Why was this type of armour in use for so long?

there's a type of medieval armor that was popular for over a thousand years what on earth is it and why was it so popular well i'm going to try it on and see what i think [Music] [Applause] [Music] what i'm talking about is mail is this stuff but it's a particular design of this stuff that i'm talking about this is basically chainmail which is a bit of a modern name male it was called a whole bunch of different things probably just called armor for quite a long period of time it is a chainmail t-shirt basically the design is not too long the arms only covered to about the sort of mid bicep this one's got some fancy brass work around there which is probably not very protective but would certainly add to your status on the battlefield and this is typically known as a bernie although the origins of that word are unclear possibly it was first invented in eastern europe at around 350 bce by the celtic peoples there is some argument that in fact the etruscans had mail as well but we do know that around 400 to 350 bce we have existing examples of this kind of chainmail male shirt it is just links of iron back in the day or steal later on linked together in a four in one pattern there are obviously many different ways of linking a series of circles like this interlocking circles together a four in one was particularly popular throughout the medieval period in in western europe they didn't really go away from it they did a little bit around the neck there are some six in one patterns around the neck which makes it much stiffer and much much more solid but basically for anything that needs to move a four in one pattern for western europe particularly england was completely ubiquitous around the beginning of the 14th century they changed the technique which seems a bit weird to me because up to that point typically male had been made by four rings of solid iron linked to one ring that was riveted so you could mass produce the four in one pattern and then link them together with the riveted things doing it quite quickly but it needed one in five rings to be riveted together around the middle of the 14th century for some reason that swaps that swaps to a different type of rivet so rather than a domed rivet it swaps to a wedge rivet and weirdly they all become riveted together which strikes me as a bit strange because that just basically quadruples the amount of riveting you've got to do for one shirt but maybe it was to do with the level of tailoring that went in to the male shirt maybe it was just because it was all higher status now and therefore people wanted it fully riveted fully riveted shirts way more than four in one patterns of riveting but anyway that's just one of those tiny little mysteries that i haven't been able to work it out this t-shirt shape shifts and people in the norman period the arms get a bit longer and it starts to come lower on the thighs and goes even lower so mid thigh and then it covers the knees it becomes a hobergion or a hobok and these are words that would have been very familiar to people at the time but they're kind of unfamiliar to me to say out loud and presumably they would have had many many different regional variations as well because this type of armor was incredibly widely spread and used by the romans and all the way through the medieval period so what the romans were wearing as male or the celts were wearing as male will be instantly recognizable probably 800 years later when it comes to people in the medieval period now lots of people have talked about male not being very effective and the simple answer is well no armor is perfect lots of people talk about male being defeated by heavy weapons and that kind of thing yes it can be by particularly double-handed weapons and things like that but broadly speaking it protects you against the main threats that are going to actually kill you or take you out of the battle which is stabbing and slashing weapons it takes a hell of a strong hit to get through mail you might break bones underneath it if with a mace and things like that it's going to stop the ubiquitous spear from stabbing through your guts for example it's going to wind you it's going to break bones underneath but it isn't going to actually stab through the male particularly if you've got any kind of padding on underneath but you often see this male worn without padding i'm going to show you that in a second as well and and it's one of my ideas about why this was so successful as a type of armor for so long no armor will protect you from every threat the best plate armor of the late 15th century still has gaps if you can find them and it will be defeated by gunfire basically as guns develop plate arbor becomes less useful and gets broadly abandoned mail is similar to that in that there are things that can get through this but if you want something flexible relatively easy to wear and that's what i'm going to test out and that will mostly keep you alive for i don't know this is a guess 70 of the threats you're going to encounter on the battlefield then this is incredibly effective and must have been incredibly effective because it was in use for so long nobody uses stuff generation after generation after generation if it isn't actually functional and useful in quite a big way so this is this is one of my arguments about the value of mail on the battlefield it is used continuously for over a thousand years it must have worked well enough to make people keep using it now what i'm going to do now is is show you this going on as well because this particular