Why Lamellar Armor Never Spread West.

Hello everyone and welcome. So clearly different people will use different weapons and armours depending on the period of history and the region they are in. Now one very clear example of that is the La Mala Armour. Because the La Mala Armour was used a lot in Asia and Eastern Europe but was actually very rare, basically non-existent in Western Europe. So the question is why was that the case? Why was it so common in the East and basically non-existent in the West? Let's find out. So before we find out why it wasn't so common in the West, first of all we need to find out what even a La Mala is and also what are its disadvantages and advantages because that's going to help us tremendously to understand why it was used in the East primarily. So first of all what is a La Mala Armour? Now remember that there will be differences between different sorts of La Mala Armours all in the material used for the plates, the material used to lace the plates together, the exact shape and design of the general armour, how the plates overlap and so on. There will be tons of differences because La Mala Armour has been used in an incredibly long amount of time. So it was used in like the Late Bronze Age, Early Iron Age and was even used all the way up to the early 1900s by the Japanese, mainly for like ceremonial purposes and stuff like that, not really for fighting, but it was still used until very recently. So it has been used in an incredibly long amount of time so clearly there will be differences and also in an incredibly large region of the world, basically the entirety of all of Asia and Eastern Europe. So there are going to be lots of differences between the exact La Mala Armour. Now a La Mala Armour is very similar to armours like the Scale Armour, the Laminated or the Bring Me, in the sense that it is made up of small scales. So these small plates here are going to be attached together to form up different rows and the rows are going to be attached together to form up larger plates that you're going to use as armour. So the key difference between a La Mala Armour and a Scale Armour for example is the fact that a Scale Armour is attached on a backing, so each individual plate will be attached on that backing and you'll basically fill up that entire backing with scales. A La Mala Armour is very different because it does not have a backing, instead the plates are attached together and that is what holds the plate together, not a backing. So you'll basically have all of these different rows that you'll form up with these plates. Now a lot of similar sorts of armours will have these rows. Let's take for example the Scale Armour, the Scale Armour kind of forms up these rows and then you'll have another row overlapping that, another row overlapping that and so on. Now on a Scale Armour the plates within a certain row will not overlap, they will just sit side by side to form a row. On the La Mala it's a little bit different, on the La Mala each plate within a certain row will actually overlap another plate within that row. So if we take this row here for example, you can see that the left plate is overlapping over the right plate, the whole length of the row. And then on the row above it's actually the right plate overlapping the left plate. Now this will change depending on the exact La Mala Armour you have. On this particular one the way the plates overlap within a certain row switches between the rows, so it's going to be right, left, right, left and so on. This can depend on the exact Armour. You can have an Armour on which all the right plates are going to overlap over the left plate and you can have some Armours similar to this one, where as you can see the middle plate is the outer plate and then the other plates will overlap underneath that one middle plate, so it kind of switches overlapping direction in the middle of the row. This will depend on the exact La Mala Armour you're talking about, but generally speaking there is going to be a certain overlap within that certain row, which is not the case on something like a Scale Armour. And then obviously you have the individual rows overlapping another row. Now usually on a La Mala the bottom row will overlap over the top row, so if you see here, this bottom row here is the exterior row and it's overlapping over this one, which is itself overlapping over this one, and over this one, and over this one, and so on. And this is quite unusual, usually if you have something like a Scale Armour, the top Scale is going to overlap over the bottom Scale, which is going to overlap over the one that's below it, and so on. It's actually the opposite on a La Mala Armour, and this is because when you're building a Scale Armour, you'll start by attaching the bottom Scales and then you'll attach Scales on top of them and just progress all the way up. On a La Mala you're starting by building it from the top, so the first row that was built on this Armour was this top row right here, and then you'll build downwards like this. And the good thing about this is that it creates a very modular Armour, meaning that it's actually very easy to just remove this bottom row if, for example, the Armour is too large, or add another row on top of that if the Armour is too small, because you can basically attach another row on the exterior of this, you don't need to have trouble to need to put the plates underneath to make the top row overlap over the one at the bottom. So it is, generally speaking, more practical. Now, you do have some La Mala Armours that are going to have the top row overlapping over the bottom row, it does exist, but it's just not the most common, and usually the bottom row will overlap over the top row. Now, unlike other Armours, like the Brigandine for example, the La Mala is not using any rivets to being assembled, instead it's using a lace. So you'll basically have a cord that you just put through all of the holes of these plates, and that lace is going to attach everything together. And this lace can really be made out of basically any material, any material that's flexible enough. The exact material will really depend on what culture you're talking about, for example, in Japan, usually they used silk, so silk cord, because that's really cut resistant, and the Mongols would usually use something like rawhide or leather instead. So it depends on the exact region you're talking about, but usually it's going to