with thicknesses under 2mm and often under 1mm, even when working with bronze. Thickness also varied within a single full plate harness: the crown of the helmet and the breastplate itself are generally very thick, but arm and leg protections might be quite a bit thinner (one harness noted by Williams (2003), has a helmet crown of 1.5mm, and a breastplate 1.3mm thick, but the leg protection is only 0.7mm thick, for instance).
The angle of attack also matters a lot more with a solid plate. Whereas mail and textile provide a surface an arrow can ‘bite’ into, there is a huge difference between a dead-on hit and a glancing strike for a steel plate. A strike at a 45-degree angle might require a third-again more energy in order to achieve the same penetration against a target.
The energy required to defeat a steel plate rises geometrically, not linearly, as the plate gets thicker, as Williams (2003) notes. In practice, a steel breastplate of decent (even just c. 2mm) thickness was functionally immune to handheld weapons and bows and crossbows except at extreme close range. You can see an example here of a high poundage (quite a bit higher than the 80lbs bows used by Williams in his test) longbow being shot into a steel breastplate at point-blank range. The breastplate is secured to the ground and there is no additional protection behind it – in terms of range, power, positioning this is an absolute worst-case test for the breastplate. It is barely scratched.
Crossbows can do somewhat better. Skallagrim tested a crossbow against both a lamellar (layered metal plates) armor and a breastplate – both of admittedly low quality – against a 350lbs crossbow and a 975lbs crossbow. While they are able to dent and punch holes in the breastplate, neither defeats it in a way that would wound a person wearing it. Range matters a lot – and these were fired at extreme close-range for the weapons.
The consequence of this, as Williams lays out, is that penetrating steel plate requires practically impossible quantities of energy for a bow or crossbow (but not, potentially a firearm – more on that later). Even a straight-on hit for an anti-armor arrowhead would need to deliver some 175J of energy to defeat just 2mm of armor. But armor was designed such that straight-on-hits would be extremely rare – armor surfaces curved and sloped away from the direction of attack to encourage blows to glance off. Williams figures the upper end of crossbow energy delivery around 200J, and that at absolute point-blank range. Except for an absolute dead-on shot, even this would be insufficient.
Thus, as Williams (2003) notes, a knight in a full 15th century Milanese harness could be confident that functionally no arrow or crossbow would be able to penetrate his armor (at c. 2mm thickness). A spear couldn’t deliver the same amount of energy – both the bow and the crossbow benefit from being able to store energy during the draw and release it into a single shot, whereas the spear is only accelerated for a short time and thus doesn’t deliver as much energy on impact (again, Williams has the experimental data, if you are curious). Thus with a wider head and less energy – a spear won’t pierce what a crossbow couldn’t. Assuming that knight remains standing and protects the vulnerable gaps in his armor – armpits, groin, neck chiefly – he is effectively immune to most of what a spear-wielding opponent can do to him.
This is not to say that a plate-clad warrior was beyond fear. The era of the plate harness also saw the emergence of weapons designed to defeat it, either by striking at the gaps in the armor with mail-splitting weapons (like the rondel dagger), or delivering blunt force trauma through the armor (warhammers, maces), or by wresting the enemy to the ground where a precise thrust could be given to a gap in the armor or the armor defeated by a powerful descending blow.
It’s also worth remembering that not all parts of the armor were equally strong. While the center of the breastplate might be almost invulnerable, other areas were more so. Fiore de Liberi, for instance, shows several ‘plays’ with a poleaxe aiming blows at the visor to disorient and ground the opponent, or at the sides of the helmet to wound him. Visors in particular tended to be vulnerable, as they needed many small holes to allow the knight to see and breath, which not only provided entry-points for smaller weapons, but also weakened the overall structure of the plate, allowing it to be defeated by high energy weapons. A crossbow bolt that would bounce harmlessly off of the breastplate might well push through an eye-opening or a breath (bending the thinner plate as necessary), with lethal results.
Finally, I should note the existence of short, stubbier versions of bodkin point arrowheads for both arrows and crossbow bolts. These were a response to plate armor. But as the video I noted above (where Tod of Tod’s Workshop describes the arrowheads) they weren’t capable of punching through breastplates – that wasn’t the point. Instead, they could potentially penetrate the much thinner plates of things like visors. That may seem unlikely, but remember that they are being fired in mass volleys – someone is bound to get lucky. And if you miss a mounted knight – there’s a good chance you’ll hit his horse. There’s a reason the French learned to attack on foot in the later stages of the Hundred Years War (e.g. Agincourt, 1415; Formigny, 1450, though that isn’t to say they stop using cavalry).
UPSHOT: Showing blows penetrating through plate armor – a depressing commonplace in portrayals of both fantasy armor and historical armor – should, in fact, be very rare. Even at extreme close-range with high-poundage war-bows, penetrating plate armor is almost impossible. Very powerful crossbows at very close range might do it, especially against low quality armor, but even then, the odds are in favor of the armored man.
