Scientists Study Impact of Wearing Medieval Armor 213
FoolishOwl writes "Scientists at the University of Leeds tested the effects of wearing heavy medieval armor by monitoring volunteers, who were experienced medieval reenactors, as they walked and ran on treadmills, while wearing accurate replicas of 15th century armor. While the suits of armor weighed between 30 and 50 kg, comparable to the weight of gear carried by modern soldiers, volunteers who carried equivalent amounts of weight in backpacks had an easier time with the weight. Volunteers in armor burned more energy and had difficulty breathing. The scientists speculate that much of the additional effort was due to weight of armor on the legs — leg armor was one of the first things dropped in the shift towards lighter armor in the 16th century. While it has long been assumed that heavy medieval armor limited mobility, and that this contributed to the outcome of battles, such as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, this was the first study to quantify the impact of wearing heavy armor."
Battles (Score:2, Funny)
While it has long been assumed that heavy medieval armor limited mobility, and that this contributed to the outcome of battles, such as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415
Nonsense. It's well established that being French contributes to the outcome of battles, such as the Battle of Agincourt. The effects of armor is minor in comparison.
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Really? They totally sucked in 1871.
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Napoleon was Italian :-) (Score:3)
No I meant the Napoleonic Wars where France had the whole world on the run for almost 20 years.
"Napoleon was born in Corsica to parents of noble Genoese ancestry", so he was actually Italian not French. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon [wikipedia.org]
Corsica was ruled by Genoa (part of Italy) for 400 or so years, had a 20-something year rebellion, 15 or so years of independence and was then conquered by France shortly before Napoleon was born. Its constitution was written in Italian and Italian was the dominant language long after Napoleon's death.
Before commencer à la flamme please note the ":-
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US Schools (Score:2)
'The US wasn't scared of France then.' no they where too busy repainting the White house to care.
Interestingly, US Schools teach that the British torched the White House, but they usually omit that it was done in retaliation for the U.S.'s burning the houses of Parliament in Canada--which is why the Canadian capital was moved to Ottawa.
Re:Battles (Score:5, Informative)
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- Otto
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The London Underground is not a political movement, I looked it up.
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At least the French never got beaten by the Canadians.
Re:Battles (Score:5, Interesting)
Americans have this tunnel vision with regards to the French, and assume they can't win wars because they got their ass kicked in WWII. They seem to think its funny even - even though if you mention the French in any regard on a forum, you can be 100% assured that someone will make a comment concerning that defeat. Its long since gotten tired folks.
Somehow they seem to ignore the whole Napoleonic Wars period, you know 30+ years where the French were the most feared military force in the world. When the French *defined* military technology, techniques and achievements. Sure, they are kind of stuck up, and their recent military history hasn't been all that distinguished but to be fair they were also faced with the German army, in its time the most efficient military force in existence. It took a whole lot of countries to defeat the Germans, and yes that eventually included the USA.
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The US land army in the spring of 1940 was hardly better than the Dutch or Belgian army, and tiny compared to the French one. The quick French defeat is unfortunate, but no other army actually in existence at that time could have done better defending France from Germany. French performance on the unit level is also not notably worse than British, Belgian, and Dutch performance in that campaign, if one compares units of similar quality.
The French were Europe's most formidable military force in a number of p
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Their surrender in WW2 is usually the first thing British people bring up too. The reality is that we were there too (Expeditionary Force) and got our arses kicked too. It would have been a lot worse for us if the French hadn't covered our fleeing from the battle at Dunkirk.
France was defeated militarily. People seem to think that when Churchill gave his "fight them on the beaches... we will never surrender" speech he was being serious, but no country ever fights to the last man. While I don't want to take
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People seem to think that when Churchill gave his "fight them on the beaches... we will never surrender" speech he was being serious, but no country ever fights to the last man.
Speak for yourself. . Most people I know would have fought to the end against Hitler or anyone else invading us. There was a whole guerilla/insurgent organisation planned and trained, and it would have started by killing any collaborators.
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The war was "lost" by the National Guard units at home who apparently didn't have the balls to shoot enough hippies to win the war.
Yes, the US failed to act like a properly fascist state, the soft bastards.
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Yeah, like the losers who blockaded Lord Charles Cornwallis' resupply and reinforcements at Yorktown, and the ground troops that reinforced the perimeter to help prevent a breakout.. Without the help of the French, both in North America and in keeping the British busy elsewhere, there would likely be no United States of America.
