The FIRST Medieval Knights' BREAST PLATES - A Triumph of Design

let's look at some of the earliest medieval breast plates hey folks Mass here scholar Gladiator so this is a medieval armor video now many of you will be familiar with the term breastplate you think you know what that means you probably do it means a plate of metal usually it could be another material protecting the chest now first thing to say is obviously plates to protect the chest have been around since ancient times so in ancient Greece they had bronze breast plates we've got muscle cures in the Roman era for um for officers and there's various other for even if we look at other parts of the world if we go to Persia or India or other places we find things which are roughly analgous to breast plates but in the medieval period what I'm wearing here the male shirt was pretty much the standard form of armor certainly in uh Western Europe for most of the early medieval period up until let's call it the Norman era okay uh and in fact beyond that into the first the Second Crusade predominantly people relied for their body defenses on male commonly known as chain mail now admissibly if you go east we start to find things like Lamela and forms of scale armor as well in fact scale armor was around obviously in the Roman era also so there were other things apart from just male or chain mail but as we get into the medieval period as we get into the 13th century we start to see forms of body defense where they C clearly found by this point due to numerous reasons we can maybe debate this in a future video but I won't go down that tangent now for numerous reasons they decided to start armoring the Torso to a higher degree but this wasn't the first time in Western Europe that they started armoring the Torso to a slightly high degree and the first mentions of breast plates in fact if we actually go back into the late 1100s so kind of Richard III's Reign we do find some isolated mentions to both breast plates of iron in fact there's one uh mentioned in relation to Richard III's um kind of Armory and it seems to be associated with jousting equipment and we'll come back to that in a second and additionally there are also the earliest mentions of curas now ciras or quas I've talked about this word before quir is French for leather okay so this gives us a hint that perhaps some of the earliest breast plates might not have been metal medieval western European breast plates other is might not have been metal at all but might have been leather but that's probably a topic all for itself as we get into the 13th century we find the development of something called the coat of plates now what is the coat of plates if you don't know already it's essentially the ancestor of this okay so this is a brigandine and you've seen this in numerous videos of mine uh if I was doing 15th century um impression or reenactment I could shove this over this male shirt that I'm wearing and that would be a very typical 15th century combo a brigandine with over a male shirt and sometimes worn by itself with no male shirt underneath great form of armor but the ancestor of this was the coated plates in other words fabric canvas sometimes leather on the outside and plates on the inside so as we go into the 13th century for numerous reasons that could be debated and in fact I did my degree disit kind of looking into this many many moons ago 25 years ago um the ca plates was developed in the 1200s okay so we start to see plates being added under a fabric or leather garment and worn over the top of male and this obviously provides a lot more protection against arrows crossbows crossbow bolts uh lances and obviously hand weapons as well and in turn it has an effect on the weapons that are being used to overcome armored opponents you know if they're more heavily armored you need to look at perhaps more powerful types of lants being used more powerful types of Arrow and crossbow bolt being shot by crossbows and longbows um and hand weapons develop as well as you start to you can't just stab straight at the middle of someone's uh torso and have any chance of going through you have to go for gaps and therefore you probably develop more and do do develop more pointy types of sword and Dagger and so on okay so that's again another major topic which we have covered in previous videos and I'm sure we'll revisit again soon but fundamentally you've now got the coat of plates now the big difference between the ca plates and the brigandine uh generally speaking is the ca plates is simpler it has larger and fewer plates okay so you're talking about less much much less plates than a later brandine and larger plates now this does cover the Torso down to around the groin or waste okay so fundamentally you've got something which is protecting the Torso um front and back usually although dominantly the front and there are certain types of early coat plate up here around 1250 which seem to protect the front but they kind of lap around the side a bit but they don't necessarily provide full protection at the back and these are very popular in modern boher for example where 14th century armor is the most uh replicated type of armor so we're talking now about the 1300s and as we go into the 1300s indeed the ca plates is the predominant type of torso armor worn over a male shirt to augment a male shirt okay so um it's a number of plates and they're arranged in different ways and they're not all the same some of them have plates horizontally some have plates vertically they very often you have some vertical plates some horizontal plates and there's all different Arrangements now one of the greatest sources we have for the coat of plates is from the Battle of visby in 1361 published in 1939 by B thorman in two big volumes and in the battle in 1361 lots of people were killed and thrown into Mass Graves and their bodies weren't stripped of all their equipment so lots of armor went into the graves as well and a lot of that armor is COA plates in fact pretty much all of the armor is coat of plates and sort of Lamela um and they're all different no what no two coats of plates are the same they are all different Arrangements of horizontal and uh horizontal and vertical plates in different placements in different sizes and