Why Plate Armor Went Back to Small Plates

Plate armor is one of the best forms of armor ever made. It can give excellent protection against cuts, thrusts, arrows, and even certain early firearms. But plate armor also has certain problems. It can be expensive, it works best when custom fit, and obviously a custom fit plate armor harness is not within the reach of every single soldier. So sometimes armor is developed cheaper, simpler, or more practical alternatives for plate armor. Now the two most interesting examples of that is the aldermane rivet and the anima cuirass. Now in a very broad sense in the middle ages, armor developed from male armor to armor made up of small plates, like for example a coat of plate or a brigandine, and then comes plate armor with those larger shaped plates. But at the very end of the middle ages and into the renaissance, certain armors will go back to using smaller plates instead of those larger shaped plates. Because plate armor with larger plates is great for protection, however it has a problem that it can be more expensive than making armor out of smaller plates, and it can be harder to fit it to the body. If you're wearing a stiff piece of armor, a shaped piece of metal that is too large or too small, that is going to be very impractical. Whereas if you're wearing an armor with smaller plates that is more flexible, that can be more easy to fit to the body, and therefore can be more practical even though it is not perfectly fitted. And also to a certain degree plate armor is not the most practical kind of armor there is. Obviously plate armor is very practical in the sense that it does manage to protect the entirety of the body while allowing you to keep a full range of motion and so on. So it is practical in one sense and you can do all sorts of movement with it, however obviously it's still not as practical as wearing nothing, or as wearing a lighter form of armor. Because obviously when you're wearing plate armor your entire body is covered in plates of steel, which obviously they are not flexible, they are plates of steel. So the first thing that was done by the end of the late middle ages was to make a sort of a cheaper plate armor. Because the idea was that they obviously wanted to give the soldiers the advantages of a plate armor because obviously a plate armor has great protection so they want the soldiers to have that protection. However the problem is that you cannot make a custom fit harness for every single soldier, that is going to be way too expensive. So what they did was to create an armor that had more flexible parts than a plate armor while still being essentially a sort of plate armor. And what that would allow them to do was to give it to a wider range of people and it would fit a wider range of people. Because obviously a solid piece of steel will retain its shape, however if you have a more flexible system that can allow you to, if you're a little bit taller, a little bit bigger, if you're a little bit smaller or a little bit shorter or anything like that, the plates will compress or stretch a little bit more because they are flexible and therefore they can fit a wider range of people. And that is what was done with an armor called the Allemagne Rivet. That essentially means, Allemagne means German and rivet is because of the construction type, meaning that the armor, instead of having a solid piece of steel, it would have sliding rivets. Now a sliding rivet is basically you take a rivet through one plate but then instead of on the other plate just having a hole that you get your rivet through and riveted together, instead you have sort of a slot so that when you attach the rivet the plate in the back can actually slide because of that slot, so it's actually moving inside that slot and that can allow for a certain amount of flexibility. So the armor was constructed with rivets and that is why it is called the Allemagne Rivet. So what that was, was just a normal solid breastplate and backplate that stayed the same, however for the arms and legs you would have those flexible armor parts. Instead of having a solid piece of metal, like for example on this arm guard, which obviously is a solid piece of metal, meaning that it will retain its own shape, instead what would be done would be to use these different strips of metal and attach them with sliding rivets so that they could be slightly flexible. And shoulder and arm guards would be made of those, tassets would be made of those, tassets essentially being a sort of leg protection hanging from the waist, from the belt area, it hangs down over the legs so they can protect the legs. And obviously this arm was primarily a munition grade armor, meaning essentially a sort of armor that you can equip all of your soldiers with, without it being too expensive, but they can still have a very decent armor. And they were also quite often exported, for example Henry VIII actually ordered 2000 Allemagne Rivets to equip his own soldiers, because, well, they were not as expensive other forms of armor and could fit everyone and so on. Because by having one single armor that could fit almost everyone, that can allow you to obviously mass produce them much more easily, because you don't need to adapt the size all the time, you can just create that one piece of metal again and again repeatedly, because it's exact same size. And if the person is slightly larger, then the place will be slightly more stretched, and if it's slightly smaller, the place will be slightly more compressed. It can just more easily adapt to the different body types than a normal plate armor. Then you also have another form of armor that is called the anima or anime cuirass. Now, anime, the word anime in anime cuirass, has nothing to do with the Japanese anime, of course. It is a historical form of armor, not an armor from an anime, obviously. The word does come from the same thing, because it means living, animated, or soul. And it is used for the Japanese anime, because it is a living drawing, so a moving drawing, so they use the word anime. But for that style of armor, it was used for the same reason, being that it is a moving armor rather than being a solid one. Obviously, a normal brass plate will be made of one piece of metal, or in certain cases it could be made of several, but they would be riveted solid together. An anime or anima cuirass would be constructed in a different way, essentially the same as the almane rivet we were talking about earlier, meaning that you would have strips of metal attached with sliding rivets. Only in the