Evolution Of Knight's Armour - A Beginner's Guide

The majority of my audience is from the USA. Indeed, over 29% of my overall viewership comes from America. Over the years of running this channel, I have come to realise that some of the same questions and misconceptions about arms and armour during the Middle Ages in England tend to crop up time and time again. The main issue seems to be due to a lack of understanding when it comes to placing different aspects of medieval knights throughout the medieval ages in specific time periods, knowing what happened when, and what English soldiers and knights were generally looking like when these different events were happening. So, this video will hopefully serve as an educational aid to put the medieval period into perspective for my average American viewer and allow people to understand the Middle Ages more accurately when it comes to armour being worn, rather than assume that everything was happening at once. It can be easy to see knights wearing mail and other knights wearing plate armour and assume they were fighting each other on the same battlefield. But, it is important to remember that there is over 400 years of military evolution taking place throughout the medieval period in England, assuming that you state that the medieval period officially began in England after the Norman conquest of 1066 and ended in 1485 after the slaying of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth on the 22nd of August, leading to the crowning of Henry Tudor, beginning the Tudor dynasty. You may also argue that the medieval period actually ended in 1487 after the final Yorkist defeat at the Battle of Stoke Field, which marked the official end of the War of the Roses. This is a Norman knight of the 11th century. Easily identifiable by the conical nasal helmet, a full mail hauberk covering the majority of the body, a classic teardrop kiteshield, and notably no leg armour, just wearing woolen hose and wearingus, or leg wraps, instead. The Normans were not French. They were Norsemen, or Vikings, who invaded the Frankish Empire and established footholds in what we would now refer to as Normandy. It is believed that the term Norman comes from Norfmen, which is what they were regarded as by the local Frankish population. Norman knights were also often mounted, as they adopted cavalry tactics from the Franks and other various Western European cultures throughout the 10th and 11th centuries. While the Saxons weren't unfamiliar with mounted combat, the Normans utilised it to great effect, learning specific tactics and riding manoeuvres to give them the upper hand on a battlefield. Their armour also became specifically tailored to mounted combat as well. They used the lance, which is just another word for a spear, and indeed these lances would look just the same as spears, since the late medieval lances that we typically think of had not yet been invented. Mounted combat was becoming so popular during the 11th century that, over in mainland Europe, tournaments and games were being set up by the noble classes to show off their horsemanship and martial talents. This would later evolve to become the first jousts of the medieval period. There is some evidence for male armour on the legs during the 11th century, but this appears to be very rare and by no means typical as of yet. But we will now roll on to the 12th century. Now we see that male has evolved to become much more tailored to the body and indeed covers pretty much the entire knight. Advances in male-making techniques and tailoring allowed for male to become much more flexible, adding gussets and corseting techniques in the lacing of armour to achieve a tight yet mobile fit. The head is almost entirely covered in male armour, with just a small opening for the face. This is then further protected by a helmet with rudimentary face protection, as pictured here with the metal bar going around the face. This was a new development of the 12th century, and there are no full-face helmets of the 11th century. These helmets are generally regarded as proto-Great Helms, because the classic Great Helm we all know and love has not yet been invented and won't turn up until the late 13th century. Although the teardrop kite shield that we previously saw was still a thing in the 12th century, the more common type of shield in the 1100s was the flat-topped kite shield instead. Here the rounded top, the last residual remains of the earlier round shield, has been cut off since this additional protection was no longer needed due to the advent of face plates on helmets. A surcoat is now commonly worn over the mail, but isn't a necessity. It is believed that surcoats like this were made to protect the mail and prolong its use out on campaign, since they were generally made of a very durable material such as silk, not wool. One of the biggest mistakes that people make in the modern day is buying a woolen surcoat. Surcoats often denoted high status, and high status knights wore silk to show how rich they were. A wealthy knight was more likely to get captured and ransomed instead of being slain on the battlefield, and high status people generally preferred to stay alive, using wealth to buy their protection and safe journey back home. When we think of the Crusades, both this 12th century knight and the previous 11th century knight is what we should be imagining. Still, the main weapons during this time was the sword and the spear, and again we will discuss swords in more detail later on. Now moving on to the 13th century, we instantly see that the helmet has developed to fully enclose both the front and the back of the head, and we are now seeing the classic great helm in all its glory. A helmet like this is depicted commonly in the Mashazowski Bible, or the Morgan Bible as it is often known as, and they came about in around the 1250s. The final crusade in the middle east ended in 1291 with the fall of the city of Acre, so these helmets, while generally being considered the typical crusader helmet, would