arrangements and in fact we also have a couple of examples from a place called kusak in Switzerland as well uh that were discovered in a castle ruin um and there's various others also and they're all different so there was no one strict formula for the size of plates shape of plates how you arrang them and what coverage they gave but the coat of plates as a generic thing was the main form of torso protection in the 14th century but what you often notice if you look at 14th century art is you often notice that the top part of the breast as we go into the second half of the 14th century so after 1350 you start to see the top part of the breast has a slightly more globular and sometimes people describe it as pigeon chested shape okay if we look at for example the Black Prince's Effigy which although he died I think in 1376 it probably dates to the 1380s about 10 years later uh he has this shape his upper breast is quite globular and this is very very typical of the time so in the late 1300s is very typical so what's going on well a couple of things firstly the early 14th century COA plates seems to have been quite flatchested but by the time we get into the late 14th century there were types of COA plates sometimes known as Corina uh which involve a larger plate up here which is uh con essentially with the COA plates but underneath there is a One Singular larger plate or sometimes a pair of plates and this is the term we see mentioned in the sources which together give a globular upper chest okay but is this really a breastplate not EX exactly however we do have mentions of breast plates so I'm just going to pull a book up here so this is pretty much one of the Bibles uh this is European armor by Claude Blair this is a first edition I've got have actually a couple of these um and he gives some early early mentions of breast plates being separate from um from coat of plates so we've got obviously references to coota plates in the late 12 or certainly artistically in the late 1200s second half of the 1200s and we've got written references to them in the 1300s loads and they they're often just referred to in the inventories as plates or pairs of plates but uh what we start to see from about the 1330s 1340s are references for example here pen uh po leust um so patrin for the Jou and then in 1361 a Bru plate po juust so a breast plate for joust um and a pectoral and other terms which which are clearly describing a distinct and separate breastplate so here we have it so 1330s 1340s and then um uh Claude Blair goes on to give various examples uh of Effigies and uh from the 1340s through to the 1370s which essentially show separate plates and in fact by the time we get to the 1380s 1390s particularly in Germany it's really common to see a separate plate worn up here okay so fundamentally the earliest mainstream and Let's ignore the isolated examples like the the record from Richard II third's time which probably incidentally was also a jousting breastplate as I mentioned before when we get into the 1340s 50s 60s we start to see and so this is around the time of the battle of cresy the battle of puer in addition to mentions of Kota plates we also see references to separate independent breast plates so what did these look like how did they work well luckily we have Effigies to look at and we can see some examples in Effigies sometimes they have a medial Ridge they've got a globos or rounded structure sometimes they have vertical fluting um but we also have some surviving examples and I have a replica of one of those surviving examples here so one of the most amazing armories that has survived is kerberg spelt cherberg um Armory in uh in the trol and there is an amazing collection of armor there from one family okay and the trap family and they the armor spans from The 14th Century right the way through the 15th century so and all different armors made for different individuals was collected there and preserved there and this is made by artos murum who have um given it to me for the purposes of videos so thank you very much I will stick a link straight below to OS mun torum and this is a replica of one of the two early Circa 14400 probably 1390 1400 I'd say um breastplates that are in the kerberg Arsenal Arsenal so let's get this on so there we have it this is an example of a Circa 1400 isolated separate breastplate um or pin as one of those sources calls it um and you can see it's got a very globo shape now if you look at um most of the effes of this period between 1380 always through to about 1410 so the kind of pre aen cor period so um you'll notice that this is the shape that most of those effes have and that's the reason now this does Echo the shape that we also find on civilian clothing on the doublets this was a shape that they thought was pleasing but I think there's more to it than that and it's a two-way exchange isn't it is is it that the Posh civilian clothing adopted that shape because that was the shape that Knights started to look like in their armor or is it that the the armor adopted that shape because that was the shape that fashional doublets were I don't think that we can necessarily say that it's a one directional exchange I think it was part and parcel of the same thing and there's no question that this type of globos shape has a number of benefits as a breastplate now just before I go into those benefits I want to point out and remind you again that some of the earliest references to separate breastplates are within the context of jousting and I don't think we should overlook that even if we go back to the earliest references isolated references um in the 1100s then again Jousting is probably key here so very clearly if you are jousting down the list against someone it add advantageous to wear certain type of helmet and a certain type of body armor that you at that point you might not necessarily wear in war but it's beneficial within a tournament setting because it gives you a lot more protection but that being said we know that these did end up being worn in war and just as today we see Formula 1 drivers trying out technology that eventually passes down into our cars that we drive around on the streets or you know famous kind of Space Age Technology like your your like your Frying Pan um we know that