The more likely way for a warrior in a full plate harness to fall is a strike to a vulnerable point. Wounds to the face from arrows and crossbows are not infrequently reported. The armpits, groin and neck are also difficult to protect with plate armor and thus were key vulnerabilities that might be aimed for. But a well-made plate harness of the sort an upper aristocrat (like a high noble) might have – in a society that produces such armor – is unlikely to be defeated by a puncture of the steel plate.
Ending Rightly
This hasn’t been intended as a complete list of battle tactics against enemies in armor. Almost every weapon available in the Late Medieval period probably had some response to an opponent in armor. Many of these alternate tactics survive in fencing manuscripts from the period – practitioners of the longsword will be familiar, for instance, with half-swording, morte-striking and grappling.
Rather this was an exercise noting the effectiveness and limits of armor. At each stage of ‘up-armoring’ our combatant, survivability improves markedly. It’s not hard to realize why armor was worn, despite the weight and other drawbacks (we’ll talk about that in a future post, I have no doubt). Even the humble gambeson offers a tremendous jump in protection compared to simple clothing.
But I think there are some key take-aways that deserve noting:
First: The protection afforded by armor does not increase in some linear fashion. I think, influenced perhaps overmuch by war-gaming, there’s a tendency to want to reduce ‘armor’ (and ‘armor penetration’) to a number, a ‘damage reduction’ figure. But that’s just not how the protection works. Upgrades in armor effect different weapons very differently. Mail makes pure cutting weapons practically useless, but offers very limited protection enhancement against arrows compared to a gambeson, or even nothing at all. But it is not as if the bodkin arrow merely has ‘+1 armor penetration’ given that a full plate harness suddenly makes the arrow far more useless than the sword or the axe (which can at least disorient the target and – in the case of the sword – thrust through vulnerable areas).
Second: Armor was useful. With some notable exceptions, anyone who expected to be on a battlefield wanted to have as much of it as they could. Examples where heavy armor was ‘traded down’ for the sake of being ‘nimble’ (as we often see in movies and games) exist, but are very few (switching out helmets for more vision or air is more common). Preferences for certain kinds of transitional armor (brigandine, cuir bouilli over mail, etc) over a plate cuirass seem more common. The key exceptions were men who did not expect to be in close-combat – archers are often (but not always!) shown unarmored, as were men working siege equipment. One assumes that the issue here is the heavy physical exertion (or cost – these are, after all, not aristocrats), not the need to preserve a ‘dex bonus.’ To reiterate, if you could afford better armor, the vast majority of the time, you did.
Third: the way many movies and games show armor being defeated is silly. But I think most of you knew that before you started reading. So why do they do it? I strongly suspect the issue is safety. If you are filming Helms Deep, sure it’s more realistic to tell your factors to aim for the orc’s exposed faces rather than their breastplates, but that’s also a great way to send a few extras to the emergency room. A lot of stage fighting is like this (like that move you see everywhere where the hero swings his sword lightly into contact with the extra’s belly, holds it there for a second, and then draws it to the side rather than completing the cut in a single, smooth movement – this is presumably so you do not hurt your extras).
Finally: the way armor and weapons evolved in competition with each other had important battlefield effects, which in turn rippled out into the larger society. To put the point in a very schematic sense (to which there are many caveats), the development of armor over time tended to increase the battlefield advantage of the well-equipped, well-trained man over the poorly-equipped, poorly trained man. Armor made the knight increasingly resistant to the sort of weapons his ‘social inferiors’ might have access to. It is no accident that this general trend coincides with the same class of military aristocrats consolidating a greater hold on society. It is also no accident that the development of weapons and tactics which diminished this advantage coincided with the reverse.
(For the world-builders out there, a bit of advice: think about how the armor and weapons of your world interact. Weapons should have an intended or ‘ideal’ target. There’s little use for a military pick, warhammer or rondel dagger in a society with very limited armor. Likewise, a warrior expecting to face armored opponents should probably bring a weapon fit to deal with them. The armor a society uses should respond to the weapons it faces, and vice-versa.)
Next time: We’re going to tackle a related topic – missile weapon ‘kiting’ and how range impacts the striking power of bows, crossbows and even muskets.
Your website is lovely, but I’d find it easier to read if you had dark text on a light background, rather than the reverse. Fortunately, I have a little button that does that for me just prior to sending the article to EverNote.
Yeah, it’s a bit of a ‘damned if I do, damned if I don’t’ situation. I find i really prefer a light text on a dark background (but not black or white), especially on tablets (it also makes the pictures – which are mostly rough screencaps – look a bit better). But I know folks who prefer the opposite. I’m sure there is probably some clever way to tell WordPress to put a button at the top to switch between two themes, but I don’t know what it is.
Wow, that’s funny. I was just thinking about how grateful I was for the color scheme. White text on black kills my vision, but black text on white is a bit harsh as well. I actually love the white text on a dark grey background; it’s very soothing for my eyes.
Kelly DeVries and Cliff Rogers once had a long argument about whether arrows would penetrate mail when the target was busily moving around. Kelly argued that the natural swirling of chain from the body’s motion would often (usually!) defeat an arrow. Even a longbow.
