Weight of 15th-century English armor.

Discussion in 'Western Martial Arts' started by Bronze Statue, Jul 28, 2011.

  1. Bronze Statue

    Bronze Statue Valued Member

  2. Gary

    Gary Vs The Irresistible Farce Supporter

    Part of me can't help wonder how much training in armour for a period would have effected the results. If you took a dozen untrained archers and gave them longbows their accuracy, range and fatigue from testing would have been terrible. Armies drill to minimise this and it seems likely most knights would have trained in armour for years before hand and been more effective at using armour as they would be more familiar with the restrictions.
     
  3. Ben Gash CLF

    Ben Gash CLF Valued Member

    The weight of a suit of armour is roughly equivalent to the load carried by modern combat soldiers.
     
  4. SpikeD

    SpikeD At the Frankenstein Place

    The article did mention that the big difference between modern and medieval weight load is that modern soldiers carry most of it on the shoulders and hips; the medieval warriors carried almost half of it on their legs which is something akin to walking through thigh deep water.
     
  5. Polar Bear

    Polar Bear Moved on

    kind of why they had horses.

    The Bear.
     
  6. Langenschwert

    Langenschwert Molon Labe

    Training and conditioning is key here. Examinations of the remains of medieval soldiers shows evidence of very intense training. IIRC, they examined remaining tendons etc, and concluded that their training regimen was similar in intensity to modern Olympic athletes.

    Which isn't surprising. They were training from a very young age to do this. There's a big difference between someone who's trained to be an elite soldier from about the age of say, 8 to even a reasonalbly fit member of modern society. Modern soldiers, as good as they are, are missing on average full decade of training before hitting the front lines compared to our medieval forebears. Remember it often took the surplus income of a whole village to support one knight, hence feudalism.

    Best regards,

    -Mark
     
  7. Ben Gash CLF

    Ben Gash CLF Valued Member

    Also we're talking about a culture where people were generally just fitter and more used to walking and effort.
     
  8. Medes

    Medes Valued Member

    At the age of 7 a boy, a/the son of a nobleman would leave his home and go to the home of another noble. Most always to a castle. The boy in question would take a woman of the household, usually the woman of the household as his liege lady. Said lady would teach the youth how to be a gentleman and how to serve in a noble house. He would learn the way of being "gentile." He would be at 7 and at the beginning of this service be made a Page.

    At 14 the now young man would become a Squire. He would learn arms and armour. A Knight would generally take the young man as his Squire ( or in some cases as one of his Squires.) The Squire would not only dress the Knight in his garments, but would dress the Knight in his armour and arm the Knight he serves. In otherwords the Squire was responsible for not only the Knight's arms and armour, but also his other property.

    The Squire during his service to the knight would learn the science and art of Chivalry. Chivalry was more than gentile behaviour towards women, but also the very way of Knighthood.

    So, as you asked about armour, well, the Squire at 14 would begin to learn all the above and more, the knowledge of armour and its appropriate use was one such thing learned.

    At 21, most Squires were Knighted ( if they had a sponsor who was capable of carrying-out that important event.)

    It was 7 years from Page to Squire, and 7 years from Squire to Knight.

    In the Medieval days and in the Renaissance periods ( in general ) thought that it took 7 years of constant, appropriate, study and practice to master any vocation.

    By the time a Squire became a Knight, 7 years of constant, hopefully appropriate, study and practice in arms will have been made. So yes, Knights ( usually ) knew exactly how to use their arms and armour.
     
  9. beer_belly

    beer_belly Valued Member

    After reading the journal article (the joys of working at a research university) I think that the issue of training in armour is moot in this case. The 4 people tested were experienced fight interpreters from Leeds, the British national armour museum who wear armour relatively often. And English WMAers would seem to be involved since the founder of the European Historical Combat Guild based at Leeds is thanked in the paper.

    A 2.1-2.3 times increase in metabolic cost for armoured walking, compared to 1.7 times for backpack loaded walking over unloaded walking really indicates that custom made late 15 century style armour is pretty good at distributing weight and letting limbs move - but good reason to ride a horse if you want to have a fight at the end of a trip against an opponent of the same level of physical conditioning as oneself.....

    Of course it would be much worse for a non armour experienced person :).
     

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