How to dress in medieval armour

last time I was lucky enough to get the chance to shape some plates of Steel to make a medieval arm harness or part of one these plates form the lower part of the arm the shapes good but the finish is very very rough there's a lot of work to go into it until it gets to this this is a similar piece of armour but it's in a finished state it has the rolled edge ears it has the hinges and the strapping and it's ready to go on somebody's arm but this is one small piece of medieval harness how do all the pieces interact and go together to create a practical defensive structure around the medieval soldier [Music] I'm gonna start with I've got my medieval underwear on so got my hose and I've got my army jacket this arming jacket is made to fit me it is filthy because I sweat in it pick up all the muck and horse sweat from the armour from the environment and if I wash it it changes shape so it's not been washed ever this is a coif my hair is quite long and it get well catching bits of the helmet so there you go it put on the coif this acts as a barrier between the helmet liner and my head it's not really protective as much as keeps my hair out of the way and it's a particularly medieval look we start to go out of fashion for civilian wear but I think it's quite likely they were maintained as sort of head underwear in this period so I start arming up from the feet upwards the first few bits I can do myself and are the lightest but most sophisticated and complex bit of the armour the shape of Greaves is quite complex it's got to fit especially these in clothes Greaves it's got to fit around the muscles of the leg and as anybody that's been kicked in the shins or plays sport will understand if you get hit on the shin it's incredibly painful so these go on in a particular way they are asymmetrical I've been quite careful to make sure my hose is not caught in the greaves because comfort with any sports equipment with any equipment you are going to be using in extreme situation you want it to be as comfortable as possible Greaves have a peg at the front which I will show you what it does and a loop at the back so they're not particularly tight they float quite nicely and they're not particularly heavy the originals in museums are not particularly thick metal but it will add a layer of protection this is Cui's a lot of a lot of the words that describe harness in English are French words that have been changed and adopted by the English and mispronounced as far as the French concerns so crease means thigh it's a thigh plate it has what's called a stop rib this is an interesting one because it shows you an example of a stop rib doing exactly what it's supposed to do nobody was really sure with a record stop ribs because the idea is the blow might slide up and then if it goes further up it'll get into your groin which is a bad thing people thought this might be to do with that and it is this is a blow from a lance good friend of mine Phillipe hit me a bit low there Lance broke I hit him quite high he came off the saddle and he did this damage to my armor so the stop rib did exactly what it's supposed to do it stopped the Lance sliding up into my groin so I'm quite pleased I could have had that hammered out but I quite like telling people about it and armor in cases and encapsulate SAS story so for me it's important to keep that even though it's obviously a dent it reminds me of a particular situation where I used the harness you could see the leg harness has gone the upper leg harness has gone over that peg so that keeps those two linked together and then it will go through the loop at the back right so now the Cui's and the Greve are connected together by that strap the crease itself is held up by this point this is where you start to feel the weight of the armor coming onto your body because the weight of all my leg armor is now coming through my army jacket through this point that is made of the same material that both strings are made of so what it says in the old books and it's covered with beeswax so it's slightly tacky so when you make not the knot holds itself together that's very important if that gets cut my leg harness will drop and that could lock the knee which would reduce my mobility you see the crease goes part round the leg not all the way around the leg because for this particular harness this is designed for riding as much as it is for foot combat so on the inside there's going to be a horse on the outside this needs to wrap round but not go too far because I don't want this bit rubbing on the saddle or interfering with how I use my leg on the horse there's one bit it's the next bit going on harness this high-status harness for a wealthy man is made-to-measure you can get munitions armor in the medieval period cheaper quality just as protective in arguably not made-to-measure and probably a bit less sophisticated it probably wouldn't have had the gilding on it because munitions armor was supplied to the rest of the men that were fighting with you as a knight so you would perhaps apply them where the breastplate probably wouldn't bother with leg armor it depends on how wealthy you were as a knight or Lord and status is a very important component of armor armor protects you physically on the battlefield it also makes you a bit of a target if you've got fancy armor on people know that you are wealthy and might wants to kill you potentially or more likely in the medieval period they might would capture you this harness is going to become different on the right and the left but at the moment it's pretty much the same it put my male skirt on now male as in the material not male as in masculine this is designed to protect several areas the obvious area of my body protects is my groin but it also protects the armor itself because as I said before if you cut to this if this comes off the leg harness can slip down and lock your knees so the male also protects the points and the