The MEDIEVAL Iron Hat - Probably THE GREATEST HELMET which gets LITTLE ATTENTION

Let's look at the most important medieval helmet that you probably never even think about. The Iron Hat. Hi folks, Matt Eaton here, Scholar Gladiatoria, and I'm wearing the Chapelle de Fer or Iron Hat. We'll talk more about the name in a second, but I'm going to assert right at the beginning of this video that this is one of the most important and most successful medieval helmets, and yet it gets incredibly little amount of love on the internet, in books, or anywhere else. I'm hoping to change that right now, dispelling some myths, giving some background, giving where it went to, and trying to impress upon you how important these helmets were. In a nutshell, these were incredibly widespread across Europe and beyond in fact, and they had an incredibly long lifespan. So normally when we talk about other helmets, and we're going to be comparing and contrasting with other helmets and explaining how these are related to other helmets in a minute, but when we look at other helmets, be it bassinets, sallets, armets, whatever, we're often talking about quite narrow periods of time, and also often narrow periods of usage in terms of who was wearing those helmets. These helmets were worn by all sorts of soldiers from the lowest to the highest for a really long time. So what I'm actually wearing right now is one particular type of kettle hat, iron hat, we'll talk about the name in a second, and this was made, it's a replica obviously, and was made by the late great Dave Hewitt, may he rest in peace, and this was one of the last pieces, it's actually unfinished, requires a bit more work doing to it, but this is one of the last pieces I think that he probably made. But this is modelled on an Iberian, so we could say Spanish and Portuguese, style of iron hat from the 15th century, and it's a specific style, and we'll talk about this and what it relates to, because it does relate to other types of helmet as well. But generally speaking, the iron hat is defined as having a hat shape, so we've got a bowl for the head of some sort, varying shapes, we'll talk about that, and a brim, and it is open-faced, open-sided. Okay, so generally speaking, they often don't come as far down at the back as something like a sallet, and certainly not as much as something like an armet. They leave the face completely exposed here, so they have a brim out the front here, we'll talk more about that in a second, and the shape of the skull can vary. This one's fairly pointy with a slightly slanted tip, we'll talk about that. Some of them are more rounded, some of them in fact are more angular as well. So where did it come from, where did it originate? We don't really know! So in Western Europe at least, they seem to possibly appear in the late 12th century, that is the late 1100s. This is widely claimed, however there are some earlier brimmed helmets which appear in Western Europe all the way back in the Roman period, but also in the Carolingian period, so in the time of the Franks, and indeed these survive in the Byzantine Empire. Now one theory is these brimmed helmets actually came to Western Europe as a result of a greater degree of, shall we say, martial cross-pollination in the 12th century, in the period of the Crusades, through the Byzantine Empire, because the Byzantines had forms of brimmed helmet. Possibly the Western Europeans picked up the idea for the brimmed helmet at this time, around the time let's say of the Third Crusade, late 1100s, and possibly kind of re-imported this back into Western Europe. But what we can say for sure is by the 1200s, by the 13th century, brimmed helmets like this, iron hats, chapeau de fer, as the French would call them, were starting to appear in absolutely loads of manuscripts, loads and loads of them. They're perhaps most famously represented in books on arms and armour, in representations shown, and there's loads of them, in the Morgan Bible, sometimes known as the Machiavsky Bible, and this shows loads of different types of helmets. It shows simple globos, a kind of or you could say late nasal helmets. It also shows great helms worn over those, but in addition many of the soldiers wear this type of brimmed helmet. So by the 13th century we're starting to see loads of these brimmed iron hats turning up in art. Now one of the major perceptions I think that most people in the modern world have about these is they are a common soldier's helmet. We'll come back to this point at various points during this video, but as a standalone point I want to dispel that myth. They can be a common soldier's helmet, they can be a knight's helmet, and they can in fact be a king or emperor's helmet. So this is a very characteristic and distinctive design, but if we go back to the 13th century and look at the manuscripts and paintings, illustrations, illuminations from this period that show the earlier version of the iron hat, then in fact the earliest versions we see are usually made of multiple components. This sort is made of one piece and would have been raised out of one sheet of steel, but that is a slightly later, from 14th century onwards, version of it. If we go back to the 13th century, so if we go back to the Morgan Bible for example in the 1250s, we can see that there are bands down the helmet, and so in this case we're dealing with a what's called Spangenhelm construction essentially. Sometimes it would have been made of fewer pieces, sometimes more, but essentially we have cross pieces and then sections put between those cross pieces, and very often the brim would have been created separately. Now as we go forward in time there's a general tendency, it's not