Perhaps the French defeats that passed into folklore (Agincourt, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Dien Bien Phu) have done so because the French were, at the time, a major power (which takes wi
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It is easy to go after the French, especially since they initially lost WWII. What most USA,USA,USA Americans tend to forget was that the first World War was largely a French vs Germany affair, with France fielding the largest army and suffering the largest casualties, not to mention that the war was fought largely on French soil. It was no poetic license when they said that the "flower of Europe's youth" were killed during WWI. The UK and US on other hand had the luxury of fighting without serious conseque
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Agincourt is also the battle Shakespeare wrote his "Band of Brothers" bit for--in a play which Data performed on the holodeck for Captain Picard. (The scene where the King is going hidden among his subjects.)
Thanks for the Star Trek reference, no one would have known what you were talking about otherwise.
Ergonomics (Score:5, Informative)
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To be fair, he did imply that when he mentioned the weight being distributed on your pelvis (the hip bone).
Re:Ergonomics (Score:5, Informative)
Medieval armour supports it all over the body, causing body-wide muscle fatigue.
Not so. Medieval armour up to the 14th century had hip belts that supported the weight of the leg armour on the pelvis.
The amount of effort you spend wearing armour is way more dependent upon the fit than the total weight.
There's been a huge study of this in various groups of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). Possibly the best proponent of this study that I know of is a gent known as His Majesty Cornelius von Beck, current king of Lochac (Australia). (www.sca.org.au). He's an armourer himself, and has studied - and worn - original 14th century plate. Serious students only can contact him via the SCA.
The SCA is the only organisation I know that chooses its leaders by rite of combat...
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Not a medieval armor expert, but didn't they have even better after the 14th century? I think that was the point of an arming doublet, a jacket or coat that was worn under say, plate maile that had straps and hooks for fastening armor on. I would imagine with such a garment that you could re-adjust where weigh was carried to a great degree.
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I helped to dress a serious re-enactor once (in Brisbane - he's not with the SCA, though) - he had me put my foot on his waist while I pulled the war belt as tight as I could. The lower half of his chain-mail suit was then supported by the belt around his waist/hips, so the whole thing (approx 10kg) wasn't solely taken on his shoulders.
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While it may take some of the weight while standing still, it won't do anything to help lift the legs while walking.
And if you transfer the weight onto the pelvis, what supports the pelvis?
Re:Ergonomics (Score:4, Insightful)
And some of it has even been reasonably scientific. The vast bulk of it doesn't even approach Mythbusters levels of scientific accuracy and diligence however. Though the SCA tried very hard, and has gotten markedly better over time, a scientific or academic organization it isn't.
(Disclaimer: Member of the SCA 25+ years now.)
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Re:Ergonomics (Score:5, Informative)
Crossbows weren't really required at Agincourt. A long-established culture of longbow use (mandated by the Crown) had more of an effect. You can see the effect today by looking at the window sills of small English churches -- worn to a catenary by yeomen (yew-man, a bow user) who believed sharpening their arrowheads on a church window brought good luck.
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At Agincourt, the longbows hampered the heavy knights, but didn't kill them except in rare shots through the visor.
They reported French knights looking like hedgehogs. Armor works.
In any event, this study is quite stupid. They measured how much faster armor tires you out when running, and then concluded from it armor was a hindrance, in contradiction to all history.
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The main advantage of the crossbow/musket over the longbow was that it didn't require a lifetime of practice to use. Not penetrating power. So N men with crossbows/muskets do not give you an advantage over N men with longbows, quite the opposite, but it impacts how many men you can field.
A relevant quote that often shows up (with some variation in wording and origin): Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.
We are the knight who say "Ni (Score:4, Funny)
ne miles on a treadmill are you effing joking".
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Yes, they are joking.
The folks who could afford full armor could also afford horses.
And they didn't do a lot of running. They mostly stood around a quarter of a mile behind the fighting watching to see if they should get back on their horses.
The folks who did the fighting, if they wore any armor at all, wore small pieces of armor at critical points.
I call ye olde shenaniganes.
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The folks who could afford full armor could also afford horses.