I think the most important word there is ‘usually.’ When talking about armor penetration, we need to think in probabilities and not binaries. In a battle, there are a lot of arrows in the air, after all – some will strike true, others will miss, others will fail to defeat armor. Penetration tests tend to happen under ideal conditions for the weapon (which in turn, means worst-case conditions for the armor), which gives a sense of where penetration is possible, but not necessarily where it is likely.
So I think, certainly that body-motion makes penetration less likely. Distance is also a big factor (because power goes down), which I want to address next Friday. But I am hesitant to attribute really comprehensive arrow protection to mail armor, just because fully mailed warriors (e.g. Bayeux tapestry Anglo-Saxons huscarls). continued to carry quite large shields. If you are worried about blocking a sword (or arrows only to the face and neck), a smaller shield can do that job – the big body shield, in my mind, is a response to concern about missile fire to the body more generally. But the kite shield stays popular into the 12th century, before morphing into the smaller heater shield. That suggests to me that for at least a century after Hastings, there was still concern about missile penetration against mail.
That said, the shield changes don’t map neatly on to the emergence of transitional armors (which come about a century and a half later, if I am keeping my chronology straight). This leaves me with uncertainty. One wonders if the background change is in the average metallurgical quality of the mail – perhaps 10th or 11th century mail could not be trusted to resist an arrow, but 13th century mail generally could? More research required.
Could the changeover have to do with expected battle formation/density? Makes sense to me for local peacekeeping type forces buying for themselves to prefer small shields, and a king outfitting an army to go for large shields.
This is informed by both my own experience, and by a few lines of silver’s paradoxes of defense.
His text:
“The sword and buckler has advantage against the sword and target ”
“The sword and target leads upon shot, and in troops defends thrusts and blows given by battle axe, halberds, black bill, or two handed swords, far better than can the sword and buckler.”
My experience tells me that silver’s words are true because at low densities, the sword+shield vs sword+shield fight actually matters. And you want small shields for it. Landing a blow on someone with a shield and battle experience in a low density environment is actually really difficult. Ideally, you want the mobility a smaller shield has to advance quickly and in ways the opponent doesn’t expect.
Whereas at higher densities, it switches over- now it’s hard not to get hit, even if you are good. Do everything right, there’s at least 3 swords, 2 pole arms to track, as well as archers. Now the mobility a smaller shield grants doesn’t mean much- step forward, you die. Your job as a swordsman is mostly to stay alive, and prevent the other side’s swordsmen from charging while the polearms do the work. So large shields are the more ideal way to go, regardless of arrow fire.
Oh, and the experience is from battlegaming in Belegarth. If you are unfamiliar- Bel goes from 1v1 to massed (200+) combat, with it’s main focus on skirmish sizes of 4v4 to 20v20. Belegarth’s unique in that it’s fielded enough bodies enough times to actually develop participants skilled with formations and tactics- something I haven’t seen elsewhere.
So maybe it was about how troops were conscripted/equipped- Was there a change in the social dynamics of how fighters were equipped during that period? A shield’s a shield, the transition from kites to heaters could be about what was being specialized for.
I wouldn’t be surprised if people kept their bigger shields for comfort long after they weren’t that important anymore. It can’t be nice being hit with arrow fire to mail even if the arrow doesn’t actually defeat the armour. Shields are fairly simple and cheap devices, so we shouldn’t expect them to be under intense selection pressure the way mail was, for example.
Yes, bigger shields are heavier… but they also _feel_ like they provide more protection, and that’s not something to ignore either. Fighting with arrows sticking out from your shield is also probably more comfortable than with arrows sticking out from your armour 😀
I have a couple of notes, although these are more matters of technical detail than any bad history like my last comment, and it’s possible you might just be simplifying and be aware of a lot of what I’ve got to say. If you want a source on anything in particular, I can provide it.
“Also, I am going to refer quite a bit to one work, Alan Williams’ The Knight and the Blast Furnace (2003). For the sake of brevity, I’m just going to note it as Williams (2003) (or just Williams) from here on in. It represents some of the best and most recent work on the metallurgy of armor and features an extensive section on defeating armor. Alas, it is not the sort of book priced for mortal men or that one can find outside of university libraries. That said, we will part ways with it on a few points.”
If anyone’s interested, Questia.com has “The Knight and the Blast Furnace” as part of its catalog. While the Questia subscription isn’t the cheapest ($95 USD IIRC), it does provide access to a lot of academic books that are either out of print, expensive or both. The coverage can be spotty at times, but it is really handy for those of us who don’t have access to uni libraries.
“for wealthy knights, their gambeson would have attachment points for the rest of their armor (this is what would make it an ‘arming doublet’). A gambeson was made by sewing together (quilting, really) several layers of thick textile (usually linen or wool).”
While the distinction between “aketon” and “gambeson” is often a very artificial one, it’s one I think that would be useful here when you’re talking about two different types of quilted garment. The aketon is traditionally assigned to the under armour role, while the gambeson fills the role of the stand alone or additional defence, and they were probably constructed differently. The aketon was a thin garment worn under mail and, frequently, gambesons, that was probably less than 10mm to judge by the Sleeve of Saint Martin (https://web.archive.org/web/20170422182905/http://www.guerriersma.com/contenu/Articles_tutos/manche_bussy/manche_bussy.htm). The gambeson, however, was a much thicker and heavier garment, that would appear to have been either multiple layers of linen/cotton or stuffed with linen/cotton rags (Sean Manning has a list of textile armour references here, although not all the examples mentioned in the thread have reached the list yet: http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=187866). I’ve not found any evidence of wool being used prior to the 16th century (the Rothwell Jack), and even then it was in conjunction with linen layers.
