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Chain mail and suits of armor were some of the most recognizable parts of medieval warfare. Created in response to swordplay, the dominant form of combat at the time, they've become somewhat legendary for their striking appearance on the battlefield. A good suit of plate armor was considered invincible in many ways, but there were several tactics combatants could use to kill their opponent.
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Chainmail tunics and suits of shining armor
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were some of the most recognizable parts of medieval warfare. They've become somewhat legendary for their striking appearance
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on the battlefield. But were they really all that? Well, today we're going to take a look at several ways
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medieval armor was more dangerous than just wearing nothing. As early as the Bronze Age, ancient Greek soldiers
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were wearing plate armor that was mostly designed to protect the chest and lower limbs
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like the dendro panoply, which shielded the wearer's entire torso and neck beneath plates of bronze
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The arms, however, were pretty much on their own in this situation. By the time of classical antiquity, lighter and less restrictive armor
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like the muscle cuirass would become widespread. Designs continued to evolve, and by the 1st century BCE
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soldiers in the Roman army were wearing plate armor in the form of the Lorica Segmentata
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Over time, the number of plates in the areas of the body being protected slowly increased
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And by about 1420 CE, Europeans had created the earliest full-body suits of armor
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And by the 15th and 16th centuries, every European army was built around plate-armored soldiers
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The fullest sets of armor tended to be made for jousting rather than warfare
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That was the glamour armor. Though this period represented the height of full-body plate armor being used in warfare
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the reason we associate knights with armor today has more to do with specialized jousting armor
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developed for tournaments in the 16th century. Wearing a blocky jousting suit wouldn't have made
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much sense in a battle, because your movement and vision would be extremely limited. But it worked
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fine for a skirmish against your fellow knights. After all, getting impaled while playing a game
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nobody wants to be that guy. It's the medieval equivalent of getting injured in the preseason
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But while a plate metal bodysuit would shield soldiers from many types of battlefield damage
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It far from made them invincible and created many more problems than it solved
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Between 1096 and 1291 CE, Christians and Muslims engaged in a series of religious wars known as
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the Crusades. Perhaps you've heard of them. These wars were primarily fought over control of various
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holy sites that both sides considered sacred, and most of the action went down in the Middle East
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Now, if you know anything about the Crusades, then you probably know they were an incredibly bloody period
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for everybody involved. After all, we're talking about nearly two centuries of non-stop violent conflict
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And if that wasn't bad enough already, keep in mind that many of the combatants were fighting each other in the desert while wearing heavy metal suits At this point you may be thinking something like hey won applying intense heat to a metal container just cook whatever inside it Good question
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And the answer is yes. Soldiers were literally baked inside their armor
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and many eventually perished from heat exhaustion. Luckily, they discovered ways to get around the heat
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Some took their armor off entirely when it became too warm. That was obviously the most effective solution
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but could leave one vulnerable if fighting broke out. Others discovered that covering up armor with cloth prevented direct sunlight from heating the metal up to the cooking point
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Of course, now they were wearing a heavy metal suit and a jacket in the blazing desert heat
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Not exactly the time or place to layer up. More is hell, man. In its heyday, plated armor made a soldier about as close to invincible as they could ever get
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Sword slashes did absolutely nothing to it, which meant fighters had to get very clever to get their cuts in
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The trick to defeating an opponent in plated armor was knowing that the armor didn't truly cover everything
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There were gaps that one could exploit near the groin, in the neck, and under the armpits
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Man, seems like you'd want extra armor in a few of those places. Given this particular weakness
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resourceful fighters would grapple their opponents and then try to stab at those weak points with daggers
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If you're the guy wearing the armor, that would often mean taking a dagger in an extremely inopportune place
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like the neck, the groin, or even through the eye slit in your helmet
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Whichever it turned out to be, the one thing that was for sure was that it would be an exceptionally painful end
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Considering that suits of armor were basically huge chunks of steel strapped to a person's body
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you'd probably assume they would be extremely restrictive. And in some ways, that was true
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But you might be surprised by just how much mobility some of these knights had
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They could actually run and jump surprisingly well for a tin can with legs
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Right away! Right away! That being said, the plates were still an encumbrance
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While you did have a decent amount of mobility in a suit of armor, that didn't mean you could just sprint around on the battlefield swinging your sword like a LARPer in a cardboard costume
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In fact, a full suit of armor could weigh up to 100 pounds or more. And that's not counting the rest of the typical gear a soldier might have to carry around with him
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Like, for instance, a sword. As you can imagine, donning a bulky pile of metal
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to swing a smaller, pointer piece of metal at your foes could get pretty tiring pretty quickly