You touch upon a very questionable claim by TFA. It says the inability to run for very long might have influenced battles like Agincourt, but the French (who lost there) had all there knights on horseback. The English knights (who won) were on foot. They still weren't running very much, because they were relying mostly on their longbows and letting the French come to them (who were hindered by mud and stakes in the ground), so to what extend fatigue from running in armour is relevant is highly questionable.
Re:We are the knight who say "Ni (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you ever ridden a galloping horse over rough ground? It's hard, and you use a lot of muscles in your legs, buttocks, and abdomen just to stay upright. Add in all the weight from armor and weapons, and it's no wonder that knights who had to move, even if they were riding horses, would be exhausted compared to knights who could stand back and let the enemy come to them.
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It is a known fact that plate armour and leathers were only worn when in hand-to-hand combat, and chainmail was worn to stop arrows or bolts.
That'd be silly. Mail is awful at stopping arrows, but pretty good at deflecting sword blows.
Also, it's awfully inconvenient to change your armour in the middle of a battle.
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Huh? Most things I've read say the second wave attacked on foot.
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I'm probably confusing Agincourt with Crecy, which I'm more familiar with. They're very similar battles, but I guess it makes sense that by the time of Agincourt, the French had picked up some of the English tactics.
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"the French (who lost there) had all there knights on horseback."
And what does a french knight do when his horse gets shot by an arrow, or stuck in the mud?
Dads with swords (Score:2)
Who knew scientist suffered from too much game of thrones.
Armor on the legs (Score:2)
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Next week (Score:2)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw [youtube.com]
SCA Nerd (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer; the SCA does medievalISH combat with rules and equipment for safety; it's not authentic medieval fight styles, and there are other groups (like WMA) that focus on things like 15th century German fechtbuchs and who have more authority to speak on authentically historical modes and styles of combat.
That said, the SCA does swordfighting at full speed and often with full power (depending on the area), and there are some strong similarities with historical combat. The sticks used (for safety reasons) are roughly the same weight as the historical swords, and there's a strong social pressure to wear armour that is both save and as authentic as possible. Thus, there's a couple things I can comment on from personal experience. First, metal armour on limbs *noticeably* slows down shots. We accept plastic plates as long as they're covered ("best effort to look good" is the standard), so people will fight with plastic covered in canvas or leather, and there is a well-known tradeoff in the SCA between "looking good" in shiny metal armour and having the best possible speed.
I just finished building a fairly close replica of 14th century coat-of-plates armour. I had been using (poorly disguised) plastic before, and the difference when wearing 25 pounds of overlapping plates is quite noticeable. I look much better, of course, but I also work harder, sweat more, and need to take more breaks. The weight's all on my shoulders, so it's not wearing my legs out, but there's a noticeable weight when I'm moving. I recently got metal gauntlets, and they're noticeable as well; the hands move slower when there's a pound or two of metal on them. I hate to reference anime, but you know how Goku wears the heavy arm and leg weights in Dragonball Z? There's some truth to that; even the fat SCA fighters have bulkier shoulders and larger arms. (actually wearing weights around all day will just screw up your joints, by the way; it's the holding-heavy-things-out-from-your-body that does it)
There's a reason armour was attached where it was in the middle ages; suspending legs from a belt takes at least some of the weight off the legs when moving.
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Make a school that practices this, just like a dojo that practices karate, and ten years from now analyse the results from those fighters.
There are such schools...and they have been around for longer than ten years. Since these schools have been around in England longer than in the U.S., and are more widely known there, it is probable that one (or more) of them is where they got the "reenactors" for this study.
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people's lifestyles back then were most likely healthier than now.
Even if that were true, it still didn't help you if you had an illness or injury, even something that wuold be annoying but trivial nowadays would kill you in an age of no antibiotics, appalling hygiene, negligible awareness of how diseases were transmitted, and do-or-die surgery.
Mount and Blade (Score:2)
Firsthand (Score:4, Informative)
Speaking as an ex-"reenactor" (Society for Creative Anachronism, http://www.sca.org/ [sca.org] I can offer the following firsthand observations:
1. The quality of fitting to the individual is probably the single most important factor in how burdensome a given suit of armor is, from the point of view of the ability to move quickly. Leggings are by far the hardest to fit correctly; they also tend to shift around the most in response to movement, so a good fitting can become a bad fitting very quickly.
2. In melee combat, the legs are hit far more often than any target other than the head. Leg armor may be encumbering, but when it comes to hand to hand combat you can't do without it.