attachments of the armor you can see how the layers are effectively protecting each other but a little bit like the tiles of a roof but they protect each other so this got to go more or less evenly it needs a bit of repair armor is not fixed in place this is torn so it's the last time I used it so I will need to get my Squire me to actually attach that again but for the moment it'll do its job so up to now I've been able to arm myself and if I was of high status back in the time I probably wouldn't have armed myself to be honest I'd have probably stood there and been armed but I quite like doing this it's sort of quite nice to do now I need a squire to start to help me the armor starts to get difficult to put on yourself and I will bring in my lovely assistant so we're going to put on the breastplate first a lot of people think breastplate covers your belly as well it doesn't it just covers your chest and your ribs this is the back has got lovely shapes on it but it's also meant to protect your spine and the front is a bit plainer so if I was a proper medieval knight I'd probably be drinking a glass of wine about now and just basically standing here and being armed but I are actually going to get a little bit involved because I'm not too busy from night so this is adjusted over the shoulders normally I'd be wearing male underneath this as well male voices but I've taken those off for repair at the moment and you'll see how the points are being organized so that we could do the next thing afterwards his Armour will layer up justic so this is the breastplate it effectively just covers my ribcage it allows me lots of flexibility but it protects the upper body and make sure everything's in the right place and then we will go for the plaque art the plaque art takes the lower body groin and is a bigger piece of armor but interacts with this top piece to be flexible I think you need to be on the other size me you have to be a bit careful of fingers because armors edges whilst they're not deliberately sharp they are just raw edges of metal that's been finished and polished over but they can cut and catch your fingers I have no idea whether this rope thing we're going to do is authentic or not but what it enables us to do is squeeze the armor closed and it makes attaching the buckles much easier and then when I take the pressure off this rope the armor then sits into itself and and tightens up the buckles and it seems to work for us so chances are this was done somebody jokingly referred to this rope as a PI rope because you need more rope if you've eaten more pies that's a modern joke if nothing's doing medieval things but right now you can see how suddenly it looks like I've got a lot more armor on I've got my plaque up breastplate these art assets these are designed again to protect the thigh to protect the part of you that is likely to get hit so if I'm on a horse and I didn't have these the armor theoretically you could go up underneath very easily this and this plate acts as an extra protection yes you could get something underneath it but if something hits there you got this and then you've got my mail and both work quite well these tassets can be set in different ways you can see they're adjustable you could if I was fighting on but I could adjust them to be vertical like this these are actually set for use on horse so they're slightly wide so they look a little odd now but when I want a horse they actually work and that's what the position that being on horse so they would align with my legs so a little tiny detail that you can tell whether somebody's intending to ride a horse or not when they're in this kind of armor theoretically by the way they're tassets are set so we're pretty much done with the symmetrical part of the armor so now I'm going to start putting on my arms the arms are multiple pieces but they're all attached so they they're linked together by strips of leather that's riveted and then they're just attached at the top here with one point and so this is the lower cannon of my vambrace of embraces this arm harness completely you can see it protects some of my arm but again not all of it there's a gap here which would be filled with mail and it is a bit shorter than most people think it should be it's not too it's not like pair of sleeves is actually quite short because it's got some free up these bits of the wrist you need to be able to move your wrist so it's sort of sits it's bit further back than you would think and then we've got a massive plate which protects the crook of the arm I'm mostly with this harness going to be this arm in this position because I'm going to be holding the reins and guiding the horse and this is my arm that's going to do a lot of action this just protects the inner part of my arm it's curved all the way around and effectively shuts all the gaps if you get hits on the inside of your arm you've got lots of blood vessels and tendons and things and that's very vulnerable the inside of any curve of your body is vulnerable this helps protect it it's actually got two layers you can't see it from now but there's a smaller piece and a grand piece over the top right for the next bit this is my right arm obviously and you can start to see there's difference for one side to the other the elbow piece on this side that cooter is a different shape I'll I'll explain why in a moment so you could see this is much bigger than this that's because both sides of my body are going to be doing different things it's going to be holding the reins this is going to be holding the weapon or in many cases the Lance this came all the way over like this the Lance would catch on it so it's specifically designed to give you as much protection as it can whilst you're holding alarms and will be the same with a next piece of armor upon my up on my shoulder so we are starting to getting into armor that's asymmetrical because I'm expecting a threat mostly from my left hand side and I'm going to give the