I want to stress that there’s a difference between quilted garments worn under armour and that worn by itself, because even Williams makes this mistake and it skews his results for the tests on mail (more on that later). There’s also some serious questions about whether aketons were actually commonly worn under mail before the second half of the 13th century, when the first depictions of it exist. Even Claude Blair couldn’t find any images of an aketon before then, and the Morgan Bible seems to pretty clearly indicate that mail was worn over only a thick tunic.
“nor mail with different join methods (riveted against end-abutted or welded mail)”
Butted mail should *never* be tested except to show why it wasn’t used historically, except for some decorative pieces.
“However, against a piercing or penetrating attack (like a lance or an arrow), the organic defenses fared much more poorly. The 16-layer padding managed to resist only up to 50J behind a spear-point, while the cuir bouilli failed at just 30J. This is a real problem against things like arrows and crossbow bolts, which might arrive at anywhere from 80 to 200J, well above the defensive power of the gambeson.”
It’s probably worth noting that Williams was conducting his test before either Edward Cheshire’s PhD thesis or Chris Dobson’s original paper on cuir bouilli, when the traditional point of view was that it was, well, boiled leather. As Samuel Levin’s thesis (https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2301&context=etd_hon_theses) shows, boiled leather has minimal resistance to arrows while offering a good deal of resistance to cuts. Cheshire’s tests, focused solely on arrow penetration, led him to the conclusion that cuir bouilli was actually boiled rawhide, while Dobson has examined extent examples and come to the conclusion that cuir bouilli was actually half tanned leather (both sides tanned, but a rawhide core in the center, known as “scabbard butt” leather) that had been baked at a relatively low temperature. As such, it’s hard to say how protective cuir bouilli was overall, since Dobson’s examples haven’t been tested and Cheshire’s have only faced arrows.
As a side note, the 16 layer “padding” is the closest to the 18 layers of the only detailed description of a High Medieval textile defence and is thicker than the Rothwell Jack (11 layers of linen with carded wool between them).
“or ‘end abutted’ (meaning open rings bent closed).”
Nope, never.
“On the danger of splitting mail, however, we must part ways (at least a bit) with Williams (2003). Williams places the energy required for a spearhead to split mail at 140-200J, noting that his simulated lance was unable to really defeat the mail decisively. This would suggest mail was a very solid defense against a spear. From a historical perspective, this seems unlikely – spear-points penetrating mail are well reported in the historical record (e.g. Plut. Aemilius 20.4). Lance strikes through mail are also fairly common in medieval artwork. Moreover, a number of members of the enthusiast HEMA community have also tested this, and have produced mixed results, but quite a few clean penetrations which would have done serious harm (e.g. tests by Skallagrim, ThegnThrand, and Roland Warzecha).”
So, this goes to my earlier point about Williams using too thick a base for the mail. What evidence we have for padding under armour is that it was quite thing with minimal layers of textile (Sleeve of Saint Martin), which would absorb blunt force trauma reasonably well but not offer much in the way of protection against penetration, or a thick tunic (as in the Morgan Bible), which would have offered maybe as much protection as the aketon (it might be more than an outer and inner layer – there’s evidence that viking coats were lined with multiple layers of old linen, so it’s possible that the thick tunics actually have more than one layer of linen below the outer woolen layer). The majority of the work being done here is by the textile defence underneath, which is helping to absorb the energy of the blow and greatly increases the energy needed to meet Williams’ definition of penetration.
“The other threat to splitting mail came from arrows and crossbow bolts. Williams (2003) notes that using a simulated bodkin arrow, the rings were split at 80J, at 100J, they were split with enough force to penetrate the padded jack underneath and at 120J, the mail failed utterly. Such hits are within the capacity of the bows and the crossbow Williams tested, although the bows he used – at 80lbs pull – would be by no means the hardest hitting of war bows.”
As before, Williams’ has skewed the results through he excessively thick padding under the mail, but I will stress here that an 80lb bow isn’t going to be producing 80j. What evidence we have suggests draw lengths of between 28″ and 30″ (based on Germanic bows from Late Antiquity and the Mary Rose bows), rather than the 32″ used by modern warbow enthusiasts, and this reduces the energy (Clifford Rogers has written that for the same draw weight, a 28″ draw bow has half the potential energy as a 32″ draw length bow). Tests performed using Italian yew bows, mostly provided by Mark Stretton, show a range of energies between 80j and 120j, depending on arrow weight, for a 140lb bow @ 32″, while the original calculations of draw weight for the Mary Rose bows put them at mostly between 90lbs and 120lbs. This is much the same as some calculations I’ve done for bows from Late Antiquity, although at 28″ rather than 30″.
The point is, the energies Williams was using were appropriate to the heavier class of warbows, rather than those of around 80lbs. I’d estimate that a good 80lb bow made from good quality yew (40+ rings per inch) would probably have an energy of 60-70j with an arrow fit for military service.