universal, but there's a general tendency to make the helmet of fewer parts. We also see this with other types of helmet as well incidentally, but with the iron hat we often start to see just one rib going over the top, so it's probably being made of two parts and riveted up the center section with that band up the center. In some cases it's actually literally just two parts, so that would have been three parts, it's just two parts and it seems perhaps to be riveted, literally one half riveted to the other, and of course this implies that economy is important in their creation because that means this is an easier, quicker, and cheaper helmet to make than something like a one-piece forged bassinet or indeed a many plate and larger great helm, which are contemporaries of this type of helmet. Now it should be noted that at this time in the 14th century, so the 1300s, this starts to be incredibly common in medieval sources, and yet sadly when we're talking about medieval helmets people pay lots of attention to things like the development of the bassinet or the great helm in fact, which originally goes over the bassinet, but then the two start to be worn independently later on, but there's never very much attention unfortunately in most sources, most modern kind of talking about writings about arms and armor, about the humble kettle helmet or iron hat. Now there should be a lot more because they're incredibly common in the sources, but I just want to break off at that point to say what are these things called? Well that's somewhat problematic because they are largely just called iron hats. Okay so in English this would be an iron hat, in French that literally translates to chapelle de fer. Now you will sometimes, myself included, hear arms and armor fanatics talking about these as chapelle de fer, it's just the French name for iron hat. Some people refer to these as kettle hats or kettle helms. Now other people out there might possibly have researched this term and might know more about this than me, but I believe that that's a relatively modern expression. I haven't personally yet found that in a period source. Okay so if you know of other English language, should we say, names for these, then by all means get them posted below. What do you call them in Germany? What do you call them in Poland? What do you call them in Spain? I don't know, however, for Spain one possible name for these is cabasset. Okay now remember the name cabasset because we're going to come back to the cabasset because the cabasset, cabasset is a type of, is a name applied to a type of helmet, most famously from the 16th and 17th centuries, which is clearly, clearly a descendant of this helmet. And it seems to me that in Iberian sources these helmets were probably known already as cabasset in the 15th century in this form, in a form where in English we would call this an iron hat or in French a chapeau de fer. So just to come very quickly back to the subject of status, I want to reiterate this point. By the time we get into the 14th and 15th century, when we look at the historical artwork and written sources as well in some cases, it is very evident that these helmets can be made more cheaply in some cases than other types of helmets. So very often when we look at, you know, Swiss or English or French or Flemish sources, we do see very often this type of helmet on the most common and should we say low class, the poorest types of soldiers, you know, your sort of town crossbowman militia or your quickly raised levies. So these types of helmets could be made more cheaply, mass produced by the standards of the day for your common soldiering. And so I think it's to some degree fair to regard these as common soldiers helmets. However, as mentioned, and it has to be said, there are other parallels in history, things like the bollock knife or the langmesser or various other things or just the humble spear. Any weapon which is used by common soldiers can be made in much more elaborate and much more fancy standards and qualities for richer people. And it's very evident looking at the 14th and 15th centuries that these could absolutely be made at the top quality and top price and for the top end of society. So it's not the type of helmet that necessarily dictates its status. You can have a low status Schäppldiffer or iron hat, or you can have an absolutely top status one. And as mentioned, we see some famous examples of this. Probably the absolutely most famous example in the world surviving today is the helmet of Ferdinand II or V, or depends which crown you're relating it to. But let's call him King Ferdinand, who was king of Aragon and also king of Castile and king of various other things as well. And his iron hat survives and is clearly, you know, it's a king's hat. And we have other examples surviving as well. Now, an interesting feature of these helmets is that although they are in essence an open face helmet and most commonly worn in that configuration, they don't have to be. We actually see looking at the historical artwork and again, the historical texts occasionally, but particularly the historical artwork, we see these often coupled with other elements. So the most common element we see these coupled with are a male coif. Now bear in mind, the male coif will protect the sides of your head and the bottom and your neck. So in a much a similar arrangement to a bassinet, for example, bassinet with an avontail. So these could be worn with a male coif, but they could also be worn with a bevel exactly like a sallet is. Okay. Or they could be worn with a great big gorget sort of neck protector, which is essentially like a bevel, but sort of bigger. And in fact, this is one of the earliest