3. When faced with archers, an unshielded fighter takes it in the arms and torso more than anywhere else.
4. Breathing difficulties are usually caused by poor ventilation in a closed-face helm, or a side effect of heat. Which brings us to:
5. Overheating is what is going to exhaust you. You're wearing not just armor, but heavy padding as well. The number one factor an SCA medic sees at a large battle is overwhelmingly heat exhaustion/heatstroke/dehydration.
Re:Firsthand (Score:5, Informative)
(sca) I found it particularly amusing, because there's an An Tir joke about "the kingmaker" being ankle-ankle-head. (/sca)
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5. Overheating is what is going to exhaust you. You're wearing not just armor, but heavy padding as well. The number one factor an SCA medic sees at a large battle is overwhelmingly heat exhaustion/heatstroke/dehydration.
Note that this depends quite a bit on the climate. There's a good reason why armour got lighter the further south you got. Also keep in mind that much of the US lies at the same latitude as the Mediteranean.
In the end, though, armour wasn't meant to be comfortable. It was meant to keep you alive, or at least make you somewhat harder to kill.
Re:Firsthand (Score:5, Informative)
Larger wars include archery, slingers (glorified tennis balls), javelins. Archery rules specify 30-pound bows maximum, padded bird blunts, arrow shafts covered with fiber tape to prevent jagged points if they break (some kingdoms disallow wooden shafts altogether and require fiberglass, because fiberglass makes a mushy rather than pointed shape when it breaks), all helms required to have no single opening that you can fit a 1/4" dowel through, no neck-exposure allowed. West-Caid war (California vs. Arizona, etc.) was a great one for that. I think they do that at Pennsic (New England vs. the Rust Belt, battle cry is "Loser gets Pittsburg!"), and Pennsic draws many thousands of fighters annually. It's quite a spectacle.
All of the above info is over a decade stale. Things may have changed, then again, maybe not. I don't know if the SCA still includes archery in wars (it was never universal; wars were announced in advance whether there were any scenarios including archery), but archery was a great way to get inexpensively into SCA war-combat. An archer needed only light body armor and a helm that was the equal of the heavy fighters. Rules are (were?) that an archer was automatically considered dead if a heavy fighter comes within ten feet, which is a good thing, as SCA melee combat is full-power full-speed. You are hitting your opponent as just as hard as your strength allows (the blow has to be hard enough to have caused injury with a real steel weapon against period armor, so such a hit on a lightly armored combatant would certainly break bones, even with SCA rattan weapons); nobody wanted to chance that a heavy would misidentify a light fighter as another heavy through limited visibility and give a full-power hit instead of a token "love tap". However, getting within ten feet isn't easy. Many an archer has happily led a heavy fighter a merry chase under the blazing sun, taunting all the way... to deal with that exercise in frustration, some fighters carried "darts" (small javelins) to smack down cocky archers with.
Good times. Add where else can you hire an entire mercenary company for a keg of home-brew?
Horses, anyone? (Score:2)
In theory, at least, the weight and unwieldy nature of the armor may have mattered less to the nobles who were most likely to wear it, simply because they rode into battle on horseback. As such, they didn't need to support themselves the whole time. The problem of the leg armor in particular largely disappears when on horseback (assuming of course that the horse itself can manage the weight).
If and when they fell off their horse, or said horse was put down, *then* they could be in trouble. But my understand
Modern Armored Combat (Score:4, Informative)
What's interesting is that modern sports combat based on western martial arts -- meaning sword and shield, full metal armor, but using modern materials -- has shifted over to using things like 6061-T6 aluminum to keep things light. Also Underarmor sweat wicking clothing (seriously). For instance, the SCA, which is interested in individuals or groups meeting in competitive combat rather than a specific battle from a particular time or place. A good deal of effort is put into finding lightweight armor that still protects your bones.
Now comes the twist: It's actually thicker and more durable, because nobody likes to hammer out their armor each week after (or during) fighter practice. So it actually lasts much much longer under a barrage of blows, but is still roughly the same weight. Apparently it's a reasonable weight to fight in, and what you can now take out with modern materials, people are adding back for durability.