have only been present at the very end of the crusade era. Prototype great helmets first came about in around the 1180s, and helmets with full face protection wouldn't be invented until the mid 13th century. So to everyone out there, typically the Americans, if you do insist on putting together a crusader kit, remember to use nasal helmets or flat top helmets like this instead. Also consider a well tailored male hauberk with male mittens and integrated coif, and a surcoat made of silk which does not have to be white with a red cross on it, instead it should be one single colour. Going back to our knight of the 13th century, we also see that his shield is considerably shrunken in size. These are called heater shields, and are smaller versions of the previously mentioned flat top kite shields. Again, as armour got better and more comprehensively covered the body, shields were gradually getting smaller as they weren't regarded as so vital anymore. The late 13th century is where we also begin to see the first official heraldry turn up. Heraldic patterns and iconography were becoming prevalent on shields, but still were not very common on surcoats, with the vast majority of surcoats depicted in contemporary artwork still being of one single colour. I'm purposefully leaving out the 14th century as I'm going to be making a full documentary all about arms and armour from this period, and I don't want to give away all the secrets. But I will say that it is during the 1300s where we see the main transition from male armour to plate. In the documentary which I will be releasing later this year, we will be looking at the invention of the coat of plates, the first forms of plate armour, and the evolution of helmets, so keep your eyes peeled for when that comes out. The mid 14th century saw the beginning of the Hundred Years' War, a tumultuous and almost mythical time between England and France which led to a war that lasted 116 years. Although, it should be said that there were multiple periods of relative peace during this time. By the middle part of the Hundred Years' War, knights had turned to wearing full plate armour which covered from the head to toe. Mail was still being used, but it was now utilised to cover the gaps instead. Armourers of the beginning of the 15th century had fine-tuned their craft to mould the steel so that it copied the shapes of the wearer's limbs and muscles. This is especially true when it comes to the greaves, expertly made to hug the calf muscles and not cause discomfort despite being such a difficult area to encase in steel. Just like the legs, the arms are now fully protected by plate armour, articulated to allow for maximum mobility while also protecting the knight in a very effective way. Mail mittens had now been replaced by hourglass gauntlets, with small metal plates on each finger. Shields were now very much optional, but here we see two options that were still prevalent during the early 15th century. Oval shields, curved in a way that they can be worn close to the body, were strapped to the This allows the soldier to equip a two-handed weapon while also receiving good protection from a shield. Alternatively, smaller shields like tajas or bushas can also be used, again being strapped to the wearer so that they can be worn hands-free. These grew to become very popular in jousting, and their use would eventually be dropped from real combat and reserved only for We also see helmets begin to fully enclose the head, but in a very different way than before. Previously, steel skulls had male aventails attached to protect the neck and throat, but now we begin to see these fully enclosed metal helmets called great bassinets appear on the battlefield. They were much more protective, but at a cost of mobility. The great bassinet would be strapped to the wearer, preventing them from turning their having to turn their entire torso instead if they wished to look to the side. This style of helmet mainly came about due to the increased threat of heavy cavalry ploughing into opponents with big lances. These lances would feature sharp spikes on the end, sometimes referred to as coronelles, and the armour began to feature aretes, which were supports for the lance to be rested on, allowing for a much stronger impact. The power from well-aimed lance strikes on the head would be enough to shatter the spine and instantly break the neck. So the great bassinet was invented to make the head and neck as secure as possible against harsh impacts, with the head of the knight effectively suspended freely inside the metal casing, cushioned by a lot of padding. Bassinets also evolved into helmets like this, the barbute, which was a typical Italian style yet used all over western Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries. This was also the age of experimental padded armour. Here you can see the soldier wearing a padded coat, sometimes referred to as a jupon, but there are many different words loosely associated to late medieval padded armour, such as akaton, doublet, gambeson, coat and many more. Again, when we think of padded armour in the medieval age, this is the only time that it ever really became prevalent. So we must do away with notions of gambesons being used throughout the middle ages, since there is barely any evidence to support this, and effectively no evidence suggesting that gambesons or padded armour was being used in the 11th and 12th centuries. Now that we roll on to the mid to late 15th century, we notice some marked changes in the armour. Firstly, sallets are now by far the most common helmet in western Europe and are being used by almost all classes of soldier. Sallets evolved from the bassinet, and it is indeed difficult to know when a bassinet really became a sallet. Generally, we regard the curved tail protecting the nape of the neck to be a feature of the sallet rather than the bassinet. Other than that, they were regarded as very similar in the first few decades of the sallet's development. However, by the mid 15th century, sallets