be some sort of organic material that is flexible enough to be laced through the plates. Then we have the plates themselves, which can also be made out of all sorts of different materials. So this particular one is made of steel. This one, which is just a piece that I've been trying to experiment with, is made of leather, but you can also use something like rawhide or something like that, or even bronze, bronze was very common in the early Iron Age. So you can really use anything to make a La Mala arm. And in terms of the shape of the arm, the shape will just vary a whole lot between the region, the use you want of it. La Mala can basically protect the entire body if you absolutely wanted to, you can have leg protection made of La Mala, you can even make advent tails out of La Mala, it was done. Now usually when you make an advent tail for a helmet out of La Mala, the different rows are going to be laced together very loosely, so you can actually bend your head to the sides, but really you can make a lot of different armour pieces out of La Mala. So now let's start talking about the disadvantages of the La Mala, because it does have a lot of disadvantages, even though it is a pretty good armour. Now the first of those disadvantages is the fact that the lacing on the La Mala, which is what connects everything together, is very vulnerable. Because as you can see you have all of these exposed leather cords that can be cut, that can rot and with time will end up break by themselves because of the movement of the plates. Now this will take some time, and cutting them with like a saw or something like that is not too easy, because you are generally speaking talking about quite a tough material, and even if you do cut some of them, the whole armour is not going to fall apart, because you are not going to be able to cut all the laces of an entire row. But it can become a problem that some of them get cut and with time, with marching and stuff like that, the armour is going to end up falling apart. And you have the fact that the laces can rot and are going to break apart after some time. Now very often these armour would be re-laced, so basically just replace all the laces of the armour, and that was part of the maintenance. Now the good thing is that re-lacing a La Mala is actually very easy. So if you take this piece here, this is a piece of La Mala that I made just to experiment, and it is incredibly easy to lace everything together, it's just incredibly easy, because you are just talking about a lace that you are just lacing through, and it's incredibly easy, you basically don't need any tools except like a knife to cut it when you are done with the row, but that's about it. The next problem is that it is very hard to remove rust from a La Mala. Usually if you have a smooth plate, you can basically just take some sandpaper and just scrub off the rust, that is very easy. The problem with a La Mala is that you have all of these leather cords, and if you try to scrub sandpaper over the armour, you are actually going to destroy those leather cords. So clearly you cannot do that so easily, so preventing the armour from rusting is much harder. And not only that, but the laces, no matter the material they are made of, are going to absorb and retain a certain amount of humidity, that is going to help the armour rust. So that is a real problem with a La Mala, and as you can see, this one is a little bit rusty in some places, simply because I can basically not do anything to prevent it from rusting except like oiling it, that's the best I can do. But once it has started rusting, there is very little you can do to it, except like dismantling everything, sanding every single plate, and then putting it back together, which is possible, but it takes some time. The next main problem, because of course there are like small problems, but the next main problem is the fact that it has a lot of gaps. So on this armour you can see it is quite short, it's not protecting the side, it's not protecting the armpits, anything like that. It has a lot of gaps and can't protect those gaps as easily as something like the male armour, and that is simply because it is stiffer than a male armour. It's not completely stiff, like you still have some good flexing in it, but it's not flexible enough to be used to protect those gaps. Now obviously you can try to cover them up in some kind of way, I could like put a plate in front of here, something like that, but it's just not as easy as with male. Now let's talk a little bit about the advantages of the Lamal armour, because clearly it has some advantages. And the first and probably most important of those advantages is the fact that it is harder to pierce for any kind of weapon than some armours like male. Now obviously male is hard to pierce for most weapons, especially basically all weapons until like the end of the Viking Age, but bows, heavy war bows, can still pierce male with relative ease. However, it is way harder for them to pierce a Lamal armour because the Lamal armour is made out of plates. So especially against those arrows, a Lamal is actually going to be more protective. On top of that, the Lamal armour is also more protective against blunt force, because it is more stiff. So if I get hit by like a big 200x or something like that, the Lamal armour is going to be able to protect me more than a male armour. Now obviously it's not going to protect as much as something like a solid plate, but this is also more flexible than a solid plate and more comfortable to wear. It also has a bit of a better weight distribution on the body than male armour, because male armour is so flexible that it will basically hang on the shoulders and on your belt. The Lamal armour will have most of its weight on your shoulders, but it will also have some contact weight on the side here, because you're attaching it tightly on the side. So the weight distribution is, generally speaking, a little bit better on the Lamal armour. And on top of that, the Lamal armour is also much more modular, meaning that it is very easy for me to change the size of this Lamal armour. For example, if I am like very short and loot the armour from a very tall person, I can actually just change the size and actually just remove a row to make it fit me. And the same way, if I am very tall and loot the armour from a very short person, I can actually just get some extra plates and actually attach another row