Another (more correct?) post about armor

After seeing this post http://imgur.com/gallery/Amvcz I figured Imgur could do a) higher resolution images, b) more facts. So after these badasses lets get to it.

This guy right here gets the basics. After grabbing a shield the first piece of armor you want is a helmet. It's the most likely bodypart to get hit when you got a big shield. After this he likely went for greaves and/or boots. Because your lower legs is the next most hit area.

If he was richer he likely wear some form of a mail shirt. Or at least a padded jacket. Because while not being as stylish a thick gamberson is great at stopping enemy slashes.

See dude #2, he can't even affort a shirt but he has his shield and helmet. Dude #1 has the means so opts for a long mail shirt over a shirt, greaves with shoes and a full helmet.

This applies all over the world. Shield and a helmet. Shields are by far the most effective piece of battlefield armor till full body plate comes around. It protects you against both enemy melee weapons as well as arrows.

Again, helmets and shields. Obviously these guys aren't peasants and as professionals they wear mail shirts. Even this noble dude has a shield. Not sure how noble he is though, pointing at people with his lunch while carrying a head on a stick. But I'm not nobility, what do I know?

All over the world, helmet and shield. What you might notice is that warriors in hotter climates still opt for long mail shirts.

Nobody is to metal for shields and helmets. I do think this guy would make a better Thor then that aussie.

Really all over. This guy is from Etheopia, Aksumite empire. Now moving on to the start of plate. As the other OP rightfully mentioned. The reason plate took a while to develop lay in the difficulty of producing large piece of high quality steel.

So this is where we stand before plate starts getting adopted. Mounted 'knights' in full mail with large shields and open helmets. First pieces of plate would be the legs, lower arms and shirts of plate.

What didn't happen was we took our mail off. Seriously this guy is boned. We replaced parts of mail with plates but the rest remained mail all the way till plate started to fall out of favor.

So what happened? Mongols happened. Of course the concept of stitching plate into a shirt existed long before. But lamellen armor has always been more popular east of Europe. And when the Mongols came they were hard to miss. They trashed European armies with a frightening regularity. People noticed, and their armor.

After the Mongols brigandines grew in popularity in Europe. I figure this depicts the siege of Bagdad, could be wrong. But that even was also hard to miss. Also notice these gentlemen wear helmets, always wear your helmets kids!

As mentioned earlier, mail didn't disappear. Brigandines were worn over mail and gamberson. This is about as far we go before newer techniques allow for full plate armor. Sidenote, maces and hammers will become more popular as plate shrugs at the idea of swords.

Now lets get one thing straight, armor was heavy but in no way turned you into a lumbering 50's robot. It weights about as much as the full pack of a modern soldier or the full gear of a firefighter. Both will work in full gear for hours. Sure they need training for this feat but Knights were trained since childhood.

One reason to favor brigandines and mail over plate armor was that palte armor did restrict your movement. Sometimes the increased chance of horrible death was work the risk.

Now armor does have downsides. The larger the parts, e.g. plates will limit your movement. But the biggest one is heat. A layer of clothing followed by a thick jackets, followed by a shirt of mail. On top of that a leather jacket with plates on the inside. That thing gets hot in the summer. Heat exhaustion was a real issue.

But you could partially mitigate this by Climbing on a horse. Let the horse move you around while you focus on cutting filthy peasants to pieces. Notice the guy on the right. He's wearing a coat of plates or brigandine. He's NOT wearing studded leather.

Leather armor was a thing, as was linen armor. However it rots away so it's hard to determine how widespread the use was. But leather armor would've been boiled leather (lamellen) armor. Studden leather isn't a thing, never has been. The studs you see are the attachment of plates on the inside.

The only place you'll genuinely see studded leather would be movies. Because it's easy to make. Cut some armor out of leather, add some studs from the hardware store. Boom, drab and gritty mediëval armor.

Now as the ease of producing steel increased plate became cheaper. This led to widespread adoption of plate among professional soldiers. A thing to point out, even our crossbowman is wearing a brigandine. Archers and crossbowmen were specialists. They got paid accordingly and tended to have good equipment.

knightswidespread use of plate armor meant Knights were on the decline? Not at all. Where one man could now afford a suit of armor the knight could now affort to also armor his horse. Heavy cavalry charges remained an effective tactic. Even if things like Agincourt showed us they weren't invulnerable.

On Agincourt etc, war bows like the longbow will not defeat good quality plate armor. Which was what the French at the time were known for. What they can do is defeat lightly armored support troops like archers and conscripted infantry.

That way you isolate the heavy armored knights. What also works is shooting their horses. Making a rider fall of his horse at full speed really hurts, plate armor or not. And lastly pure volume of fire. At some point an Arrow finds a gap, visor slit or other weakspot. And if not being turned into a pincushion isn't a performance enhancer when you're knee deep in the mud in close formation.

So while the French got utterly trashed by the English, probably in part because of their longbows. It wasn't because those longbowmen would shoot through the plate armor.

So if longbows couldn't, guns could? Not really. Guns and plate armor got in an interesting race. Improvements in steel as well as thicker plates let knights remain viable for centuries after guns were routinely used on the battlefield.

It was even a common demonstration to shoot the armor with a pistol. Show how it could stop bullets. Of course the shorter the range the higher the chance of a failure. But in general bullets did not defeat plate. They did force plate armor to rapidly improve. This actually led to heavier cavalry with more armor.

Crossbows were a bigger threat when they became powerful enough to penetrate plate. But the race between gun and plate ended that too. It did not however end the effectiveness of close pike formations. While cavalry became heavier it did start to feel the end of it's era.

So where did plate go? Well it remained for a long time on cavalry. Not full suits of armor, but strong breastplates and the like remained popular for a long time. But our boots on the ground? Simple economics, capatalism strikes again. It became much cheaper to field so many men with guns that they would defeat armor and still be cheaper. In the end plate died to economics, not neccesarily guns, crossbows or bows.

Kutna Hora tax. Notice gambersons, mail and plate existed alongside each other. Also everyone is wearing helmets <3 Also the dude in plate doesn't even fall down from getting shot. Guns didn't end plate, merely motivated people to make it better.