The EVOLUTION of Medieval Armor

the teutonic knights are a great example how arms and armor evolved they span from the time of the crusade through to the height of the beginning of the 15th century so you're probably wondering what are we doing outside of the workshop and what am i doing dressed as a night this is a talk that we got to give at the abbey medieval festival here in brisbane australia with a teutonic knight reenactment group looking at the history of arms and armor and how that evolved with time i've been armor for about three years professionally now and it's not very often that we get to escape the dungeon of the workshop and get out in the wild with the general public and see that armor in real life in this video you'll get to see us put a dent in one of our helmets differ lady knight and answer a few commonly misconceived questions on armor such as a few pet peeves i have about armor in the film industry stay tuned to the end of the video for all of that goodness and let's crack on and talk history first things first armor how did it evolve you could actually see um right here a few different examples configurations of armor i'm depicting a night from around the year 12 50 so the middle of the 13th century and that time the teutonic knights were in eastern europe going to war against the lithuanians and the poles clearing a territory for themselves this is about the middle of the order and when they're most active i have uh shouts mail shouts on my legs that cover my entire leg i have under that a hornberg that comes down to my knees sleeves that extend down to my wrists and uh historically they would have had mitts similar to this that were actually attached to the male shirt itself and on top of my head i wear a padded a padded koi covered by this male koi underneath that this is actually a really cool moment where we get to see lots of different pieces of armor coming together in the one place see his armor is we're often working very hard on the details of one specific piece but it takes a re-enactor to take that piece and combine it with all the other bits and pieces the mail and the clothing and the weapons and consider a living breathing character in time to take it let it shine and bring it to life as a living recreation of history and that is capped with this helmet here um this helmet is actually known as the dargan helm it's a replica of a helmet in berlin in the museum of berlin it's the earliest surviving great helm we have and may have been worn by a german night or a teutonic night in time which is pretty cool even some of the little details like the uh the way that this is shaped here at the front come directly from the original piece which i find very exciting i have a few of the guys here wearing um adrian step forward adria's wearing another helmet i've happened to make another dargan helm and in case you guys are wondering how real the armor is does it actually do the job is it safe i've got adrian to put on his helmet and i'm going to give him a bit of a crack just so you can see the uh armor in action it's good to know you're ready are you prepared all right got my dawns have you got your will in order yes all right we should proceed everything goes to the cheetons how are you adrian good good harder [Music] so the idea of armor is to protect the wearer inside of um adrian's helm here adrian if you remove your helmet there is a liner inside the helmet uh it's actually a suspension liner and the idea of the suspension liner that actually reduces the force of impact so a lot of the force goes into that flex of the liner it's padded linen with a wool sometimes i use horse hair to stuff these liners but this on top of more padding and mail provides an excellent protection for the head as you can see adrian is fine and the helmet's done its job factor hasn't deformed at all apart from a few nicks here at the front thank you adrian so moving forward in history let's move forward about 100 years and we have the 14th century armor in the 14th century we see a lot of experimentation in plate armor at the very beginning of the 13th century they're still wearing complete mail they begin to add coats of plates later about the mid-14th century we start to see single-piece lobos breastplates like what sarah's wearing here we see legs tweets and greaves being added eventually arms and then by the end of the 14th century the early 15th century where the teutonic knights end at the battle of tenenberg we actually see head to toe full plate armor on the battlefield it's interesting to note that the full plate suit of armor that we're so often familiar with in the common conception of a knight is not something that occurs to far later in the medieval period closer to the renaissance in fact most of the medieval period is a tapestry of different styles and experimentation with armor and a process of constant change and that's what's fascinating for me as a modern armorer is that i get to look at the whole tapestry from beginning to end and choose between all of these different styles not getting stuck like armors in history were in one specific style in time that's what makes understanding the evolution of armor so important to placing yourselves correctly in that historical narrative some examples