Why haven't we properly tested MEDIEVAL JACK ARMOUR yet?

So recently we were looking at why in some places they preferred breastplates or cuirasses rather than brigandines and indeed why in some places they preferred brigandines. And I made the assertion that brigandines may have been better protection against arrows. But in fact that's a highly complicated topic and that's a very simplistic take but it's just one thing to consider and there are other reasons why in some areas they might have preferred plate armour. These could involve as diverse topics as the guilds that were making these things, the way they were stored and indeed just basic economics of that region. But if you follow us on our socials then you will have noticed I've also been talking about mail and the fact that in the era of brigandines and plate, i.e. the 15th century, which is obviously a period that we look at quite a lot on this channel, mail, despite the fact it had been around for, well, literally hundreds of years at this point, going all the way back, you know, well into the Roman era before that, mail was still a very important base layer armour and in some cases there were soldiers, as I posted some examples from the Swiss Chronicle, for example, showing that sometimes common pikemen or crossbowmen, common soldiers, were sometimes relying only on mail as a defence. And we're going to look more at mail in the future even though I have to say that I've found in my personal tests against daggers and arrows and various other things, mail is great against cutting, not particularly good against piercing, and I've sent all sorts of weapons through really some quite good quality mail in my time. But here we're going to look at another really important and often overlooked and underappreciated form of armour that was very important in the 15th century and indeed carrying on into the 16th century, and that is the jack. Hi folks, Matt Eaton here, scholar gladiatorian. Now, whether we're talking about plate armour or brigandine, in other words a series of small plates, or indeed mail armour, these are all essentially forms of metallic armour, but they weren't the only types of armour being used by common soldiers in the late medieval period. In fact, all sorts of chronicles and accounts from the period state that common soldiers, for example, like English archers, if we look at the accounts of Mancini, the Venetian ambassador who was in state that standard English soldiers, and this goes for all of much of Europe anyway as well, wore jacks. Now, what are jacks? The jack is a slightly vague term. We're going to look at a specific type of jack here, and I actually have a very detailed French account which I'll read out in a second from the reign of Louis XI from the late 15th century, so same time as Mancini was around essentially, describing how the jack should be constructed. But just very briefly, a jack is essentially a fabric defence, so it's made of only cloth essentially, sometimes involving leather and very occasionally involving plates. Now, if we want to be sort of a little bit more clear about what we're talking about, we should refer to that as a jack of plates. So indeed, sometimes they did, probably taking lessons from the Brigandine, combine plates, much like in a Brigandine, inside a jack. But fundamentally, a jack is usually only a fabric soft, well, soft, we'll get to that in a second, defence. In other words, it's usually a non-metallic defence, which you might think means that it's cheaper. That can be the case, although obviously it depends what kind of materials you put into it. And with all of these defences, it doesn't matter whether we're talking about a breastplate or Brigandine or indeed mail, any of these things can be made in cheaper or expensive versions. Yes, there were cheap breastplates, cheap cuirasses, yes, there was cheap mail, but there were also expensive versions of these. And of course, that is even more starkly the case sometimes with Brigandines. For example, Edward IV of England ordered some very fancy Brigandines for his retainers and retinue, with very fancy fabric and gilded rivets and all of this kind of stuff. So all of these armours can be made in more expensive versions or cheaper versions, and the same would be true of a jack. However, a general tendency, and I think something that's fair to state, is that a jack is probably the most affordable and economical type of armour that you can furnish your troops with, be they archers, crossbowmen, pikemen or whatever. But also don't think that inherently a fabric defence is necessarily less protective than a plate defence. So I think most people in the modern world, because they're familiar with things like modern ballistic armour made of ceramic or whatever, or tanks made of metal and ceramic and other things, reactive armour, they kind of think of hard materials as being the most protective materials. However, when you're dealing with something like an incredibly fast-moving shell or bullet, then the rules of the game are somewhat different to if the thing that you're being hit with instead is something like a poleaxe or a sword or indeed an arrow. Arrows, for example, have very hard and sharp tips, however they're moving relatively slowly, same with the crossbow. And the simple fact is that whether we're talking about one-piece plates like this, or large plates, or whether we're talking about multiple laminate plates like that, then arrows have compromised them in numerous modern tests. We can easily show that this did happen in the modern world, but also in historical texts it's also mentioned. So just because an armour is made of steel doesn't mean that it's proof against arrows at all, and indeed that's especially true of mail, and frankly we usually find in all the tests that we've ever done, no matter how good quality the mail is, usually arrows of warbow sort of power or crossbow power go through mail. Now, not to say you can't make arrow-proof mail or arrow-proof plate, of course you can, but remember that there was a big variance of both quality and thicknesses, okay? So sometimes some bits of mail are thicker and stronger, or double-mailed, double-layered, than other bits of mail, and that's also true of plates. So when people talk about plates they tend to think about helmets and breastplates, but remember that most of a full harness of armour is actually made of thinner plates, and obviously it has gaps in it as well which might have mail in them, but even if you hit the plate, if you're instead of hitting the two millimetre or three millimetre thick breastplate, if you hit a 0.8 millimetre armour leg defence, then it's far more likely to go through. So all of those defences can be compromised by arrows. So in some cases it might be that more absorbent and flexible defences might, might, and this needs to be tested, might