![]() Full plate steel armour developed in Europe during the Late Middle Ages, especially in the context of the Hundred Years' War, from the coat of plates worn over mail suits during the 14th century. Plate armour is a historical type of personal body armour made from bronze, iron, or steel plates, culminating in the iconic suit of armour entirely encasing the wearer. The age of plate armor died, but much of the armor lived on, testimony to, if nothing else, exquisite design and craftsmanship.Armour for Gustav I of Sweden by Kunz Lochner, c. Large professional armies hastened the decline of fine armor also-armorers could do better mass-producing breastplates for footsoldiers than crafting custom suits for nobles. Musket balls put an end to the golden age of armor-they could pierce most plate at a hundred yards. We are fortunate owing to the fact that iron can so quickly rust and deteriorate that such wonderful examples of armor have survived. By the mid-1500s, ceremonial armor was inlaid with precious metals and engraved with decorations and illustrations. It is not true that knights required cranes for mounting or were helpless if knocked flat.The principal drawback of full plate armor was the retention of heat. Some liked to show off by doing cartwheels in their armor some, chased by enemies, were said to have swum rivers armored. Fully armored, knights could mount their horses unaided. Suits of armor worn in battle by medieval knights weighed anywhere from 35 to 55 pounds. Sixteenth-century German armorers fluted many of their plates, increasing the plates’ strength without adding to their mass. Large plates had raised edges so any sword or lance point sliding along would not penetrate into joints. Breastplates were shaped convex in the middle to deflect blows. This they did by lapping smaller plates, called lames, connected with sliding rivets.Īrmorers showed their ingenuity in dozens of other ways. The armorers’ main challenge, of course, was allowing for free movement of the elbows, knees, and neck. They distributed the weight of their armor over the body the shoulders, for example, bore none of the mass that protected the legs. Nearly finished pieces were heated in glowing charcoal, inducing more carbon into the iron, thus turning the surfaces to steel while leaving the substance beneath more purely flexible wrought iron. But armories were not for crude people or crude production, as the surviving beauty of some suits of armor attests.Īrmorers-the best were from Germany and northern Italy-learned how to increase the thickness of plate for the areas at the middle of the chest while thinning it toward the waist and armpits. Apprenticeships lasted up to seven years craftsmen must have spent their whole working lives in such places. Their factories must have been noisy, smoky, infernal places. They cut iron plate with large, case-hardened shears. They devised mechanized bellows and trip hammers, mainly run by waterwheels. Engineers built blast furnaces to reduce the ore to iron. Metallurgists sought the finest ores, and businessmen organized miners to usher them up. Plate armor required a tremendous amount of knowledge of mining and metallurgy, plus the organizational skills, industrial training, and smithing factories for manufacture. ![]() The Technological Height of Medieval WarfareĮven a quick examination of iron plate armor puts to flight the notion that the 15th and 16th centuries were technologically unsophisticated. From the 13th century, plate armor increased over the body until by the 15th century every square inch was covered. Soon armorers were making breast- and backplates of iron to cover mail at the torsos. Ring mail also hung most of its weight from one place on the body, the shoulders. Plate armor grew out of recognition of the limitations of ring mail, which was found not to stand up to crushing blows-as from battle-axes-or to the bolts of crossbows. Who can look at a fine suit of armor from this period and not feel a mixture of pity and awe? Pity for those who felt compelled to suffer the suits’ confines, and awe for the craftsmen who made them. The golden age of armor lasted from about 1400 to 1550.
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