Why Medieval Knights OFTEN Did Not Bother with FACE PROTECTION

let's talk about openface helmets in the late medieval period hi folks mat here scholar gladiatoria now many of you will have watched my videos in the past on Armor where I've talked about some of the virtues of more convenient types of helmet and it should be obvious to anyone if you've watched my recent great bassinet video that the great bassinet whiler is absolutely optimal in terms of protection so cly for fighting on foot and if you were jousting something like a frogged mouth Helm would be the ultimate level for that neither of those are very convenient helmets to be wearing in a day-to-day kind of on campaign basis they need to be secured to the Cass um so you need someone to help you do that you can't get them off very easily by yourself I won't say you can't do it but it's not very convenient by yourself especially ones which is strapped at the back you literally can't do that yourself but moreover even just you know Bend down to pick things up or eating or drinking um various types of you know various types of everyday activity on campaign they would not be convenient to wear whereas very obviously a helmet like this uh which we'll talk about what it is in a second um is really really convenient in fact functionally this is really not very different to a modern helmet that you'd find a modern Soldier wearing obviously it's made of steel rather than Kevlar or anything else but fundamentally it leaves the same amount of the face open and lots of people go oh well you know isn't your face really really vulnerable well you could say that with modern helmets as well but people don't wear full face protection in the modern world for a whole bunch of reasons one of those being that you have to operate a rifle and if you've got full facial protection not very compatible it can be done with different types of sites and and goggles and other types of things that's something probably for another Channel let alone another video but the fact is that open face helmets are the most practical compromised design for head Protection Plus being able to do your job now I think most people will realize that people like crossbowmen or Gunners or archers very often need openface helmets but what about Knights well often they do as well and in fact it's incredibly common in the uh 15th and 16th centuries to find an armor equipped with a selection of different helmets so just because you have full plate harness on your body doesn't mean you're always going to wear your most protective helmet your close helmet your armut or your great bassinet or your jousting Helm with that armor in all situations if you're just on General campaign often a salot and this is this doesn't have a Visa again we'll come back to that in a second um a visor salad or an unored salad or a chapel defer is going to be more practical so those are all kind of obvious things right very briefly what is this helmet and why does it look like this so this is a type of open faed salad um that was popular in England burgundy Flanders and France as well relatively now a lot of people would describe this as an English salad and in in a sense they're correct because this is actually made by Ash armor Services historical um based on a number of English effes there's about six that fall into this group um and they were also shown in Contemporary Art French Burgundian Flemish art as well so we know that these weren't only worn in England but probably some of them were made in England by English armorers and were worn with English armors but equally there's a lot of um commonality should we say between armors found in France and the low countries and burgundy which owned some of the low countries at that time and England and of course remember the historical context so obviously up until 1454 the English were in France they owned big chunks of France and were also allies of the burgundians those burundians who caught Jon of AR and gave her to the English um those burundians that when um Edward IV Was Defeated and ran away with the Duke of gluster and his and his buddies they ran away to his sister who was married to the Duke of burgundy gathered an army and then came back and fought at the battles of Barnett and tuxbury in the wars of the Roses so the burgundians in the English were inextricably closely linked right that I could do a whole probably hourong video by itself but that's just a brief tangent so this is a type of open openface salad you find in England France burgundy so on so forth and it would be completely normal for someone on campaign a knight a lord even a king to have a helmet like this that they would wear some of the time instead of their armor their great Basset or whatever their heavy helmet was so having a heavy helmet and a light helmet sometimes maybe even having a spectrum of helmets a super light helmet um and a sort of medium level helmet maybe a salad without a bever or salot in a bever and then a heavy helmet for mounted work you might even have different helmets for foot and mounted so you might wear an armet on Horseback and you might wear a great bassinet on foot so a bunch of different helmets and that's what I'm going for essentially so this is my campaign helmet made by Ash polished up by me it was originally in sattin finish and I have um mirror polished this to match my new armor which as aforementioned will become unveiled soon right so let's just shed this for a second and talk about the issue of open face versus closed face and actually a sense of perspective so people always say Matt isn't your face massively exposed with an open face yes that's the compromise you're making however remember that a very big percentage of the soldiers on the battlefield also have open faces okay so that's the first thing is that modern soldiers have open faces World War I soldiers had open faces most other periods of soldiers have open fa Roman soldiers mostly had open face helmets but even in the medieval context most soldiers be they Billman archers crossbowman Gunners whatever on the medieval Battlefield have to some degree an open face secondly this can be worn with a bever so that you can close up uh half of the face with this and just leave a section open in the middle okay so that's the second thing to mention but here's the point I really wanted to make and I don't think I've ever really put this in a video before let's take the visor from my great bassinet so there's the detached visor it attaches by pins on the sides you can put different types of visors on we're going to see a different visor in a second um and this seems like a closed face visor however it does have openings and that's really important because you