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It meant you often found yourself facing opponents who were potentially far less exhausted than you were
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Thanks to contemporary reenactors, historians estimate that running in 15th century chainmail armor
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required twice the amount of energy than running without it Picture trying to run an obstacle course with a full man riding on your back like Yoda That kind of what fighting in a suit of armor was like Nowhere was that more consequential than in the Battle of Agincourt
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The Battle of Agincourt was a conflict between the English and the French, famously immortalized in Shakespeare's Henry V
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In the play, Henry rallies his troops to victory by giving one of the Bard's most famous soliloquies
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the St. Crispin's Day speech. From this day to the ending of the world
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In real life, the French lost due to factors that were less than poetic and more logistical
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One of those factors was the weather. It had rained for two straight weeks beforehand, turning the ground into a field of mud
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Marching through that churned dirt in 100 pounds of armor sapped a lot of the French troops' strength
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before they even reached the fight. While that doesn't make Henry's speech any less inspiring
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the English had a bit more of an advantage than old Hank let on
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One of the deadliest weapons of medieval combat was the trusty old bow and arrow
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While it's true that armor could protect its wearer from arrows, it hardly made you immune from them
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First and foremost, distance was a huge factor. From a long distance, arrows wouldn't do too much
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But at a closer range, arrows designed to pierce armor could smash right through
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The advent of the English longbow was an especially dangerous development, as it had stronger power and longer range
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These bows were over six feet long, and in the right hands, they were capable of killing a target 200 yards away
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They also drastically reduced reload time. A skilled longbowman could fire half a dozen arrows
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In the same time, a crossbowman could fire a single bolt. Anyone relying on armor plates to save them from the occasional lucky shot could easily find themselves lit up like Sonny Corleone by a longbowman
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Time to call on the cavalry, Santino. Speaking of the cavalry, a strategic cavalry charge could often be the deciding factor in a fight
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even against combatants decked out in full plate armor, like zombie Gregor Clegane
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One reason for this is that horses could deliver an incredibly powerful blow to virtually any
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defensive formation. But more pointedly, the riders carried lances, which were long poles
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with incredibly sharp metal tips, specially designed to pierce armor, and they were incredibly
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effective. With the power of a galloping horse behind it, a lance could punch a hole through
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Robocop, let alone any knights on the battlefield. Along with the lance, other weapons designed to
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take advantage of the weak points and suits of armor included the long-tapered sword
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halberds poleaxes and polearms The helmets that completed a suit of armor were incredibly adept at protecting one head Unfortunately that protection came at the price of completely eliminating your peripheral vision
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sort of like how a diving mask lets you see underwater, but only the sharks directly in front of you
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In the midst of combat, it could be pretty easy to get taken out by an attacker creeping up behind you
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before you even knew they were there. Luckily for those wearing the helmets, this didn't happen too often due to the way
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military formations tended to work at the time. But when combatants got really mixed in with one another, Braveheart style, a distinct possibility in any battle, a soldier in armor could get absolutely bushwhacked by someone just outside their limited field of vision
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While a heavy suit of plate armor would protect you from most stabbing and slashing damage, it could actually make it easier for your opponent to clobber you into the next world by increasing your chances of getting a concussion or internal bleeding after sustaining a massive blow
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Weapons like maces and hammers took advantage of the fact that steel could dent and cave into its wearer
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Obviously, teeing off a foe's head with a heavy blunt weapon could still do plenty of damage, even if they were wearing a helmet
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But if swung with enough force, a hammer could actually damage a chestplate enough to break bones, cause internal bleeding, or even stop someone's heart
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The trick is having enough strength to make the blow count. But when you're talking about professional soldiers of the medieval era, that kind of strength wasn't all that unusual
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By the 17th century, suits of armor were on the decline. While they remained common among the nobility and queersers
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during the European wars of religion, by the start of the 18th century, the once glorified suit of armor
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had basically been reduced to a chest plate. Why? Well, the short answer is guns
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The wide proliferation of flintlock muskets, which could easily penetrate armor at a great distance
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eventually made plate armor all but obsolete. Napoleon's cavalry experimented with forms of chest plate armor, and it even made a brief but mostly ineffectual reappearance during the US Civil War
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Soldiers in World War II wore flak jackets designed to protect against fragments of high explosive weaponry, though they weren't typically effective against bullets fired from rifles and handguns
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Starting in the 1950s, so-called bulletproof vests began to be manufactured using synthetic fibers like boron carbide, silicon carbide, or aluminum oxide, as opposed to steel plates
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Starting in 1971, these vests started being made almost exclusively from a material developed by DuPont called Kevlar
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Kevlar remains the standard for body armor right up to today, worn by modern soldiers, police officers, and certain interpretations of Batman
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Here I am