design is actually relatively straightforward to put on so i'm going to show you so all you do i am in i'm in my civilian outfit now and i have to arm up quickly so all i do is find the underside put my arms through like this this is where long hair gets in the way as well sort out the armor put my belt back on just take a little bit of the weight off my shoulders and i am now protected by body armor it comes down to well there are my elbows so it covers half my upper arm half my forearm there it covers areas the chest it covers down to well a little bit of groin protection a bit of back protection basically it feels very comfortable and this is something i want to test out so i'm going to go and do a whole bunch of different tasks while wearing this for a whole day and tell you what i think it feels like but it is actually really quick to put on compared to my plate armor it protects your torso your body obviously you'd want a helmet i don't have any throat protection so lots of gaps but it took me what 20 seconds to put on if that and i've got it on over my ordinary civilian kit so i haven't had to change into specialist arming outfits i haven't had to have servants help me put it on this is the kind of armor that in the very earliest period would have been high status because of the metal work that's gone into it and the skill that's gone into it but as period of history goes on it becomes lower and lower status as the rich posh people with servants and people that can help them put their armor on as they develop plates and add to it this becomes something that an ordinary person can put on relatively easily well super easily actually and can wear relatively easily as well so there is no weight on your lower arms and that as anybody that knows if you've got heavy gloves on then actually the weight being far away from your shoulders means that things are more tiring so heavy steel gauntlets when i'm jousting or doing tournament gauntlets although they're thinner plates typically and they are closer to the enemy and they're going to get hit they're the things that really tie your arms out whereas the body armor typically doesn't really take too much energy out of you i mean it does but it's closer to your center of gravity so it doesn't require so much to move around and if you want to attach a sword over the top well you just pop your sword belt on and you're basically ready to fight so none of these things are they don't require a whole bunch of servants to get you ready for battle and they don't require a whole lot of storage or maintenance this type of mail is relatively easy you just keep it slightly oiled keep it in a sack get this right and tie this off and you're ready for combat you'd need a helmet you'd probably want some gloves you don't have any protection on your legs and we know that the legs were targets in battle but you might have a shield at various periods of history that would help protect that or you'd be surrounded by a bunch of other people and therefore they would be somewhat protecting parts of you you just have to avoid stabs into the body this is very difficult to actually stab through yes the impact will be moved through you'll be winded you'll break limbs perhaps but basically this will stop you from having your guts pierced by somebody else's spear that's what it's all about it isn't going to stop a great dane axe from a you know if you don't see the danex coming it will chop through we know that from illustrations we know that swords potentially can cut through this kind of mail although modern tests say they can't we have lots of illustrations of axes and swords going all the way through armour so it might be that the armor was lower quality back then compared to the steel that's used for modern reproductions we just don't know but there are illustrations and stories of people being cloven down to the navel all the way through but those are special big hits your average scrapping and people are stabbing but not as well as they could they're off balance you're off balance the the the the chaos of an ordinary battlefield being stabbed from the side without realizing it having somebody one of your friends hit you by mistake that's going to be prevented from doing any meaningful harm to you by wearing this kind of stuff one of the things that is often done in tv and film is the sword and this is a sharp um the hero will often slice across somebody somebody's armor well sword no sword is going to cut through the actual steel of mail quite frankly any reasonable armor is not going to get sliced through quite frankly even robust clothing is not going to be sliced through unless you're very very unlucky might be stabbed through but basically you can you can i can feel the impact there on my on my guts and my chest um so you wouldn't want to you wouldn't not feel the impact so in plate armor i wouldn't feel that i'd hear it but i wouldn't feel it but um with male you definitely know you've been hit but it's not going to cut it's not going to go through and similarly when you're talking about you know points you're going to get impacts if you're very unlucky but it's it's going to oof you and it might do some internal damage but it's not actually going to stab so mail itself even worn just over a tunic like this is going to protect you from and this is an estimate 70 to 80 percent of the threats you will encounter on the battlefield yes you can be killed if you're wearing male like this and your legs are clear of any protection and so are your arms and your forearms and as we know forearms are often impacted