threat with my right hand side let's have a look at podiums this is where try and keep my hair out of the way this is a pauldron it's a very big piece of armor it covers parts of my chest all the way around my shoulder down my arm a little bit and onto my back and it's got two layers as well so when it's attached I will show you it protects my heart quite well this particular position I'm standing in now is seen in illustrations as a famous illustration called how a man shall be armed from the fifteenth century and a knight with his arm on the shoulder is Squire or the squire doing all the bits and pieces up is is actually characteristic and it works so you can see the armor works in tandem with itself so I've got elbow protection I've got shoulder protection two layers of armor on this and when I'm riding it protects quite a big part of my not quite my heart my heart's here but it protects a big part of the side of my body that's the side likely to get hit by somebody Lansing at me especially in the joust right this pauldron is cut away and again you could probably see why it said I can hold a lance so arguably I'm less protected on my right hand side than on my left-hand side although the Lance will act as a protection because it blocks the space so you can see rains in this hand holding like this glance in this hand glance would go under here under my armpit to allow me to couch it this is where you would attach a lance rest so if you were doing a joust of war or you were wanting to kill somebody with a lance you have a hook attached to here and this hook comes out here you put the lance on top of it and you have what's called a grapper and the grapper effectively when the lance is pushed back by impact the grappler grips onto the lance rest and it will put all the impact of my body through the tip of the lance I'm missing gloves which and a gauntlet and a helmet so we'll try putting on throat and face protection and the open face helmet so this is a piece of armour often not seen in television and movies so this is a piece of armor often not seen in movies and television for the obvious reason that it protects your face and your throat it makes conversation difficult and if you use it properly it hides half of your face so we're going to see what the sound is like but you can understand why if you're paying a actor a lot of money then you don't want this up because you want to see their face but this is essential in combat because your face and your throat are the most vulnerable things on your body or amongst the most valuable things on your body so put the helmet on the open face helmet please now push it down thank you the helmet is essential even the loneliest soldiers I would imagine would have wanted helmet first as a first piece of armor maybe gloves and some protection for the hands but helmet first you get hit in the head you're done for this is a salad but it doesn't have a visor on it this is exactly the same helmet but it's not the face protection now we see in the illustrations that we've got of the period that some people rode around with helmets with visors like this and some without typically a lot of the English cavalry didn't have visors now we don't really know the reason for that one of my ideas is that there was less threat from missile weapons from the enemies of the English than there was threat from longbows from the English so the enemies of the English had to wear visors otherwise they'd get shot in the face but the English Knights themselves perhaps decided not to take the risk to have greater vision what I know for a fact is that if you've got your visor down you can't see very well and you can't hear very well and so you're vulnerable because you can't see threats if you can have your visor open like this or just don't have a visor you are actually quite able to see around a monitor the battlefield and take advantage so I guess this would have been a personal choice I quite liked in my battle reenactments to have no visor probably because I'm not actually going to be attacked and therefore I can see well but if I was going into the joust obviously I would wear probably helmet different from this but I would at least wear a visor to protect my face [Music] I really like wearing medieval armor because it's a form of time travel and it allows you to imagine what it was like back a few hundred years when people were wearing it for real if it's authentic armor which mine is 15th century it's exactly the same kind of stuff that they would have been wearing so your experiences when wearing it are the same as their experiences your mind might be in a different place and I've never actually been preparing for battle but the armor takes 2530 minutes to put on properly and the average night would have had quite a large retinue of people to help him put the armor on and the armor has to go on properly as well if the armor the armor doesn't feel right or something's uncomfortable underneath it you will be distracted in the battle and that distraction could cause your death or more likely it could cause injury because if it rubs in the wrong place and rubs you raw you might get an infection from the battlefield and we all know that medieval battlefields were quite filthy horrible places so even a minor injury could have actually caused infection and without antibiotics and proper modern treatment an infection can kill you so you would be very sensible to put your armor on carefully and properly before you went in to fight with it please like and subscribe and don't forget to use that notification button if you can and we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Modern History TV

Views: 1,039,705

Rating: 4.9648819 out of 5

Keywords: jason kingsley, medieval, middle ages, knight, Armour, Armor, Chainmail, Plate armour, Harness, Helmet, 15th century, milanese, knight in armor, knight in armour, expert

Id: V8-eeJUcO5M

Length: 23min 21sec (1401 seconds)

Published: Fri May 11 2018