now featured a variety of other indicating features, such as a reinforced browplate, a jawbone or full-face visor which could be lifted up to help the knight see more clearly, and if required, a beather could also be used in conjunction with the sallet to protect the lower face, chin and neck. In England, knights and soldiers alike typically favoured the male standard, which is like a collar made from male rings which protected the throat and collarbones. While this provided less protection than the beather, it allowed for more mobility and greater circulation of air, which meant that the soldier could run around the battlefield and fight for longer without getting tired or disorientated. As I say in all my videos, armour is a balance between protection and mobility. Cuirasses didn't change too much throughout the early to mid 15th century. They generally just had more of an artistic flair with scalloped edges and fluting, and with a bigger reliance on the four main components that made up the cuirass, the breastplate, placard, folds and tassets. And decorations on arm and leg armour also followed these stylistic patterns. While pauldrons were a thing during the late 14th century, they became much more popular throughout the latter end of the 15th century mainly due to a re-emergence of heavy mounted combat. The English began to utilise shock cavalry tactics, where a group of heavily armoured knights on horses that were also wearing armour, called barding, would plough into an enemy rank, skewing them with lances and pushing them out of the way with their horses to break up the enemy lines and cause disorganisation and chaos. When charging into an enemy line with a lance, you don't necessarily need to be very mobile, since you'd just brace up, charge in, then get out of there as soon as you can while you still had momentum, hoping that you didn't get caught up within the enemy lines. This meant that a greater reliance on fully protective armour was required, since the enemy would no doubt be pointing their halberds, bill hooks and spear points directly at you as you charged towards them. So pauldrons acted as a double layer of protection, overlapping both the arm harness and the cuirass, to help reduce the possibility of a spearhead or arrow making its way between the plates of armour and injuring or killing the knight. Swords were always very common in medieval warfare spanning throughout the entirety of its 400 years. They were ideal for cutting down unarmoured opponents, of which built up the majority of armies during the middle ages. But when it comes to fighting other knights, you generally wanted something with a bit more weight to it. Polaxes became a very popular choice of weapon for knights during the late 14th and 15th centuries, as they had many components which were designed specifically to take down armoured opponents. An axe head would be used for cleaving at limbs, a spike for poking into gaps between armour, a crow's beak spike or bec de corban for puncturing through plates of armour, and a hammerhead for causing blunt force trauma, leading to internal bleeding and broken bones. These were exceedingly deadly, and are often jokingly referred to as can openers by re-enactors within the UK. Finally, we'll briefly feature one last harness. This is early 16th century armour, and it's not medieval. As previously mentioned, the medieval period ended between 1485 and 1487 at the resolution of the War of the Roses, and the renaissance followed with the beginning of the Tudor period. A renaissance or renaissance is a difficult term, because it actually began in places like Italy and France long before it began in England, with some experts advising that it likely started in Italy as early as the beginning of the 1400s. This armour is often referred to as the Almayne Rivet, and was very popular throughout Western Europe, possibly being of German origin. It was regarded as a utilitarian armour, designed to be mass-produced and easily worn by soldiers of various sizes. No frills, no fancy decorations, just purely made for warfare. Combat had changed a lot from the 15th to the 16th centuries, with a heavier reliance on black powder usage such as gunners and cannons, as well as a greater dependence on hired armies where mercenaries would do the bidding of local lords and nobles. Battles were generally much larger in the 16th century, and so more men had to be kitted out with armour, hence the mass-production of these styles of munition-grade harnesses. But importantly, it is not medieval, it is instead armour of the Renaissance. And so, this briefly covers the evolution of knightly arms and armour from the 11th to the 15th centuries, at least in England, covering the entirety of the medieval period in England. Of course, there is a massive amount of information that I haven't covered in this documentary, but I have two other videos where I dive a little deeper into specific periods in medieval England's history to discuss each component of armour and their evolution in depth. Throughout this year, I will be travelling all over the country to film new How a Man Shall Be Armed videos, including Ancient Greek Hoplites, Roman Auxilia, 7th Century Saxons, Anglo-Vikings, 13th Century Knights, English Longbowmen, French Crossbowmen, 100 Years War Knights, and multiple 15th Century Manor Arms, including the infamous Gothic Knight. Once these filming sessions are completed and their respective episodes have been published, I will be working on a fully in-depth documentary discussing the full evolution of warriors in England from the Iron Age all the way to the Tudor period. Expect the video to be over two hours long. I will also be working on two other documentaries, focusing on the evolution of Roman armour and the evolution of the Saxon warrior. So stay tuned as myself and my re-enactor friend show truly authentic arms and armour throughout various periods in history, and learn about what real knights of medieval England looked like. But for now, thanks for watching.