arrangements we see before the bevel was existed going all the way back into the 14th century. If we look, for example, at the Hastings brass, we see some sort of iron hat bassinet combination sort of halfway between the two, a hybrid worn with a large plate gorget or gorget. Um, so it could be worn with plate defenses down here. It could be worn with male defenses down here, or it could be worn with nothing just, you know, padding clothing or nothing at all. And in those cases where there isn't some other armor here, we very occasionally even see plates attached, seemingly attached to the helmet, much like we would see actually on later 17th century helmets. We actually see plates coming on the side very occasionally. Now, one of the most, to me anyway, kind of funky and cool arrangements for these is actually with a type of bevel, which actually concertinas up all the way up to here and can fill the hole. So normally it would be a bevel around the bottom of the face down here, but the bevel can then laminate up all the way to the top here, and you actually have slits through the bevel. Instead of slits through the helmet like you would have with a sallet, the slits are actually in the bevel down below. And so it can be worn even as a closed helmet as well. Now you'll notice then I mentioned slits in here. The other one we have to mention is it's very clear. If I just pick up my sallet for a moment, this is my open face sallet, which many of you will be familiar with because there are many photographs of me wearing this with my full harness. Now you will notice obviously when worn by themselves, these both have open faces and actually offer basically very similar levels of protection from backside or front. Now the sallet is normally worn with a bevel and this is an open face sallet. But as you will know, many sallets have either a visor or they have, the front comes down further and you have slots cut for the eyes. Now, obviously this is better facial protection, but it's also more impeding in terms of what you can see, breathing, stuff like that. Now what's interesting is there is something which is between the sallet and the iron hat. Now depending on your point of perspective, you might call this a form of iron hat, you might call this a form of sallet. I personally would say it's both. Why not both? Essentially it is pretty much like this in coverage, but there are slots cut up here. Now the beauty of that means, of course, that you can wear this as an open face helmet like that when you want to. But if you suddenly find yourself coming under, you know, missile weapons, arrows or anything else, stones coming your direction, you can pivot the thing down and essentially will protect the whole front of your face in the same way as a sallet would, but you can see through the front of here. Now it must be said, this is mostly a German thing. When I say German, I mean the northern part of the Holy Roman Empire. So what's now Germany and Austria and Switzerland? However, you do occasionally see these in art outside of the Holy Roman Empire. So you do occasionally find it in French art, for example, or Flemish and possibly English. I'm not 100% sure of that. And certainly in places like Sweden as well, you find it where a lot of their armour is influenced by Germanic armour. So there was also that version of hybrid. So you've got two choices essentially. If you want to have a closed face, you can either have a bever that comes all the way up to here. The other option actually is leaving a gap. So some bevers come up very, very high, and this was quite common. So sometimes you have a high bever and you just look through the gap there. Sometimes the bever can come all the way up to the top, and that's a late 15th and early 16th century thing where you have slots through the bever. Or you can tilt the helmet and have the slots through here. So while the iron hat or kettle hat, war hat, whatever you want to call it, is widely thought of as an open face helmet, it can actually be worn as a closed face helmet when you put it with another element. So very briefly, the advantages and disadvantages of this compared to, let's say, a sallet or an armet or any other helmet of its period, or great helm indeed, if we go back earlier. So fundamentally, this has, and I've done videos on this in the past, this has all of the advantages of an open face helmet. Okay, you can see better, you can talk, you can breathe, you can hear. Loads of advantages. And for that reason, it is a fantastic campaign helmet. Would you wear one of these in a tournament? No, not really, because it doesn't have any face protection. But if you're serving on a military campaign and your primary job is patrolling, scouting, entrenching, besieging, loading, all of these things that soldiers spend 99% of their time doing rather than actually being in hand-to-hand combat, this is a fantastic helmet. And it is noted in a few sources that these were used extensively at sieges. Okay, so these are brilliant everyday workman helmets. And it should be no surprise that when we look at modern soldiers' helmets, they're kind of like this. Okay, I mean, the British Tommy helmet, made famous in World War I and still worn in World War II, is essentially based on one of these. And the French, you know, the French helmet, the Adrian helmet, is not really that different either. So fundamentally, it's got all the advantages of an open face helmet. Therefore, it's also got all the disadvantages of an open face helmet, but we've talked about some ways that they can be mitigated with different types of bever and gorge and things like that. However, I think the important thing to state about these is primarily