of helmets that they wore in the 14th century are these uh clap visor helmets very classic german helmets which is why in our group we depict german teutonic knights these are the helmets that we use sarah's just gonna put on her helmet and a few quick features with sarah's helmet as well you can see it completely encapsulates her face it has what's called an oven tail attached to it sarah spin 360 degrees for me this uh aventail here is stitched on and attached the helmet protecting her has a padded liner under it to take the impact of weapons and this protects sarah's shoulders her throat it's very difficult for me to get into sarah's throat when she's wearing that turn to face me what's great about bassinets they all have this classic point towards the top and this gothic art shape unlike the flat top dargan helms you saw this deflective surface makes it very hard for me to actually put any kind of concussive force into her head plus the suspension liner so we're seeing an evolution in the understanding of how armor works later on in the 15th century we moved to a helmet such as this one a salad salad is probably the most common helmet from the 15th century and uh takes over from the bassinet and the great helms going into the 15th century weapons weapons all right so weapons also evolve with the armor in the earlier time periods the sword the axe the spear or the weapons of choice swords like this one from from the earliest time period in the crusade times we also have axes axes like this one brad step forward please designed to hew through the opponent the axe is a deadly weapon um even male can be busted and broken with this weapon here an interesting thing to note about weapons and combat and history is that most fighters use pole arms first and foremost before their swords swords are sort of like a side carry if you think about modern combat a weapon a spear or an axe was your rifle your sword was your side carry and worse comes to worse you have that dagger that you can starve a man when he's down actually that's a great question how do you take down a fully armored knight what gets through all that mail and armor or plate armor that goes on there well if you can't give him a strong enough blow to concuss him the main goal is to get him on the ground yeah sarah i'm going to demonstrate with you once again um i met your pleasure in battle sarah might be wearing a lot more kits she'd be wearing a helmet and all of those components as well max can you put your helmet back on for me in combat most weapons that we have here can't actually get through the armor you know you might have heard of swords cutting through armor never happens swords cannot cut through armor axes can barely cut through armor if anything they don't cut through it they just cave it in in places where it's weakest a tool like this can potentially be used to puncture armor with what's called a crow's beak this point here a well-placed strike to the helmet may puncture the helmet and even then it probably gets stuck in that armor difficult to pull out may not penetrate the full way i really want to take sarah down i need to actually get in close with her maybe concuss her get behind her and throw her to the ground that's a dip syrup [Laughter] and while she's pinned down maybe i have another knight helping me hold her to the ground she's squirming she's trying to get away there's a couple of places i can actually kill her and they're not fun places first and foremost is in the throat up and under here i can stab her through there i can subdue her and go through the ocularium straight through the eyeball through the brain into the back of the skull and last but not least there's an artery in here which because of movement this place in the night is never covered that's how you go to the toilet by the way in case you're wondering this is never covered you can always get here so if i can restrain her i can get the carotid artery right in the thigh and she'll bleed to death or if i don't want to kill her i'll ransom her because knights are worth a lot of money and if i was a uh a mana arms or someone of lower status capturing a knight ransoming them later would make me quite wealthy that's probably what i do thanks to sarah yes give her a round of applause um so that's a general scope of arms and armor we go from mail bringing in great helms great helms replaced by bassinets bassinets replaced by full armor like you could see on the jousters if you guys got out to go see them um arms and armor evolve from basic weapons daggers swords and spears all the way through to pole axes and warhammers designed to puncture that plate and name the knight and that's pretty much the history of arms and armor in a in a nutshell i'm open to any questions you might have as an armorer as a professional i try and answer all your questions as best as i can so thank you very much [Applause] questions

Channel: IronCrown Workshop

Views: 138,561

Keywords: medieval, knight, history, joust, jousting, armor, armorer, great, helm, teutonic, crusader, sword, axe, fight, battle, talk, education, blacksmith, workshop, plate, chainmail, helmet, breastplate, abbey, festival

Id: B6zRxRvsjgk

Length: 11min 35sec (695 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 23 2022