Some notes:
I want to start with your assertion that butted mail was “no, never” used.
First, yes it was, at least in the ancient world. Consider the Kirkburn shirt (Stead, Iron Age Cemetaries in East Yorkshire, 1991), and the Ciumesti armor rings (Rusu, “Das Keltische Furstengrab von Ciumesti in Rumanien” in BdRGK 50, 1969), both butted mail. The Numanita armor rings also do not appear to be riveted (Schulten, Numantia, 1927, 1929). The last is decidedly within my date brackets for this post. I realize non-English language scholarship may not be readily available to you, but that’s all the more reason to exercise some caution in making blanket statements. The majority of Roman mail recovered archaeologically is riveted, of course (the sample-size for Gallic mail is too small to make the same statement). But to say that butted mail was never used is beyond what the evidence can confidently sustain.
Moreover, I would urge you to exercise the historian’s caution on this point. Armor in collections and burial deposits is strongly biased towards elite products on the high end of quality. There are some exceptions for armor recovered from battlefield deposits, but for the Middle Ages, these are, of course, swamped by the existing collections. One need simply contrast the armor recovered from the Battle of Visby (1361) with armor of the same period in museum collections to recognize the problem.
On terminology for textile armor:
I am using these terms very generally, since they are used quite imprecisely in the enthusiast community, by scholars and also frequently in our sources. Gambeson is often used by some scholars, as well as the HEMA community as the catch-all term for the type of armor and so that’s how I use it here. One need merely look at the life of the term ‘longsword’ to see how use can dictate meaning even well after the historical period in question has ended. The assumption that we can divide textile defenses into neat categories between the stand-alone and under-armor role on the basis of the current evidence seems to me like a heroic assumption; the evidence does not warrant such confidence (note that the post you link includes examples of gambeson/wambes describing something worn under a hauberk).
Likewise, I tend to be cautious about what materials might be used. The Byzantine kavadia (or the epilorikia of the cavalry) was made, at least in some cases, with silk and cotton, for instance (see T. Dawnson, “Suntagma Hoplon” in Companion to Medieval Arms and Armour (2002)). As you note, in later periods, we see wool filler – but not much textile armor from earlier periods survives, making it difficult to discount earlier use (especially for poorer combatants, who would likely use what they could get). With so few survivals – and what survivals there are biased towards elite products – I think we must exercise some caution on this point.
As for the release and impact force of bows, as noted, I intend to discuss this more in a later post. To be honest, I think all of the wrangling – and yes, I’m aware of it – about the release energy of these bows is a bit ironic, given that we tend to test them at point-blank range against unmoving, square-on targets. In practice, I think we need to assume both a wide range of release energies and impact energies (after wind resistance) – along with a fairly wide range of energies-to-defeat-armor. Better to think in probabilities than in certainties.
In all cases, I’d warn against an excess of confidence. Editors and publishers often edit to give scholarship a greater sense of confidence, sometimes, than the scholars themselves feel if you talk to them. There are still a great many question-marks on these issues, and there will probably always be so. Thus the appropriateness of the historian’s good caution in all things.
“But to say that butted mail was never used is beyond what the evidence can confidently sustain.”
I have to say, I am genuinely surprised at the amount of butted mail in existence, the relatively late date at which some of it was used and the fact that I’ve overlooked it. I apologise for my rash words, and I’ll keep myself out of Antiquity until I’ve put more effort into getting myself up to date. Clearly I’ve been relying too heavily on older secondary sources and avoiding archaeology too much. If you have any book recommendations (or theses or papers) that could help me get up to speed, I would be extremely grateful.
“The assumption that we can divide textile defenses into neat categories between the stand-alone and under-armor role on the basis of the current evidence seems to me like a heroic assumption; the evidence does not warrant such confidence (note that the post you link includes examples of gambeson/wambes describing something worn under a hauberk).”
I want to point out here that I specifically mentioned the artificiality of such a distinction and made an argument for this artificial distinction because it helps prevent confusion among even academics. Sometimes artificial definitions can be more useful than blanket ones.
“Likewise, I tend to be cautious about what materials might be used. The Byzantine kavadia (or the epilorikia of the cavalry) was made, at least in some cases, with silk and cotton, for instance”
Which I never denied, although we’re probably at cross purposes here because I don’t consider Byzantine textile armour to be part of the same tradition as the gambeson.
“As you note, in later periods, we see wool filler ”
But, I stress, not as a standalone component, and the linen layers were clearly the primary defensive component.
“but not much textile armor from earlier periods survives, making it difficult to discount earlier use (especially for poorer combatants, who would likely use what they could get). With so few survivals – and what survivals there are biased towards elite products – I think we must exercise some caution on this point.”