they're about practicality. So they are sacrificing quite a lot of protection in order to gain a lot of practicality. However, I would argue that these have one big advantage over the standard sallet, if I just pick up my open face sallet for a second. So I've experienced this myself in a reenactment context. One of the things about the sallet is they project at the back, but they don't project at the sides, and they don't project at all at the front. Now, if you have a visor, admittedly, then you do get a sort of brim. However, you don't generally speaking have a brim, a literal brim, certainly with an open face sallet. Now, that's great if you're drawing a bow, for example, because the bowstring can come close to your face. If you're trying to aim a crossbow, there's many reasons why not having a brim is nice. However, it is notable that when someone hits the top of your helmet, what often happens is the weapon skips off and comes down this way. Having a brim there is super, super nice, great security. And it also means if a strike comes close to your face that way, instead of down on the top of your head, it is kept a long, long way away from your face. Okay, so it's much better than a nasal on an earlier helmet, because it's kept way away from your face instead of being right close to your face, which is quite disconcerting. So it protects your eyes and nose and rest of your face from downwards and frontal strikes. But perhaps most importantly, having that brim there means that if you're coming under archery fire, so arrows or crossbow bolts coming in, first of all, they have a degree of trajectory to them. So they're more likely to hit that brim and they're less likely to go into your face. But because the brim is there ready for you, if something comes to your face and you flinch from it, what you tend to do is that. Now, if you look at the angulation as I do that, that brim not only protects this part of my face, but all the way down here because of geometry. So simply sticking my head down like this turns the blow coming from there into a blow coming somewhere here where it will glance off. So it doesn't only protect your face up here, protects your whole face, your neck, and even because this is a glancing surface, it can even protect your shoulders and your torso from something like an arrow or crossbow bolt because it's like a cone and it will slide and deflect off. So the final point I want to make about these is people often see these iron hats, war hats, chapeau de fer, whatever you want to call them, kettle helmet, they see these as isolated things, low quality, low status helmets, worn at the same time as more glamorous helmets like the sallet or the armet or the close helmet or the great helmet or the bassnet. No, okay, these were worn by all people from bottom to top and they were incredibly useful and incredibly prevalent and successful. And this is the thing that I think people forget. These went on being used all the way through the 16th century, all the way through the 17th century, in the forms of what are known now as the cabasset and you could argue the morion. So those helmets that were made famous by things like the 30 Years War, the English Civil War, the conquest of the Americas under the conquistadors, all of that sort of thing, those soldiers in the 16th and 17th centuries, a lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them, were wearing forms of cabasset and morion, which are the descendants of these. And funnily enough, specifically of this, the conquistador kind of, well you could say certainly the cabasset and arguably the morion, are descended from this Iberian shape of kettle helmet or iron hat that came around in the, really the 14th century. So the earliest forms of this type are seen in the mid-14th, mid to late 14th century, and would round right the way through the 15th century, early to the end, and they develop. The end up here starts to become more exaggerated, so that little peak there turns into a little backwards curved sort of spike or tail, you could call it. The brim gets a bit shorter, but fundamentally you've now got a cabasset, one of the most successful helmets of the, for common soldiers anyway, of the 16th century. And they were still being worn by pikemen in England in the English civil war in the 1640s, they were still being worn by, you know, colonial powers all over the globe, whether it's in Southeast Asia, in the Philippines, or whether it's in South America, Mesoamerica, all over. Okay, incredibly prevalent, successful helmets, and they came from this. So to conclude, the kettle helmet, iron hat, war hat, whatever you want to call it, should be getting a hell of a lot more love than it does. Okay, I have made numerous videos about sallets, I've made, you know, ones about great bassinets and various others, but really I'm ashamed, I mean I've owned this for quite a long time, I'm ashamed that I haven't made more videos about the iron hat, because it's one of the most important helmets that we've ever seen in history. One of the most successful geographically in terms of numbers and widespreadness, if that's a word, but also in terms of longevity, how long it was around. And we can really say that the cabasset is just the late form of the iron hat, which was already really popular in the 13th century, still really popular in the 17th century. Anyway, thanks a lot for watching, I hope you're subscribed, just check that button, make sure it's clicked, give me a like, and I hope to see you back on the channel really soon. Cheers folks! Thanks for watching, we've got extra videos on Patreon, please give our Facebook a like and subscribe if you haven't already. Cheers folks!