this probably there's some kind of comparison between these kind of extreme sports like jousting or indeed uh the type of bassinet pioneered for for certain types of foot combats were sometimes used in war because they were found well it works really well for this maybe we'll use it for this as well so I think this probably also happened anyway regardless of that and that's a matter of opinion on my part um these globos shapes do have some advantages over the flatter earlier types of uh chest defense that we see as part of aota plates and what are those advantages well obviously you'll all be shouting at your screens at this point that one of the major advantages is deflection okay so it doesn't really matter whether it's a lance or a sword or an arrow crossbow bolt whatever coming at you if you have a rounded shaped here or later on a castom brush style shape but these deflective angles the thing which hits you is more likely to slide off and on that note for any of you who've watched uh Todd's absolutely incredible Aros vers Armor Series which I continue to follow avidly and talk to Todd about behind the scenes and and gives me ideas for things that I'm doing as well you will notice I have the Beloved stop rib here now these stop ribs first appear if I remember correctly in the 1380s or thereabouts so they're fairly new technology but you can see that it was not necessarily something you need when you have a flatter chest as found on a brigandine or a coated plates because you don't get that deflection upwards from lances arrows swords whatever when you don't have a globos chest so it almost becomes these two things come together once you've got this slidy chest here and you've got things that are likely to slide off the center then you also need a stop rib or as we say late later on you need something like a bever or a bolt down great bassinet or some other solution to prevent things from coming upwards here and under under your neck now this is particularly important in in this period because the type of helmet being worn is a bassinet with a male Avent tail so the M Avent tail sitting down here so anything sliding up here could theoretically go under the male Avent tail if it was coming in from the front as we saw in Todds Aros versus Armor you've got an Avent tail you've got padding underneath it and you've got a male colar underneath so you've got several layers of protection but coming up from underneath it would bypass some of those it would bypass the Avent tail and in fact we do see some examples where a um a circuit or dupon is being worn so fabric garment is being worn over the armor where we can actually see the Avent tail has been tied down to it presumably to try and prevent some of these things coming up underneath but nevertheless when you've got this deflective globo shape you need a stop rib here unless you've got some other solution as I say like a bolt down helmet um so the replaced what replaced the avantel basically the great Basset so the other advantage and this is not mentioned an awful lot and again we can extrapolate this from Todds arrows versus Armor test but I've also seen it through personal experience as well when you have a globe on the front of a hemisphere on the front of your body here what you now have is essentially a gap between your body and the armor now that's important for two reasons one is shock absorption so if you're being hit by a lance even if the you know if you're being hit by a Coronel hopefully it's not going to penetrate anything but the breastplate it might Dent it might push inwards even if it's um sort of sprung steel it could Flex inwards just the same as you know body work on a car Flexes in before it flexes back out again after an impact so by having that further away from your body that protects your ribs your internal organs and everything else from that impact but moreover if we're talking about penetration now if we're in this period we are not for the most part talking about hardened carbon steel armor some armor was admittedly some bassinets have proven to be but most wasn't we're fairly sure that the majority of armor in the 1300s was iron it was unhardened iron and at best if it had that tiny percentage of carbon in it then it was what we would Now call Mild steel which is not really hardenable not by very much anyway so by and large this is relatively soft a bit like Al Gusto's um armor that he made for the second arrows versus Armor 2 um and we have seen that that can be penetrated sometimes you know we see a penetration on the arm armor we saw a penetration partial penetration um up on the helmet I think and yes you can get penetration however the advantage of this globo structure is firstly you've got deflection so a lot of energy is going to be lost secondly you've got a crumple Zone okay so even if a an impact forces it in it's not going to hit your body but secondly if you've got penetration if you look how deep most of the penetrations that Todd has got or I have got even when I did the dagger penetration when I did the collaboration video with Todd you'll notice yes we can penetrate plate with a weapon be it an arrow or a dagger or a Warhammer or whatever but it doesn't penetrate a lot now think about the distance here so having this globe here means that even if I get that much Arrow penetrating through my breastplate which is fairly unlikely but even if it happens it's probably not going to reach my internal organs at worst it will be a superficial wound rather than if this was resting against my body it'd be a really serious wound and I would definitely be out of combat for today and I might be on out of combat for the rest of my life so these global most breast plates are really quite something uh you know impressive it's an impressive idea and obviously it was something that was carried on if we look at 15 Century um two-part breast plates with a plaque art which is something which comes later maybe we'll look at in a Future video just by itself because obviously my other armor has that um even if we go all the way through to the 16th and 17th Centuries with uh breast plates being worn in the time you know in the Elizabethan period And The Conquistadors and into the English Civil War and all that kind of period they fund