on the bottom to just make it a little bit longer. So you can really easily, and that is partly because of the lacing system, which is incredibly easy to just remove and reattach, it is incredibly easy to resize to any person, or resize to make like a horse armour or something like that, incredibly easy to do. If I want to do that with something like a scale armour, for example, I would have the problem that the scale armour cannot be larger than its backing, so I cannot start attaching plates on the outside of the backing, because they have nowhere to be attached. So I am kind of limited by the backing, and I kind of have to remake the whole armour and just scrap the entire backing. If I want to resize the Lamala, I am just going to add another row, that's not any sort of problem. The next big advantage is that the Lamala armour can be made of basically anything. So clearly you have steel, you have bronze, but you can also make it out of leather, out of rawhide, most things can be used to make a Lamala. Male armour, for example, well clearly you can make it out of steel and iron, you could probably make it out of bronze, but you cannot make it out of leather or anything like that, and that's kind of a problem with the male, and it means that if you only have like leather, you cannot actually make a Lamala armour. And even if you make it out of steel, it is still relatively easy to make compared to other armours. For example, a plate armour needs massive big plates, which are going to be very hard to make, especially if you don't have the right technology to do it, and something like a male armour, well you don't need to make so large plates, but a male shirt like this one has like 30,000 rings, so it's going to be incredibly time consuming to rivet all these rings, and it's going to take an eternity. A Lamala armour is kind of in between, because it does not need massive plates, yet it doesn't have too many plates, which make them too long to make, so you can actually make one of these armours relatively easily and relatively fast. So now we can start answering the question, why was it more popular in the East than in the West? Well, if we look at the different advantages, we can see that, first of all, it can be made out of any material, meaning that if you don't have access to different metals, or you don't have the time to start building mines or something like that, you can actually still make an armour out of leather or rawhide or something like that, that is going to be relatively efficient. Obviously it's not going to be as efficient as any other sort of metal armour, because it's not metal, but it's still going to be relatively efficient. And Lamala armour is probably one of the best options for leather armours, because it is overlapping enough to have decent protection, and it's still simpler to make than some other sorts of armours. So for some nomadic Mongolian tribes or something like that, that don't necessarily have the time to start making a mine on a specific place, it can actually be really useful to have Lamala, because you can have leather Lamala armours, that are still going to be pretty good, but that you don't need metal to make. And from there you have sort of an influence from the leather armour to the metal armour, because the metal that you are going to use to make armour, well you already know how to make a leather Lamala, you use that armour, so you're most probably just going to make a Lamala armour out of that metal. Not only that, but you can also combine metal and leather in one sort of armour on Lamala. So for example I could have this one armour here in metal, and then I could have a leather Lamala for the legs or something like that, I could combine leather with metal to get a good suit of armour. Then you also have the fact that most eastern cultures are usually going to be more focused around bows and arrows, more focused around archers. And as I said, the problem with mail is that it isn't too good at stopping arrows. It can still stop some arrows, especially from lighter bows of course, but once you run into some higher poundage bows, it is going to be worse at stopping them. A Lamala armour can most probably stop basically any poundage of bow, even up to poundages like 200 pounds or something like that. It's still going to have a good effect, most probably. Of course I guess an arrow shot from a 200 pound bow will be able to pass a Lamala with relative ease, but it's not going to stick out too far back, so you might survive it even though you get shot by a 200 pound bow. So since the Lamala armour is better to protect against arrows, it kind of makes sense for cultures that are more focused around archers to use them. Then you also have the fact that generally speaking, using a Lamala armour for an archer is more practical. This one in particular maybe not, because it has these shoulder guards that can be practical to move your arms around. Even though it's not too bad, I can perfectly well move my arms around perfectly fine, but especially if you have a Lamala armour without these extra shoulder guards, it is going to be very practical to use for archers, because it's only protecting the torso. A male armour usually has sleeves and stuff like that that can be practical. Of course you could make that armour without the sleeves, but then one of the main points of the male armour is kind of gone, which is the fact that it's good at protecting gaps. If you have a male armour that protects the same area as a Lamala armour, then the male armour is kind of useless. Then you also have the fact that Lamala armour is, generally speaking, slightly better for cavalry than male, because it stops at the waist, so you have much more free movement with your legs, and you can actually sit on a horse with your legs bent more easily. And when you're sitting on a horse, you're also kind of pushing it a little bit up, so it's more resting on your waist instead of resting on your shoulders, so the waist distribution is a little better than on something like male, that will, because of flexibility, sit a lot on your shoulders. Now obviously there isn't a lot of difference, but it can be slightly better for cavalry. And then of course it's also much better for horse archers, because that's a combination of archer and cavalry, so having that flexibility with your arms, while still having your protection for the torso, can actually be really useful for those mounted