Check out http://www.zoombang.com/ [zoombang.com] for really out there modern armor designed for medieval non-edged combat.
obSemiOffTopic: Deep bruises are just part of the sport -- my wife is very careful to point out early in doctor visits that she's involved in full contact martial arts. Especially as she's 5 foot and petite and I'm 6'3" and huge; we already had one nurse freak out and send me out to have a talk with her about reporting domestic violence. She now carries photos on her phone of herself in armor, holding her helm and grinning happily, just to fend off people who get the wrong idea.
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You had me at "modern armor designed for medieval non-edged combat" but Zoombang lost me with that god damn flash menu.
Oh, *physical* impacts... (Score:2)
Representative? (Score:2)
I somehow doubt that you can make a representative study of how knights in the Middle Age (you know, the ones whose almost only duty / job was to fight for his lord and who trained during his life for that) by using some modern people, who might be fit but will need a serious training to get used to it. Not to mention all of the know-how about using the armour lost during the centuries.
As a sidenote, the simplest explanation to the fact that the first armor to be eliminated was the armor of the legs may be
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there are no vital organs in the leg, so an injury there is less likely to be lethal.
Organs no, but those arteries are a real bitch.
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there are no vital organs in the leg, so an injury there is less likely to be lethal.
Organs no, but those arteries are a real bitch.
That's why I just said less lethal. I prefer not to receive any, but if I have to chose I'll go for a cut in the leg or the arm before a cut in the head any day.
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The legs themselves are rather vital if you want to run away from danger. Disabling someone's leg is very effective in combat.
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there are no vital organs in the leg, so an injury there is less likely to be lethal.
The femoral artery is the single largest artery in your body after the aortic artery. Even just knicking it, let alone severing it, will cause you to bleed out in about 30 seconds.
And considering modern standards of diet and health care, I think you could find considerably better specimens for testing endurance while wearing armor than among knights from 500 years ago.
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As a sidenote, the simplest explanation to the fact that the first armor to be eliminated was the armor of the legs may be just that there are no vital organs in the leg, so an injury there is less likely to be lethal.
The problem there is that it is very difficult to avoid a lethal injury once your leg is injured. However, I am going to guess that improved maneuverability offset the loss of protection. The introduction of gunpowder to the battlefield changed the balance between maneuverability and physical force in combat.
Scientists Study Impact of Wearing Medieval Armor (Score:2)
Scientists Study Impact of Wearing Medieval Armor
And, this being slashdor, I expected to see a story about global warming and the effect that armor had on it.
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One does not just walk in Armor.
bespoke (Score:2)
What kind of physical conditioning did they have? (Score:2)
....back then?
A friend is a history professor and he has a story (apocryphal?) about a history professor who had an exact-size copy made of some 13th century king's armor from his teens (Richard the Lionhearted?), and the armor was a good fit on a modern football linebacker.
Anyway, the idea is that the elite soldiers -- from nobility, raised to fight from a young age, the best possible diet for the era (high in protein) -- were in outstanding physical condition and very, very strong. The armor the football
House Rules (Score:4, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that the motivation for this experiment was to settle a long-standing argument about D&D encumbrance rules.
Battle of Cerignola ended the age of armor, too. (Score:2)
Besides the Battle of Agincourt, which proved that armored knights on horseback was no match for large formation of well-train longbow archers, I think another battle nearly 100 years later--the Battle of Cerignola in southern Italy--proved that full-body armor of the time was useless against the then-new gunpowder firearm, the harquebus gun.
They didn't walk, they were mounted (Score:2)
So the weight on the legs didn't matter.
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Well, I am going to turn on my brain ( you forgot to, it seems ), and apply logic and reasoning.
Being an experienced medieval reenactor means that person is experienced in wearing and moving around in, medieval armor. If you were going to study the effects of wearing heavy armor, would it not make sense to use test subjects who know how to use said armor, in the way it was used, in the 14th century?
See, how hard was that? Using your brain is not as difficult as you thought, stop being lazy and use it.
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It's somewhat sensible to use reenactors instead of random people from the street, but reenactors are hobbyists, and not real medieval soldiers. A knight trained to fight in armour would probably be quite a bit stronger and tougher than your average reenactor.
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It controls for experience. Random people off the street might be more or less able to move around in armor, all depending on how quickly they take to it. It could have been possible that wearing armor which distributes weight evenly is no more tiring than wearing a backpack, but because the volunteers weren't familiar with armor, they would expend more energy for that reason.