fundamentally follow this principle of deflective surface globos or curving and away from the body to some extent at least down here at the center of body mass to create that deflection crumple Zone um and mean that even if they are penetrated hopefully it won't reach your body as well okay finally I want to talk because I know people are going to ask about this Matt what about your groin tell us about your gr so so yes absolutely this doesn't protect the lower abdomen and this is one of the interesting things um I remember many moons ago I think probably a teenager watching a documentary about by Richard Holmes about the Battle of Ain cor and he put one of these breast plates in fact it was the other kerberg breast plate the one with laminated vertically laminated bits around the side but the same overall shape is this and he put one of these on and pointed out oh well you know if I was if I was a French Knight walking towards the English archers I'd be minc meat because their arrows would be going through my mail down here well hold on a second so a number of things first of all you've got to think about the layers that are being worn okay so the arming clothes that are worn underneath at this time are not the same as arming doublets that are being worn thinner armoring Duets that being worn in the 15th century the likelihood is that the the cloth armor being worn underneath male and plate in the 1300s is generally probably a little bit more layered okay so you've got some protection from that secondly there are certain types of armor that we know for certain were being worn in Germany later on where they um have just a big male skirt underneath where you've actually got kind of almost a corrugated structure and padded structure to the to the skirt if you want to call it that underneath so there could be various things going on with fabric secondly we've got male now a lot of people underestimate male and can you shoot an arrow through male yes you can however trying to stab through male is not as easy as you might think um and male comes in many forms it comes in many different ring sizes why thickness um there's iron and there's steel there's even heat treated there's hardened steel male being mentioned and there's double layered so it's entirely possible that you could have what's only visible being male and fabric down here but that could be layers it could be two layers of male it could be very small lengths of male could be hardened male and it could have other things underneath it as well okay that we can't necessarily see in the artwork but in addition to that you've got to bear in mind that a lot of time weapons don't even go through mail and people have been relying on mail for centuries okay so just because they've added this up here don't necessarily think about this as being really really weak because bear in mind that's what they've been wearing for centuries that's what all of the Crusade or the first three Crusades were fought in was male okay so so they're just wearing the male that people have been wearing for centuries but they're adding this to the upper chest but there is of course a separate skirt that can be worn with this now later on we get the what we refer to usually as a fold so um horizontal lames down here initially they were just at the front and you'll notice that this is open at the back later on back plates are added we'll look at those in another video um but you do find additional little skirts that could be worn on here and a really simple thing if you just wanted to augment this breastplate with a with a a skirt or an apron essentially is one made of scales and we see this in the art so you can have it you could have a second layer of male or you could have scales or you could have just a little what we sometimes see already in the 1380s a little um apron essentially of overlapping uh plates sometimes they're rectangular but usually horizontal bands that become later the fold which is attached to the bottom of the upper thorax or breastplate up here um and they can be worn separately they don't have to be attached to this but I have to say already in 14 uh 10 it's pretty normal to already see a plate fold on a lot of armors in most parts of Europe although interestingly in Germany not necessarily so the Germans are a little bit different to other people and the Germans were wearing separate breast plates like this uh with just visibly anyway just male down below here not necessarily with any visible plate that doesn't mean to say there wasn't plate underneath or scale or layers of M we don't know um so there we go um I hope that's super um useful to you if you didn't already know about these but what a great bit of armor imagine you're a guy who in the year let's say 1380 1390 uh has been you know relying on just male with maybe a rudimentary coated plates so basic like a visby type coated plates one of these big breast plates you literally can't feel impacts from things like lances or arrows on here anymore it's away from your body it's deflective it's a great design um and we'll talk more about deflective armor because I've got some ideas for some things I want to talk about in the future anyway that's basically an introduction to the earliest Standalone Western European medieval breastplates not a new invention they had breast plates in the ancient world but these really were where the later casses really come from this combined with the coat of plates these two things working together and then harmonizing to create the curas that we famously see uh from 1400 onwards this is where it started and that's why you get that shape thanks a lot again to arst munitorum for uh giving this to me for purposes of the channel um it's a great thing to have a lot of fun to wear I'm going to have to put together now uh late 14th early 15th century armor aren't I so there we go I've got to put it together another armor any ideas for that or any other questions down below I hope I'll see you in the comments cheers for watching folks I have been mat E I will continue to be cheers 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: 42,452

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Id: PvziLkAMBrk

Length: 25min 32sec (1532 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2024