Given how much better wool survives in the archaeological record and the detailed descriptions of construction we have from guilds and earlier authors, I would stress an equal caution not to assume that wool was used just because it was cheap. Generally speaking, you either wore armour that had some defensive quality or you relied on a shield. Aldrete et. al. showed how poor even 40mm thick quilted wool protection was, while those required to wear armour were wealthy enough to afford at least armour made from rags rather than new cloth. Perhaps wool was used to bulk out some of the cheapest armours, but I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence to consider wool being primarily used in a textile defence. That smacks too much of assuming that seaxes were used like a gladius by the Carolingians because some of them might have read Vegetius, or giving Vikings 15th century jacks because they “weren’t dumb”, both of which I’ve seen done (and the former by an academic).
“As for the release and impact force of bows, as noted, I intend to discuss this more in a later post. To be honest, I think all of the wrangling – and yes, I’m aware of it – about the release energy of these bows is a bit ironic, given that we tend to test them at point-blank range against unmoving, square-on targets. In practice, I think we need to assume both a wide range of release energies and impact energies (after wind resistance) – along with a fairly wide range of energies-to-defeat-armor. Better to think in probabilities than in certainties.”
Agreed, but it’s also not helpful to attribute 120j to an 80lb bow and say that this is the lower end of the scale when 120j is actually near the top of the scale for an average warbow. The worst case scenario is also, in my opinion, worth considering since we don’t yet have a good way to conduct more realistic tests. It at least establishes what is possible, if not probable.
“In all cases, I’d warn against an excess of confidence. Editors and publishers often edit to give scholarship a greater sense of confidence, sometimes, than the scholars themselves feel if you talk to them. There are still a great many question-marks on these issues, and there will probably always be so. Thus the appropriateness of the historian’s good caution in all things.”
You’re absolutely right, and this discussion has proved it to me. I’ll try to curb my enthusiasm and think more critically from here on out.
https://myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html has sources talking about crusader knights walking around like pincushions, unharmed by many arrows. This may be felt over mail, though. Also has reports of people being struck by charging horse lance without penetration. So high end mail could be pretty solid; the author thinks changing production costs explain more of the transition.
But even if your hauberk were immune to penetration, I think you’d still want a shield for blocking blows and their blunt force effect, and protecting extremities that might be less armored or more delicate.
Your point about plate being immune to many attacks, but vulnerable in the joints, is reflected in a couple of contemporary “pop culture” stories I like. Orlando Innamorata (1483) very early in the action features one knight defeating another by stabbing through the groin joints of his armor. The sequel, Orlando Furioso (1516) climaxes with a very lengthy duel, concluded by grappling, and then a struggle with knives. The good guy, on top, holds his dagger “at the sights” of the bad guy’s helmet and demands his surrender. The bad guy gets an arm free, and tries to stab the good guy in the neck. The good guy responds: “Raising his arm as high as would suffice, / He plunged his dagger in that awesome brow, / Retrieving it, not once, but more than twice.”
RE arrows, mail and large shields: I wonder how much of the persistence of kite shields is due to inertia, which we could break down into a couple of categories: tradition and prestige (the bigger your shield, the more important you are; perhaps this also drives depictions even after kite shields were obsoleted in practice), and better-safe-than-sorry (if I was a mediaeval warrior, I’d definitely want to err on the side of over-armouring myself if there was any doubt about mail’s effectiveness against arrows, even if that doubt is only due to poorly-made mail). Stick that together, along with the difficulty in transmitting knowledge effectively in a pre-modern society, and perhaps we could postulate kite shields’ persistence in the records isn’t necessarily such strong evidence against their obsolescence once mail was figured out.
“if I was a mediaeval warrior, I’d definitely want to err on the side of over-armouring myself”
Wearing armor needlessly means carrying weight that the other guy isn’t carrying, thus essentially letting him be quicker, and hit harder for a longer time. I think they thought very carefully about what they really needed and what they didn’t.
I appreciate the study that went into this article, yet I feel it fails to explain the extreme efficacy of massed, ranged fire, first by the English longbow and later by the musket. Such weapons eliminated the use of armor and, eventually, cavalry on the battlefield until WW2 with the advent of the tank. Even during the Hundred Years War, the English Longbow was very effective against armored targets or the horrendous discrepencies in causalty counts between the English and French forces have no explaination. For an excellent list of primary sources backing my point, consider https://web.archive.org/web/20190203143415/http://militaryrevolution.s3.amazonaws.com/Primary%20sources/Longbow.pdf.
It seems worth noting that the English did in fact lose the Hundred Years War and that English longbowmen caught out of position without protecting trenches and stakes were regularly overrun by cavalry and even sometimes by infantry.
I’ve already read your linked article, but of course it fits within a much larger debate about the potential efficacy of longbows. A lot of real world testing has been done precisely for this reason. That said, drawing a line between longbows and the decline of armor against firearms is, I think, a misleading connection. Bows with the striking power of English longbows were not restricted to England – Turkish and Mongol steppe bows have the same striking characteristics. At no point did any of these weapons seem to meaningfully motivate a reduction in body-armor. In some cases, quite the opposite.
For all of its flaws, Alan Williams’ The Knight and the Blast Furnace quite clearly demonstrates the process by which armor initially increased and thickened in response to firearms, and then declined when adding more thickness could no longer keep pace. And the difference in energy deliveries between a longbow and a heavy musket was not small – it was a full order of magnitude.