archers. Now the main reason, I would say, is that in Western Europe, people relied mostly on shields to protect themselves, from arrows, but also in melee, generally speaking. And the fact is that you don't need such a good armour that is not going to get pierced by anything, when you have a shield that will stop everything in any case. And the fact is that you don't need a Lamala armour that will stop any arrow, because you have a shield, so the arrows are never going to come close to your body in any case. So having that bit more durable and a bit more flexible armour can actually be more useful when you have a shield. In the East, they, in a certain way, use the Lamala armour instead of a shield, because as you'll probably have noticed, usually samurais don't use shields, Mongolian horse archers don't use shields, shields are just less common, generally speaking, in the East, partly because they are using more bows, so using shields can be impractical, and that can be a reason to use an armour that will stop more blows, because you actually need that, because different blows are actually going to hit you more easily, because you don't have a shield. And since most of those blows are going to be arrows that have a chance to pierce mail, mail isn't the best option, so actually having a Lamala is better. Now, obviously, the Lamala still has the problem that it has a lot of gaps, so an arrow can't theoretically hit one of those gaps and actually just kill you, even because it didn't hit the armour, but you're still unlikely to get hit in those gaps by an arrow or something like that. The Lamala still protects the main areas of your body, and primarily, it protects the most vulnerable parts of your body, the most important places to protect. And obviously you can combine it with mail that will protect those gaps. So the primary reason why Lamala became popular and stayed popular was because people were more focused around archers, more focused around cavalry, and preferred using an armour instead of using a shield. And that led them to actually need an armour that was going to protect them against the arrows of the enemy archers, and that still was practical for your own archers. And a Lamala armour is relatively practical to shoot a bow with, because you have free movement with your arms like this. A mail armour, especially if it has sleeves, is going to add a lot of weight on those sleeves, and it's going to make it more impractical. Now, obviously, a big reason why the Lamala never spread to the West was because people already had their own armours in the West, and starting to change your armours is going to change your whole infrastructure for making armour, which can be very complicated. For example, the Roman Empire, well, they already had mail, they already had scale. Now, maybe the Lamala might have been a better option for them than something like the scale armour, but starting to change your entire infrastructure to another armour will be incredibly complicated because, well, they already have blacksmiths and armorsmiths experienced in making scale armour, for example, or something like laminated armour like a Sigmentata, and they are already making rivets, they are already making the plates they need, so even though we admit that the Lamala was better for them, which isn't necessarily the case, but let's admit it was the case, starting to train all these smiths, starting to develop new techniques to make Lamala armour is going to be very complicated and not necessarily worth it, even though you might get a better armour. And if we move forward in time to something like the early Middle Ages, people already had mail, which was more than enough to protect themselves, especially with their style of fighting with a shield and so on, and even if the Lamala could have been an improvement, which it didn't necessarily was because of, well, they already had shields, didn't necessarily need that, it might only have added weight, so it might not really be useful, but let's admit, if it was an improvement, they have the problem that they already know how to make mail, they already have all the technology to make mail, so actually starting to adopt a new sort of armour will mean that now they need to know how to make these small plates, they need to change their techniques to make these small plates in math instead of rings, so it's going to be much, much harder, and there's going to be a huge change in the infrastructure itself, which isn't necessarily worth it to get an armour that might potentially be a little bit better, and it wasn't necessarily because it wasn't really adapted to the Western fighting style. And when, like, Western Europe started using, like, plate armours, like coat of plate and brigandine, you might imagine that, well, they could have started using Lamala. The problem is that they were more used to making rivets and not laces, and their original thought was to put plates on top of mail to give an extra protection over the mail. It wasn't to make a completely new armour on its own, but over the mail. So in the end, Lamala was probably popular in the East because it was more adapted to the fighting style, being more archers and more cavalry, and also probably the fighting style evolved with the Lamala, since they had an armour that was good enough to stop most arrows, they didn't need the shields, so they could have more archers and so on. And the reason why it never spread to the West was because it wasn't really necessary because people already had shields to stop those arrows, so they didn't need a Lamala that was better at stopping the arrows, and also they were less focused on archers and cavalry as a general rule, so Lamala wasn't so important. And also there was that manufacturing part where if you're already used to making Lamala, you can make more Lamalas, and if you are used to making another armour, you can keep making that other armour, instead of adopting another one that will be way harder to make for you when you're not used to making that armour. So really, the Lamala wasn't necessarily adapted to a more Western fighting style, and also it wasn't worth changing to it, even though it could have been better. And the same way the Far East didn't change to something like mail, because it wasn't really adapted to their fighting style, or worth it to start making a new armour. Anyways, hope you enjoyed the video, and I'll see you in the next one.