Mail-and-Plate Armor Is Genius… Or Is It?

Hello everyone and welcome! So you might already have seen or heard of one of these strange looking armors. It's not full plate but it's not just mail either. It's kind of a combination of both in one single armor. So the question is why would anyone make one of these weird armors? Let's find out. To understand how this strange looking armor works we must first go back to the basics of how an armor even works because obviously certain armors will have certain advantages and disadvantages. For example if we take an armor like mail it is incredibly good at stopping a cut and it's very flexible meaning you can protect all the gaps like armpits, side, everything like that. The problem with mail is that it is not the best protecting against thrusts meaning that certain weapons like for example heavy warbows, lancers, warhammers and even certain swords can at least with a heavy blow actually bust through mail. Certain other armors typically made out of like plates will be better protecting against thrusts. That is the case for example with a lamellar but also the case with like a solid breastplate, brigandine and even to a certain degree a scale armor. The problem with those armors is that obviously they are stiffer so they cannot protect the gaps too easily. So for example if you're wearing like a solid breastplate, a lamella or something like that your armpits are likely going to be unprotected. Same goes for your sides and also the armor is going to be shorter so you can actually bend down but the problem is that obviously the armor is not protecting your legs or hips as much as something like mail. So you might want to use those different armors in different contexts and for different troops. Now obviously what you can do is to actually combine the two armors to have even more protection. So for example you can wear a lamella armor over mail that was done for example in the Byzantine Empire at least for heavy cavalry. You can wear a brigandine over mail that was very commonly done and you can even wear like a breastplate, solid breastplate over mail that was really common on early plate armors. Early plate armors actually had entire mail shirts under the breastplate. The problem by doing this is that obviously you have a much heavier armor. For example this mail shirt here weighs approximately 10 kilograms and my lamella right here weighs approximately in between 6 and 7 kilograms. So if I combine the two armors I'm actually ending up with an armor that weighs from 16 to 17 kilograms. So if you do that your soldiers will be slower, get exhausted faster and so on. Obviously you're getting a much more protective armor because you're essentially getting the advantages of both armors into one armor but it does get very heavy and also the mail that is underneath the plate you're wearing is adding a lot of weight but isn't really that useful because you're very unlikely to have a certain weapon actually piercing through the plates of whatever plated armor you have. Now obviously certain weapons can pierce through those plates like for example heavy warbows can to a certain degree pierce through thinner plates but generally speaking having that mail underneath those plates isn't necessarily worth it because it does add a lot of weight. So essentially what a lot of people discovered is that they should actually just remove the mail that is underneath those plates to make the armor lighter even though it might slightly reduce how effective it is. And obviously there are several different ways of doing that. The first way is by using an arming doublet. So an arming doublet is essentially a only it will have a mail attached to the gaps of a typical plate armor. So for example you will have a mail under the armpits because plate cannot protect these areas so easily. And then over that arming doublet you will wear your classic plate armor with a breastplate and so on but what it does is essentially to remove all the mail that is underneath the plate and that therefore isn't so necessary. And obviously you could theoretically have all sorts of different ways of doing this. For example if you took something like a lamala armor only you attached mail sleeves and a mail skirt to it essentially not having the mail underneath the lamala itself only protecting the gaps that could work. It didn't exist as far as we know but you know you could imagine certain other ways of doing it. Now that strange looking armor we were talking about in the beginning of the video is one way of actually removing the mail underneath those plates that isn't so necessary. Now that armor is called a mail and plate armor can also be called plated mail or even you could also call it plate mail. But if you do that there's going to be a lot of confusion between like the plate mail armor in D&D which is essentially plate armor. So generally speaking you're going to call it a mail and plate or plated mail. Now it does look very similar to a fantasy armor called banded mail but it is slightly different. Banded mail is essentially about the same except that the plates are actually going to be attached on top of the mail and there is still going to be mail underneath those plates. In mail and plate there is no form of mail underneath those plates. The plates are essentially replacing the mail at that one particular section and are attached to the rest of the mail on the sides. Now there are all sorts of different ways of attaching those plates to the mail and also you can have them overlapping or separated by a section of mail. It depends on the exact mail and plate armor you're talking about and the exact region of the world you're talking about. Now mail and plate armor is a very very late sort of armor. It started appearing during the 15th century so even after proper plate armor and it was primarily used in like Eastern Europe or Asia. So for example it was used in the Ottoman world, in India, in Russia, also a little bit in Japan and Korea but was not used at least to a large degree in Western Europe. It also had a lot of different names because obviously it was used by a lot of different cultures that had different languages so it was called as an example all of these different things right here. Now the interesting thing about mail and plate armor is that at least to a certain degree it combines the advantages of both mail armor and an armor made up of different plates like for example a brigandine, a lamella or anything like that. Because the mail of the armor protects all of your gaps while the plates are actually protecting against the blunt force and against like heavy thrusts and it manages to do that while still being relatively light. The examples I could find usually range from in between 7 and 13 kilograms so relatively similar to something like a simple mail shirt. As I said this particular one weighs around 10 kilograms which falls right in the middle of that 7 to 13 kilogram range and this is obviously because instead of putting extra plates on top of the mail you're actually replacing the mail with plates that are of relatively similar weight especially because the plates are only of about one millimeter thickness on average. Now obviously this does mean that they are easier to pierce than something like the plates on for example a lamella. A lamella plates will usually range from in between one and two millimeters with some examples going up to three millimeters and obviously it will be much easier to pierce than like a proper breastplate or something like that. So it obviously is not as protective as like lamella combined with mail, brigandine combined with mail or a proper plate armor but it does manage to keep relatively light while still getting the advantages of two different sorts of armors relatively well. So as a medium armor if you don't want to have like an insanely heavy armor you still want to be able to move around fast without being too exhausted mail and plate armor can actually be a good option and to a certain degree I think we could say that the mail and plate armor is one of the most protective sorts of medium armors because it does manage to keep a relatively low weight while still protecting all the gaps and still having the place for that against a thrust or heavy impacts. Now obviously it does have certain disadvantages first which being that obviously it's not as protective as something like a proper plate armor because it's not because it doesn't have so thick plates and it's also less easy to maintain than a simple mail shirt because it does have all these plates and so on. And I may also add that there are a lot of differences between different sorts of mail and plate armors. As I said the way the plates are attached will be different, some of them will be overlapping, some others will be spaced out and also different armors will be more or less covered with plates. Some of them will only have some few plates while some others will actually be almost entirely covered with plates. And you may also have heard of another sort of armor that is called the mirror armor which essentially is mainly constructed of one large big round plate on the body and then other plates for the rest of the body. But some of those mirror armors will essentially be constructed in the same way as mail and plate only they will have larger plates because in some of them the plates are actually going to be connected together with a mail and not have any mail underneath. So in the end there really are a lot of different sorts of mail and plate armors and sometimes the exact definition between mail and plate armor and mirror armor can be slightly overlapping because some mirror armors are constructed in a similar manner. But it is a good attempt at least to make a medium armor that actually combines the advantages of both mail armor and other armors made up of more or less large plates. Obviously it stays a medium armor it's not going to be as effective as something like a proper plate armor but I do think it's a good attempt and probably one of the most protective and advanced sorts of medium armors. Anyways, hope you enjoyed the video and I'll see you in the next one!