Medieval Armour: BRIGANDINE / COAT OF PLATES - Why Were the Plates on the INSIDE?

[Music] hey folks matt easton here scholar gladiator so you've seen this brigandine quite a lot of times on my channel uh it's a nice piece of armor i'm very fond of it and it's very effective and it was also a very popular type of armor particularly in the 15th century and into the 16th century as well and it had its roots in the 14th century coated plates now a question which has come up a number of times under videos where i featured this is why are the steel plates and so just so you're aware just as shad pointed out this is not leather armor in fact there's no leather here really except for the straps um why are the plates the steel plates hardened carbon steel on the inside rather than the outside um and that's a very good question and we don't really know the answer but the fact is that in europe there was a tradition um and a convention for putting the plates until we get to the so-called all-white harness and you know having a brush plates on a brush plate there was a convention for putting the plates on the inside of the fabric and yes sometimes these were leather but usually they were a type of fabric sometimes layered in fact usually layered so you usually have a tougher fabric on the underneath and then a nicer fabric on the outside and i suppose the question is why did they put that on the inside well when did this start with the coat of plates so for anyone who doesn't know in the 13th century we should go all the way back to the 1200s now a type of defense started to appear on torsos of knights so men at arms who were otherwise pretty much covered in male armor chain male armor so they've got male on their legs male on their arms metal on their bodies they're wearing a full you know full length long-sleeved male mitten um jacket little coat if you want to call it that haul book is the correct term and they're male sources or legs okay which cover their feet as well and then uh it went around their head and so covered their koi covered their neck and head and then on the top they stuck uh various types of helmet usually a great helm but sometimes underneath the male of the koi there was a sevelia which eventually evolved into the bassinet um as well so um on their bodies they presumably found in the 13th century either and i wrote my degree dissertation on this subject but either because of arrows or crossbow bolts or because of lance's or just because of weapons in general possibly partly because of contact with the mongols and various other people from outside of what we conventionally call europe um so new types of armor technology being experienced lamela rama and other things being noted and emulated perhaps to some degree but for all of these potential reasons and i'm not saying it's for anyone or any particular balance but for all of these possible reasons they developed the coat of plates and the coater plates was a series of large iron plates which were riveted almost always not always but almost always on the inside of a covering now the covering could be leather it could be fabric of various sorts but the plates were riveted on the inside usually okay and one of the most famous examples we see of this is the same morris statue where that you can clearly see the outliner plates riveted on the inside of a garment which is over the top of the male horbook now what's interesting is that this development of the plate around the torso and obviously the torso is a large certainly from the front relatively flat surface that is very vulnerable to arrows and lances this seems to be one of the first things really to get plated but if we look at the medieval artwork what's often got lots of attention in the medieval artwork are the development of the plates for the arms and the legs okay and the the problem with the medieval artwork is that in this period knights or men at arms wore various types of material covering over their torsos and for many parts over their legs as well that you could call a surcoat and or various other names that were in use at the time but basically that carries their heraldic device and so it was very important to them for identification and status and everything else to have their heraldic clothing worn over their armor for students of armor the problem is it hides the development of the kota plates and so we only get to see the development of the coater plates either in art where that outer heraldic garment has been taken off or stripped off or sometimes in statues and effigies and things brasses occasionally where you see in the sides so the heraldic covering covers the front and back and very occasionally we see the sides of the armor of the torso armor underneath that heraldic covering anyway that's a massive topic and i'll cover the coat of plates in more depth in a future video definitely and people like ian laspina have have covered this as well on knight erin channel um but the coat of plates conventionally if not always involve plates being secured on the inside of the fabric i think possibly originally this may have been for two purposes number one it means that the plates are against your male and the fabric is against the fabric just think about that for a second so remember that the coat of plates was essentially sandwiched between a male horbook and a heraldic fabric coat on the outside and by putting the plates on the inside of the coat of plates it means that the steel plates on the inside of here are against your male armor okay so they're just gonna iron is gonna rub on iron no big problem there and then on the outer surface the fabric or leather covering on the outside will rub against the material of your heraldic coat surcoat so you've got no problem there because the fabric's not going to damage the fabric the iron is not going to damage the iron and these two are riveted to get together so they're not really going to damage each other if you put it the other way around if you put the plates on the outside you'd have iron plates rubbing against the surcoat and potentially ripping it to shreds if you're riding around for any amount of time and on the inside you've had the lever or the fabric over the top directly of your mail which might cause some kind of rocking or kind of just generally the male wearing away at the inner surface of the fabric covering underneath the plates and this kind of thing so that's one possible idea another possible idea is that it's to do with essentially weatherproofing so remember that iron rusts and it's a real nuisance like that but if you have a fabric covering on the outside it does mean that to some degree the iron or steel plates on the inside are protected from the elements protected from the weather which means less maintenance it also means you can color this and you can make it look bright and you're not going to end up with horrible rusty iron and this kind of stuff um and to some degree that helps protect also the male armor that's underneath there as well and you have to remember that maintenance trying to keep rust off stuff in the medieval period must have been a constant battle and so i think that what happens when we get to the brigandine in the 15th and going into the 16th centuries as well but when we get into the 15th century is when the brigandine starts growing out of the corozina and the various forms of kota plates that were around at the end of the 14th century i think what happens is they just continue that tradition of having the fabric over the iron and i think you have to remember something else as well that iron wasn't seen as a glamorous surface um to have whereas now we have the we have the mental image of the shining knight or the steel the shining steel warrior being this medieval kind of um icon whereas actually if you look at medieval art often we see helmets were painted sometimes helmets were covered in fabric we see breast plates which are one piece brush plates sometimes covered in velvet sometimes gilded sometimes painted so the fact is that the medieval people the medieval mindset liked bright colors and like you know my broken dean happens to be black but it could have been bright red it could have had brocade patterns all over it could be bright green with lurid yellow flowers and that would actually be more historically accurate than a black one i should point out incidentally black was not particularly widely used actually in this period but so bright colors gordy colors showing off also colors that relate to your heraldry as well if you are someone who has a coat of arms so i think that there are many many things at play and many reasons why fabric was on the outer surface of the plates but and i did mention this earlier on in this video there are exceptions to that and occasionally we do see if you look at for example the romance of alexander um from the 1340s or if you look at various other sources we do occasionally see a coat of plates or a burgundy or corazina where the plates for ex are like scales on the outside and we do occasionally see that i think in the holcomb bible hulk picture bible is an example as well so we do occasionally see the plates on the outside it's just not normal and i think that's for the aforementioned reasons anyway i'd be very interested to hear your input and your theories i know some people watch this channel who are bigger armor experts than i am by a long margin so i'd be fascinated to hear your ideas about why you think that the convention for most if not all maybe 90 percent of multi-plate armors in the 14th 15th and 16th centuries was to have the plates on the inside and the fabric on the outside do you agree with the points i've made do you have additional points do you disagree with any of the points i've made i'd be very interested to hear because i'm genuinely interested in discussing this topic and expanding my thinking on it because i think it's a very very interesting subject to talk about anyway give us a like and a subscribe if you haven't done already and i'll see you really really soon again for another arma video or something else weapon related on scholar gladiator channel cheers folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our facebook a like and subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks

Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 46,028

Rating: 4.9837565 out of 5

Keywords: medieval armor, medieval armour, brigandine, coat of plates, armour, armor, knight, soldier, medieval combat, matt easton, scholagladiatoria

Id: aGPBU4AU48s

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020