As for the casualty counts: the discrepancies are actually fairly easily explained. In melee combat, even involving forces with effectively identical equipment, casualties are often very one-sided because most killing is done during the rout, not during the battle. Having looks at a LOT of ancient and medieval casualty figures, the losses the French sustained to English longbows do not stand out as peculiar in their magnitude. The Flemish do as well without them at Courtrai.
Really nicely laid out article. Thank you for the work you put into it, and the information. Something funny I noticed though. You shared some photos from popular art in our modern world depicting unrealistic interactions between weapons and armor. I wonder how many of those historic depictions are doing the same. It’s not like humans suddenly started exaggerating action to tell a good story only at the creation of movies.
I am 6-7 and strong to a great extent and I can chop and pierce things. I sent a Dane haft deep through 2 solid panel wood doors atop each other. Even if the armor saved you, you’d be kicked senseless or down. Once the ground was behind you the armor would be to pierce. I’ve punched thru steel drums with ease. I’ve cut with a blade through a 2 inch branch with ease. Modern man is weak, a lot of folks don’t get a good contact with the edge or point. This even true of martial artists like Doug Mercada. The ancient ones trained hard and were strong. I dare you to run around in a mail shirt with me and my longbow.
I realise that this may qualify as Necromancy at this point, but has anyone ever done a study on how effective a Roman Pilum was at Armour Penetration?
There are all sorts of comments about Legion vs Phalanx in Ancient Sources, and modern commentators bring it up all the time. However, beyond the obligatory references to penetrating shields, and rendering them useless there seems to be little on them actually causing direct casualties, especially against an armoured opponent?
“With some notable exceptions, anyone who expected to be on a battlefield wanted to have as much of it as they could. Examples where heavy armor was ‘traded down’ for the sake of being ‘nimble’ (as we often see in movies and games) exist, but are very few”
The Janissary Konstantin Mihailović in his Memoirs of a Janissary circa 1500, makes a note on how the Christian armies should abandon the use of heavy armor if they want to beat the Ottomans, he notes:
“If you pursue him, he will flee: but if he pursues you, you will not escape. And their horses, because of their great lightness are always swift; but you, even with your horses, are always slow because of the great burden of armor: for having much on your head, you are short-winded. Moreover, you cannot hear or see well. Because of the weight of the armor you cannot manage your hands or yourselves either. Rather you prepare yourself for such a war by taking much armor for yourself, as if someone wanted to attack you with a dagger standing in one place. Thus a man must fight bravely with a stout heart, and not encumbered with armor. For it is better for a man to advance into battle and to retreat with honor, and later, being healthy, to begin what he will than to perish and remain in one place, being unable to manage himself, as if leaden”
On the other hand, its noted by Ottoman commanders from the period that their arrows and swords would glide off the Christian armies heavy armor. Forcing Ottoman soldiers to have to use maces, clubs and axes to bring them down. Its also noted that the Ottomans were enthralled and intimated by men in full suits of armor. In spite of this, they (the Ottomans) never seem to make any effort or show any interest in having their soldiers clad in heavy armor. For them putting their time and energy into effective command and control, tactical discipline, clear communication and unit cohesion were more important then using their resources on fielding an army with heavy armor. So yes, armor works but at what cost.
“(Note: I have heard and read reports or mail armor rings being burst, which is not quite the same thing as cut. Here what I’ve seen reported is that the force of a sword-blow has burst the rivet in a riveted mail ring (or several), opening the rings and thus weakening the armor. I should note the word ‘reported‘ – I have not seen this form of damage done with an edged weapon myself. It’s not clear to me that this damage would allow the weapon through.)”
I make mail as a hobby, in my experience, rivets pop out of the rings for one of two reasons:
1.) The ring was made poorly with the rivet hole set too close to either the inner or outer edge of the ring, causing a sear to occur that can cause the ring to “pop” open if hit with any force.
Or
2.) If the rivet wasn’t set just right, it can work its self loose and “pop” out if hit with any force.
Both of these reasons can occur just from bad rings and bad riveting being overlooked. When you’re making tens of thousands of rings and then weaving them into armor, you can easily overlook a few badly made rings. That said, the possibility is there, but it’s more likely the case with mail made by beginners or mail bought off of online stores made by some poor shmuck in India who doesn’t really care about getting it right as much as getting it done in as short a time as possible.
Curious – if I was looking to get a lorica hamata made accurately and to high quality – as someone active in the hobby – do you have recommendations as to where one would go for that?
A fantastic write-up, but in the name of pedantry I feel compelled to point out that you’ve made a critical error when it comes to the performance of warbows against plate armour by not specifying the material of the armour.
Many people have ‘refuted’ the contemporary accounts of battles such as Agincourt and Crécy, where the English longbow devastated the French cavalry, by performing tests of the longbow against plate armour that showed no penetration. However, these tests are deeply flawed because they don’t take into account the material of the armour.
During the Hundred Years’ War, the French made plate armour out of a wide variety of materials, from medium-carbon, slack-quenched steel to slaggy wrought iron. This armour was good at repelling edged weapons, but the arrows from the English longbows punched right through it, even where it was thickest. The full, tempered steel plate armour that was used in all the tests I mentioned above was very rare among the French, and was more commonly used in Italy.