Also, it's not possible to go out and get real knights, because we haven't finished the time machine yet. Reenactors are the best
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A knight trained to fight in armour would probably be quite a bit stronger and tougher than your average reenactor.
There is actually quite a bit of debate about this. The question is actually quite complicated (involving diet, modern athletic training techniques, medical science and a few other factors). The conclusion generally reached is that you are correct. Most knights were stronger and tougher than your average reenactor. However, it is unlikely that they used average reenactors for this study. More likely they used guys from ARMA (Association of Rennasiance Martial Arts). There are a significant number of guys in
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Does ARMA train in period armour? Most HEMA schools (including mine) tend to train without armour, and spar with modern, lighter armour.
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Also it probably helps to have people who have worn armor before are familiar with how they're supposed to fit, how they can move in them, how they put it on.
At the -very- least, it's an important methods note. You wouldn't publish a drug trial study and leave out the fact that you used mice.
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In theory it means that they are used to the weight of the armour. I call BS, though. A medieval knight would train to fight in armour for 6-8 hours a day since he was old enough to spit. These guys put it on and stand around doing nothing much for a few hours a day. The whole idea that we can tell how well a medieval person supported armour weight by using modern untrained people is very suspect.
While an actual medieval knight would surely have outperformed a modern re-enactor that is not terribly relevant. An actual medieval knight would still have improved his personal performance by switching to a modern backup. The modern backpack doesn't rely on muscle, it relies on a physiological structure that has not really changed in the last few centuries - well perhaps scale has changed but not essential structure.
Good point (Score:2)
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You're both partially wrong. Yes, knights rode on horses for much of the middle ages, but in sieges they often fought on foot (because a horse isn't much use against a wall), and during the 100 Years War, England also often had knights fight on foot during field battles.
Also, heavy infantry like halberdiers and some swordsmen often did wear armour. Not the kind of armour that a mounted knight would wear, but pretty heavy armour nonetheless.
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This is a bit of a myth caused by extrapolation from accounts of very fancy custom suits made for kings and nobility.
In fact, there was (relatively) cheap mass produced armour too.
It's like looking back from the future only seeing Rolls-Royces, and not Fords because it's mainly records of the rich and famous that are preserved.
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I though that knights rode horses. I doubt that they did very much jogging.
Yes, however this research indicates one reason why getting a knight off his horse was considered a "good thing" by his enemies.
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Yes, however this research indicates one reason why getting a knight off his horse was considered a "good thing" by his enemies.
The standard way of getting a knight off his horse wasn't to politely ask him to dismount, it was to knock him off.
At that point, his ability to jog wasn't an issue, it was more an issue of him flopping around on the ground like a turtle on his back until his squire could come help him stand up again.
It was a "good thing" to knock him off not because he'd be hard pressed to run after you, it was because he'd be hard pressed to run away from you. Or swing a sharp cutty thing at you, for that matter.
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From an anecdote I heard somewhere recently (I think in 'The Knight' episode of Terry Jones' Medieval Lives [wikipedia.org] [highly recommend it, was on Netflix instant, these days who knows]) not only was he hard press to run away, he was hard pressed to even stand up again. The armor, however, was so good at its job you couldn't hurt him while he was on the ground until you brought out the boiling oil.
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You don't have to actually penetrate armour to injure the occupant. A decent hit with a hammer will cause a shockwave that can concuss or break bones.
Then there's a dagger through the eyeslits, or in the part that isn't armoured in order to get a better grip on the horse.
Re:Horses? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Arses? (Score:2)
Ah. I always wondered how the English won at Bannockburn, and why the Duchy of Burgundy extends from Belgium all the way down to Italy.
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Agreed, top quality body armour is a formidable force multiplier. It's like the US Army vs. insurgents. If you're not wearing modern body armour with plate inserts, you're severely disadvantaged.
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What you're forgetting is that the point of swords in medieval times was not to slash or pierce but to break bones. The Scottish Claymore is a great example, it was blunt as a butter knife, the Scots used it to great effect to break arms, leg, ribs, backs and skulls. Pl
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In Judo one of the higher katas (well, higher than those that I know) simulates(*) wearing japanese armour. And, from looking at the movements, it looks anything but comfortable.
(*)I do not know if somewhere it is actually done while wearing armour, I only saw that with the participants wearing the usual judogi.
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Brave, brave Concorde! You shall not have died in vain!
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