need openings to see and to breathe now while these openings might be minimized and kept relatively small so we've got lots of small circular holes difficult for things to get into those although not impossible and then you've got these slits here it is absolutely not impossible for weapons to come into those so if you're being shot with arrows the fact is that if an arrow manages to find one of those um breathing holes or Vision holes they're actually both there is a chance that it can penetrate through the visor here and we find this mentioned in FASA the French Knights at puer feared the storm of English arrows hitting them particular from the flanks they feared that they would penetrate their visors specifically visors not the rest of their body visors so even a closed visor can be penetrated by weapons and I think people often forget this because they look at things like bowart videos where thrusting is not allowed and obviously there's no arrows um or they look at reenactment where for the most part thrusting at faces is not allowed and in anyway the weapons are all blunt and those big blunt ended weapons for the most part won't go and go through the gaps here anyway but if you're talking about sharp weapons arrows daggers Spears swords they can go through these gaps now for illustration I have a Todd Cutler dagger here this is a rondle dagger this is modeled on Fred Frederick the victorious' great Basset so it's historically accurate the slits are the right size and everything else I could grab one of my salats and do a similar thing to this I can't see where they are right now um but here we go nasty so if you get into close combat with someone two things to bear in mind first of all if you're really up close and personal there's always going to be gaps there's their groin there's the inside of their armpits and elbows back of the legs uh back of the neck behind the helmet inside the gauntlets both the palm and inside the cuff and these holes can be compromised even really narrow slits on salet and armets are enough to let a blade through if you get close enough to stick it in there so not only can you deliberately stick a blade through the gap of a visor you can also find other gaps to stab anyway or potentially you can open the visor or pull a piece of plate off and stab into there we see this in Palace uh Palace Cal's um treaties um where a pauldron is cut off and stabbed into um but additionally just accidentally so if thrusts are constantly coming in from Spears arrows all sorts of other things there is a chance they will penetrate this anyway so in a nutshell even if you have facial protection yes it increases your odds of not getting stabbed or shot in the face but it is never an absolute protection now I'm just going to briefly we'll talk about this more in a future video I know I say that's a lot on this channel but here is a different type of visor and clearly that's got big old holes in it now this is called in German a CN turnia Helm but we will call it a tournament visor and you see these in Rene Don's manuscript and this is the alternate visor for my great bassinet and you'll notice yes it's gilded which gives you some clues about the rest of my armor um so this is an alternate visor visor for um tournament use and I can also use it for hea use so long as the weapons don't have pointy ends on them which for hea they don't usually so this is very useful for fighting with wooden clubs or blunt swords which have wide ends and can't go through those holes and it brilliant for seeing brilliant for breathing it's similar to a fencing mask in principle but much much stronger bars and bigger holes um so you couldn't use this for rapia because they go straight through and sub you in the face now clearly these aren't great for war because you'd be shot through them but here's the thing you do see these in manuscripts warn in war so sometimes some people somewhere because of the added breathability and vision of this would have chosen to wear the tournament visor instead of the so-called War visor because yes indeed arrows can come through and swords and other things and obviously something like a dagger so at the end of the day it's all about context and compromise because you can never have all things for all people at all times at once you've got to make your choices what is the specific um tactical and strategic scenario uh what is required of my armor what am I going to wear clearly this is the best option for a uh club or blunt sword tournament as seen in Rene DJ's tournament book um and clearly on the battlefield usually if not always usually this is the best choice but don't think for a second that just because you have a visor it will always protect you against all things it won't the French Knights at patier were scared of it and we know that people did get wounded and sometimes killed through visors moreover just have a look at Medieval art the number of medieval illustrations there are where the helmet be it a a um a salot or an armet or even a great bassinet has a visor but in the art the people are fighting with their visors just pull this up up like that okay so if the people are fighting with their visors up like that well at this point they've essentially got an open face so yes they might have advanced into the arrows into the so-called Arrow storm or they might have charged in on Horseback with their Lance with their visor down but as soon as they get into melee the ability to see and breathe more more important so absolutely obviously when you're wearing helmets like this number one yes your face is more exposed but you gain a lot from that secondly most soldiers on the medieval Battlefield had open faces thirdly just because you have access to full plate and visors and heavier helmets you very often would choose this type of helmet for standard campaigning and sometimes deliberately for for close combat and we know that English knights in the of the Roses very often fought with open faces remember Henry the at the Battle of shobby back in 1403 I think it was shot in the face with an arrow Oho he had an open face or his visor up thanks a lot for watching I hope this has been interesting and thought-provoking if you've got any specific questions on this topic which might spur me into making future videos in a related thing maybe something I've never covered in a video before then by all means get posting down below thanks a lot for watching I have been mat e and I will continue to be and I hope I'll see you back on the channel really soon 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: 127,416

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Id: cjzT5CCs-vg

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2024