The difference between the two types of armours was witnessed at the Battle of Verneuil in 1424, where 2,000 Milanese heavy cavalry, all outfitted in tempered steel plate, bolstered the French lines. During the battle, the French cavalry attacked the English line on the left flank, and the Milanese attacked the English line on the right. The French attack was broken by volleys from the longbowmen, and hundreds died. The Milanese were practically impervious to the arrows and lost only 60 men.
This is a seriously misunderstood aspect of medieval armour and one that is in desperate need of consistent clarification. It is far too easy to find one of a dozen YouTube videos ‘debunking’ contemporary accounts using a flawed methodology, leading to dozens of people writing articles that echo the incorrect conclusions. Tempered steel plate armour is a solid defence against nearly any pre-modern weapon, including longbow arrows, but not all plate armour was tempered steel. In fact, the majority of it wasn’t for most of the Middle Ages.
I’m relying fairly heavily on Williams, The Knight and the Blast Furnace (2003), which does consider penetration with both steel plate and also relatively high-slag iron plates. Note the chart in the follow-up post (https://acoup.blog/2019/07/04/collections-archery-distance-and-kiting/) which distinguishes between the two. But even low quality iron plates or scales at c. 1mm thickness in his tests (and others I’ve seen) will prevent lethal penetration from all but the most powerful hits from an arrow or bolt.
Hello.
May I ask some questions about methodology of Williams?
– Is there any explanation, why energy of impact was chosen as defining parameter?
– Is there exact explanation, how this energy was defined and measured, especially for non-projectile (hand-held) weapons?
– Have I got it right, that for cutting weapons only “chopping” blows were considered, no “drawn” cuts?
– Have I got it right, that both (metal)armor and penetrators materials were tried in single treatment variant?
Joinville’s accounts of the Crusade of St. Louis appear to imply that Frankish mail was essentially proof against Saracen arrows at typical ranges – he reports that when the enemy attacked their camp at night many of them could not bear to don their mail because of the many pricks they had gotten during the day from arrow points pinking them through rings and gambesons…pricks, but not actual penetrations by the whole arrowhead. As to the lance he recounts one knight who received a Saracen thrust between his shoulder blades who was forced forward onto his horse’s neck and held there, unable to straighten up, by continued pressure, yet the lance did not defeat the mail. Mail seemed to be quite useful even against attacks which per modern theory and testing should not have been expected to be so. Which leads me to wonder what the theory and tests are missing.
This was extremely enlightening! As a former professional game designer (not video, board, miniatures, and RPGs) I take a deep interest in these sort of details about combat and weapons. It seems to me from studying the sources, and in agreement with this analysis, that simplistic modifiers to generic weapons vs. generic armors does not create realistic results. Those +1 or -1 mods to die rolls — easy to design and remember, but it seems to me that a more realistic solution would be to create a grid that could be consulted — left side vertical with a list of weapons, top side horizontal with a list of armor types (including shields!). Cross-reference on this grid to see the actual modifier for any given weapon vs. a given set of armor. More work for the designer, and not something the players are going to absorb immediately, but still a pretty viable solution to this problem. Just organize the chart legibly and sensibly and make it a separate sheet so it can be copied, laminated, and kept handy as a play aid.
PS: And then you could add a modifier table to take into account range considerations. Also needing attention: rate of fire. Traditional bows tend to have a higher rate of fire possible than crossbows.
Harder to factor in to games (especially if you’re needing to play-balance various weapons types over a broad range of possibilities or historical eras, so that there is no “super weapon” that everyone wants to defeat every other weapon, regardless of historical realities) are the questions of availability of a weapon, ease of use, required training, and any relevant geographic factors. E.g., crossbows were very useful for untrained troops (took less training or muscle power to use) and in siege conditions because they could remain cocked and ready to fire, unlike a bow, that needs to be drawn and held. Also, crossbows require less space to use compared to a tall bow — this is sort of a D&D issue! — but they also fire in a more direct line, so arc’ed, ranged fire is less possible. Situational issues like this are hard to work into generic strategy games or massed battle rules.
You mention leather “motorcycle wear” as an example of what armor isn’t. I’m a motorcyclist myself, and I only wear gear with proper “armor plating” in it – and it turns out, that’s not good martial armor either! The primary goals are impact protection and abrasion resistance, not resistance to anything that would look like a spear or a sword. Motorcycle armor only protects your joints and your spine (and perhaps your chest), so your lower abdomen is only covered by the jacket – fine for motorcycling (as there’s no bones to break in there) but not fine if someone is trying to stab you. And a lot of motorcycle armor is full of holes, to make it lighter (see, for example, https://www.d3o.com/partner-support/products/lp2-pro-limb-protectors/ ) – again, not what you would want against an armed opponent.
I have, however, had the unfortunate opportunity to test my motorcycle armor in a handful of real accidents, and it’s been very instructive in why so much real-world martial armor is *shaped* the way it is. Those round surfaces deflect blows very nicely, even when the “blow” in question is the force of one’s own body hitting the pavement. I’ve picked up some spectacular bruises, but I’ve never broken a bone motorcycling.