Armor Is Heavy
by Josh Witten on July 20, 20119 comments
Researchers at the University of Leeds have determined that knights wearing full plate armor would have become exhausted while lugging 30-50kg of metal around the medieval battlefield, especially a muddy one like Agincourt. Being a bit tired is, of course, better than being rendered dead due to hacking with metal objects. Except that enormous numbers of French knights at Agincourt did wind up dead, apparently due to being too tired to prevent being lethally hacked with metal objects.
Ironically, the longbow may have won Agincourt, not because of the high velocity pointy bits it flung at people, but because of the exhausting measures people took to counteract those high velocity pointy bits.
Follow this link to see some poor bastard getting talked into running on a treadmill in replica armor. Then you can go to your nearest Renaissance Fair and understand why the reenactors spend most of their time sitting in the shade and very little time “having at thee”.
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9 comments
Matthew Payne on July 20, 2011 at 6:24 pm. #
Not buying it. Look at that guy on the treadmill! Looks like an accountant. Your 14th century French knight was inured to suffering and trained from 12 at carrying that stuff around. The high nobility might have been winded, but your average free lance could fight for hours, on foot, in the stuff. They were also built like brick outhouses.
Josh on July 21, 2011 at 12:39 am. #
For the purposes of the study, the physical fitness of the test subjects (there were more than that poor schlub) was not the main point. The energetic requirements of carrying that much weight in that configuration is large. While a trained knight would certainly bear up under the strain better, there is no getting around the fact that the armor was a huge burden as well as being protective.
Incidentally, I know a lot of brick outhouses from rugby. Lacking even the burdens of armor or swinging really heavy weapons, incredibly fit people cannot maintain the intense, whole body, physical activity we typically think of for melee combat for hours. In rugby, we can only manage 40 minutes at a time, the action is intermittent, and we have halftime. The most powerful players involved in the close action often only play for 60 minutes.
Matthew on July 21, 2011 at 7:53 am. #
Fortunately, we don’t need to speculate. We have historical information in accounts of melees and techniques (such as German Fechtbooks). Apparently, these guys could bash each other for prolonged periods of time and William Marshall was famous for making a good living at this, not just jousting. Agincourt was rather rough–the melee last three hours, which I think would wind anyone (even without the tin suit). Remember medieval armor was much lighter before the 14th century (mostly chain, not plate) and knights, actually, usually fought supported–either in a sheild wall or on horseback. In fact, they were primarily heavy cavalry whose ability to deal, on foot, with pikemen or even squirmishers, was hardly optimal.
I always love these “scientific” experiments which seem to leave us historians out!
Josh on July 21, 2011 at 9:12 am. #
Matthew, I agree that ignoring the input of historians when attempting “experimental history” is bad practice, and that they might have been better served to find trained athletes for the test as comparable individuals (though fitting a member of the Leeds rugby side into medieval armor might be tricky).
Because we cannot entirely trust the historical sources to be unbiased or accurate, it is useful to put parameters on some of the claims, such as what a human being is actually capable of doing. You know this better than I, but histories are telling stories, not necessarily facts. Based on my athletic experiences, it seems improbable that high energy melee combat, especially with heavy weapons and encumbering armor could have lasted for extended periods of time (dehydration would be a huge factor). I’m willing to believe that people could club each other for hours, but I would like to see someone actually do it. Combat with shield walls, lulls in battle, rest periods, or rotating combatants could create hour long, physiologically plausible battles, but ones that are very different from depictions in media and non-academic history.
The main message that the French knights would have been far more exhausted at point of contact and this had significant impact on the battle holds up.
My point about the credit to the longbow was light-hearted, but essentially agrees with you. The increase in size of armor had perhaps exceeded a useful optimum and was, especially under the circumstances of Agincourt, detrimental. I’m suspicious that the armor development was actually responding to a desire to prevent injury in tournaments and training, rather than battlefield utility.
Josh on July 21, 2011 at 10:13 am. #
Having taken the time to delve in to slightly more detail, the researchers used 4 experienced re-enactors for the study (early descriptions called them museum staff only), in order that the test subjects would be used to wearing armor. If these guys are anything like the re-enactors that come to fairs on Parker’s Pieces in Cambridge, then your brick outhouse comment is still very relevant.
Nick Glossop on July 21, 2011 at 3:35 pm. #
Might I suggest we create our own series of videos? Josh can try rugby in chain mail, Lenoe can have a go at rowing in a breastplate and gauntlets. We can send Parker cycling around China with a visor and lance. For my part, I’ll post a Youtube video of myself reciting the Saint Crispin’s Day speech after polishing off a bottle of absinthe.
Matthew on July 21, 2011 at 7:27 pm. #
Oh, hell, Nick, don’t I get in on the fun. Josh, you are so right about the mistaken impressions given by Hollywood movies or “Game of Thrones.” Actual tournaments involved ransoming the vanquished knights and ranged over miles and miles of some poor peasants’ meager farms until well into the age of chivalry. The “lists” were made up of six foot high stakes driven into the ground and one’s squires would launch fresh lances to their retreating knights over it. Smarter (and richer) Knights relied on phalanxes of pike men to ward of expert ransomers like William Marshall. Women were explicitly not allowed until the thirteenth century since the likelihood of death or injury to onlookers (and possible rape for women) was not negligible.
These events were about as genteel as a bar fight in a biker bar. Anyone interested in reading a great account on how European knights were “civilized” (when not sending them off to slaughter in the Holy Land or against the heathen Lithuanians) should check out Norbert Elias’ The Civilizing Process–the chapter on violence.
Josh on July 22, 2011 at 5:11 am. #
Matthew, great book suggestion. I shall have to see if I can acquire it. Sure the tournaments in “Game of Thrones” are wrong, but the dragons, zombies, and gorgeous prostitutes are all based in reality, right?
I’d also point out that a lot of history (not just Hollywood) generated for the public is very credulous about propaganda-esque descriptions of battle. From my vague recollection, Parke Godwin’s novels Firelord and Sherwood (retelling Arthur and Robin Hood legends, respectively) actually have relatively decent (and brutal) descriptions of combat and tournaments at that time.
The utility of experiments is to give us a framework for understanding historical sources, essentially what is possible. This concept, however, is really hurt by hacky approaches to things like engineering (e.g., Stonehenge & pyramids) when we don’t have great understanding of methodologies. It has applicability when we are dealing with the capabilities of known materials or human physiology. There needs to be more exchange between historians and experimentalists to make sure the details are done as well as possible.
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