actually deal with arrows in some cases better than some hard defences. Again, that we could say in general hardened carbon steel full harness will deal with arrows very very well, however if it's only iron and it's thinner plates might not deal with arrows very well. Mail, very good quality, might deal with arrows very well. Poor quality mail might do absolutely nothing to stop the arrows. Now when we come to jacks it's very clear that there was a huge diversity in jacks, and that's where we come to this particular document from the reign of Louis XI of France that actually describes a supposedly arrow proof jack. So before I delve into the exact description here describing how this jack's made, I'm going to throw something out there. So this is something that I have for years wanted to get reconstructed and test. Because I have my own sort of living history company or kind of group as an offshoot to my school of gladiatoria HEMA club, indeed it's something that I could use in the club as well. So I'm happy to buy it as club equipment and I'm also happy to have arrows shot at it. Now obviously I've known the arrows versus armor guys for a long time, I don't want to tread on their toes, and I know that Todd for example has done tests with the lockdown longbow, in other words a crossbow of the same energy output, against various forms of padded armor. But this is something that I would really like to get reconstructed and test myself, and obviously I know a fair number, I know Will Sherman for example, Medieval Arrows, I've done videos with him on this channel, but also I know various people who are shooting warbows. So I'm going to throw this out there. The first step of this is to finance and get, by order, get made an accurate replica of this French jack described in this ordinance, okay. So if you are watching this channel or you know someone who would be interested in this, forward them this video and get them to drop me an email at the Scholar Gladiatoria channel at gmail.com address which is associated with this YouTube channel, because I'd be really interested to look at people who could potentially recreate this with a view to testing it on camera and making obviously a video, at least one video out of it, probably more than that. So let's have a look at these ordinances. Now just before I read it, this is the ordinances of Louis XI of France who reigned from 1461 to 1483. So this is exactly the same period as the Wars of the Roses were going on in England. So it's just after the Hundred Years War had finished in 1453, and obviously the Wars of the Roses, and indeed obviously the late Hundred Years War, saw vast amounts of English arrows being shot at things and people. And in this period as well, the English were still active in France, particularly for the Duke of Burgundy. The Duke of Burgundy's wife was married to an English woman, Margaret of York, and there were English still going around in France doing things with arrows at this point. And equally of course French soldiers came over to England during the Wars of the Roses as well, so there was still a lot of cultural exchange shall we say, enrichment in the form of arrows. So let's just read the ordinances. So I will post this down below as well so you can read them in your own time, but I'll just quickly read to them. And first they must have for the said jacks 30 or at least 25 folds of cloth and a stag's skin. Those of 30 with the stag's skin being the best cloth that has been worn and rendered flexible is best for this purpose, and these jacks should be made in four quarters. The sleeves should be as strong as the body, so it's not just the body that's really tough, it's the sleeves as well. With the exception of the leather, not exactly sure what that means, maybe they leave the leather off the arms, and the armhole of the sleeve must be large. So this is a particular detail to do with tailoring of medieval garments, so whereas modern garments like this jumper here, the sleeve is attached there, instead it's attached up here which gives you a better flexibility range of motion. The armhole should be placed near the collar, not on the bone of the shoulder, that it may be broad under the armpit and fall under the arm, sufficiently ample and large on the sides below. The collar should be like the rest of the jack, so it should have a protected collar as well, but not too high behind to allow room for the sallet, so anybody that's worn a sallet helmet, oh it comes down in a scoop down here, if the collar was too high it would keep pushing the back of the helmet up when you look upwards. This jack should be laced in front, we think that's a potential weak spot, but under the opening must be a hanging piece, in other words an extra sort of flap, called port piece, of the same strength as the jack itself, good to allow no arrows in. Thus the jack will be secure and easy, provided that there be a doublet without sleeves or collar of two folds of cloth that shall only be four fingers broad at the shoulder, to which the doublet shall be attached to the chausses, that's the leg armour. Thus shall wear afloat as it were, with his jack and be at ease, for never have been seen half a dozen men killed by stabs or arrows in such jacks, particularly if they be troops accustomed to fighting. So in other words what we've got described here is a jack which is, to all intents and purposes, supposed to be arrow-proof and stab-proof. Is that true? Now I've mentioned in a few videos, I found once in the coroner's rolls of London from the 15th century, a merchant, a Belgian merchant, who was boasting about the fact that his jacks were stab-proof and he was wearing one and stabbed himself and actually it wasn't stab-proof and he died, that's why he was in the coroner's rolls. So is this just bluster? I don't know, I've never held or worn a 30 layered of linen jack with deerskin over the top. Now I can procure the deerskin, for reasons I won't go into, but the jack I need, I would need someone to make. And this is a really fascinating and historically important type of armour that was used not just in the 15th century but well into the 16th century as well and I would love to see this recreated and I would love to test it. So there we go, if you know or if you can recommend or forward this video to people who might be interested and then I'd be very interested in talking to someone or anyone or a group of people who could reconstruct this jack with a view to testing it in the future. But for those of you who didn't know what a jack was, hopefully now you do. It's actually not quilted, not padded, it's many many layers of fabric with deerskin on and will that stop arrows? I don't know, but keep watching and hopefully we'll find out. Anyway I have been Matt Easton, I will continue to be of course and I'll 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!