case of the almane rivet, the brass plate would be a solid piece, but in the case of this armor, the anima cuirass, it is actually the brass plate itself being made out of those strips of metal and being flexible. And the idea behind this was essentially to have the protection of a normal brass plate, like you find on the normal plate armor, but getting more flexibility in that brass plate, because obviously a brass plate is designed to be as practical as possible. For example, it is rather short, it usually stops around the belly button, so you can actually lift your legs and so on normally, and you can sit on a horse normally, but it still is a solid piece of metal, so it still is going to be less practical than a flexible one. Now, this sort of armor was primarily used in Italy, it was primarily a form of Italian armor, but it was also used in other regions of the world. For example, the Polish Hussars use them quite a lot, because this is a pretty decent form of armor for cavalry. Because, yes, you can absolutely wear a solid brass plate while on horseback, but it still can be a little bit impractical. So, by having a slightly more flexible sort of armor, that can be better. And it was also usually worn by wealthier people, because in contrast to the Almayne Rivet, that was a munition-grade armor that was cheap, the Arnima Cruace is actually kind of the opposite, it is actually quite an expensive sort of armor, because you can use the technique of using strips of metal attached with sliding rivets to have a more effective production of the armor, but if you do not have that effective production, it will in the end be harder, especially because these Cruaces, the Arnima Cruace, were usually custom-fit, because they were used by richer people. On top of that, the Almayne Cruace only had this form of flexible armor on the legs and arms, whereas the Arnima Cruace has it on the upper body, which is more complicated to make a flexible armor for. Now, as I said, both these armors are constructed with strips of metal attached with sliding rivets, which basically is a rivet that is going through a hole on one piece of metal, but then on the next piece of metal, it's going through a slot that can allow it to slide and get a little bit more flexibility. Now, this is quite similar to an earlier form of armor you might have heard of, which is the Lorica Segmentata, which is a Roman sort of armor, sort of laminated armor. The Lorica Segmentata was constructed in a very, very similar manner, meaning that it would use strips of metal, but then, instead of having those sliding rivets, it would use instead strips of leather, soft leather, that would connect all the pieces together. And that sort of armor is called laminated armor. Now, the Arnima Cruace and the Almayne Rivet are also a style of laminated armor. They just are slightly different, because even though they are not made with a piece of soft leather on the back attaching them together, they are still strips of metal overlapping, and therefore they are still considered a form of laminated armor. Now, you might remember a video I did some time ago about the Lorica Segmentata, so that Roman laminated armor. In that video, I mentioned that the Lorica Segmentata was the last form of laminated body armor to be used. Now, that was technically wrong, because you do have the Arnima Cruace, which is an example of a laminated form of armor used much later than the Lorica Segmentata, so that was technically wrong. I made an error there, because I just simply did not know of the Arnima Cruace, but the Arnima Cruace is an example of a later laminated armor. So, correction, there were actually later forms of laminated armor. As far as I know, the only later example of a laminated body armor is the Arnima Cruace, but it still is an example of a later laminated armor. Now, at this point, these two armors, the Arnima Cruace and the Almayne Cruace, might seem like genius ideas, because they are more practical than a suit of plate armor, and, at least in the case of the Almayne Rivet, they are cheaper to make. However, plate armor does retain a lot of advantages that the two other armors kind of lack, the primary one being protection, because there is a reason why, in the first place, people moved from armors like, for example, to the plate armor, because the plate armor was just better protection than having smaller plates. Now, that laminated style of construction that we find on the Arnima Cruace or the Almayne Rivet does retain a certain amount of rigidity, more rigidity than armors like, for example, However, they still have the problem that they have all sorts of different parts that can get broken, that can need replacements, and a lot more maintenance, too, because, obviously, we have all of these fighting parts that all need a lot of maintenance, and that can get broken if they get hit. So, having one solid piece of metal is going to offer much more protection and needs less maintenance. On top of that, a proper suit of plate armor usually had less gaps, because, well, it was custom-fitted to the body of the wearer, so, obviously, it would cover the gaps as well as possible, whereas, if you take something like the Almayne Rivet, it is not custom-fitted, meaning that it is obviously going to leave more gaps, and, in the case of the Anima Kuras, it was custom-fit, however, it did have the problem that on the sides and so on where all the plates connect, it is very hard to get that exactly right, and you might end up with certain gaps. So, in the end, these two forms of armor, the Anima Kuras and the Almayne Rivet, were not just superior than plate armor at all. Plate armor retains a lot of its advantages, it's just that they solved slightly different problems, because, in the case of the Anima Kuras, it reduces slightly the amount of protection you get from the armor, however, you get slightly more flexibility, which can definitely be worth it, at least in certain cases. And the Almayne Rivet was a way of making plate armor more affordable and more accessible for more people, so that more people could be equipped with very, very good armor. But, obviously, it still wasn't as good as a proper suit of custom-fit plate armor, if you could afford that. Basically, the idea was to adapt these armors to a slightly different use. For the Anima Kuras, you decrease slightly the protection, but increase flexibility, whereas for the Almayne Rivet, you decrease the price a lot, but you get a slightly worse armor. Anyways, hope you enjoyed the video, and I'll see you in the next one.