in any kind of combat you get defensive wounds on the forearms but you're not going to get stabbed through the body unless you're incredibly unlucky or completely unsighted and somebody's swinging a dane axe at you so so it's it's it's good to remember that armor is about percentages and if you're doing role-playing games or the equivalent the armor will save you from i don't know 70 to 80 of the threats that you're likely to encounter on a daily basis on a battlefield in later periods it seems like they realized there was some value in putting multiple layers of padding underneath this and so you would have 12 layers of linen that's got some other substance some other matrix holding it together a little bit like fiberglass but not quite so some kind of glue potentially that kind of thing with this as well and that creates an incredibly strong armor and it's basically a development of this you're just adding to the effectiveness of this kind of armor right that's enough about this kind of mail this kind of ordinary working man's armor i'm going to go and do some working man things i'm going to go and groom some of the horses train them ride them maybe clean them out do all the sort of things i would do in an ordinary day and we'll see what it feels like to use this and work in it because the soldiers that were wearing this kind of armor particularly in the later medieval period were likely not very high status that the sort of people that were going to have to sort themselves out make their own food work out where they were going to sleep and basically do the hard work they were not nobility with a whole group of people helping them out so this is really the armor of certainly in the later period of the ordinary soldier i'm going to wear this for a day and do my horse activities try it out just to see how tiring it is compared to my full plate harness that's what i think my thoughts are that this is super easy to wear and really easy to look after and it's just practical it is not the best armor in the world but it is 100 times better not wearing anything at [Music] all [Music] good boy [Music] [Music] oh [Music] let's go [Music] so far it's actually not been very difficult to do my ordinary everyday jobs with the with the male bernie on um grooming gossamer's made no difference really it's a bit like wearing a big heavy coat so it does take a little bit more energy out of you but not really very much my my arms are quite free to move and um horses haven't really bothered with it not making any particular noise it hardly makes a noise when you move so again there's no particular challenge to a horse we'll see if we get on do a few things see how it goes come on then good girl [Music] see what happens when we go a little [Music] faster [Music] [Music] it is actually very easy to wear though because the weight is centered on your body um and there's anybody that's carried weights around knows that the further they are from the middle of your body the more heavy it feels so this is actually i can understand why people like this kind of armor it's not super protective but like all armor it's kind of a compromise that this would protect your body not your hands or your arms or much of your hands certainly not your head you'd need a helmet as well but um it's actually very easy to wear it and i'm wearing it over a linen shirt and one layer of wool just the whole tunic and we see that in the bayer tapestry we don't see much in the way of what might be called sabarmalis which was the roman expression for it so under armour garment good boy he did very well [Music] [Music] good job [Music] good girl come on then good girl stand there good go well after spending quite some hours just wearing this it's pretty obvious to me at least one of the reasons why it was very popular and why it lasted a thousand years it's because you don't really notice you're wearing it it isn't particularly cold it isn't particularly awkward or heavy it's a little bit of you know you could argue a little bit of strain on the shoulders not not any strain you you feel it like wearing a really heavy coat but you could just get on with your day-to-day task so you could continue to wear your armor for a long long period of time and it doesn't really get in the way like um some kinds of armor does it doesn't require much in the way of maintenance you can put it on and take it off yourself you can basically work in it and that's why this type of armor with the short sleeves and it doesn't go too far down your body was incredibly popular for such a long period of time in fact milanese knights in the mid to late 15th century wore this underneath their plate armor so it actually never went away they just added bits to it so this in itself goes from 400 bce all the way through to probably 1450 1480 1500s that is a long time for a piece of kit to be worn practically it's almost 2000 years good girl what did you think sweetheart what did you think yes you didn't even notice did you hey good girl come on let's get you some hay good girl and to take the mail off very straight forward take your belt off and then you we see this on the bayer tapestry it's very awkward but it's the easiest way i've found of doing it um and forgive me but this is what the most noble knights must have done in the time period which is you sort of scrunch it up and then get your hair again hair is getting in the way and you shake you shake the armor off you and we see exactly that position on the bayer tapestry for goodness sake so it's not very elegant it was probably done by nobility in the privacy of their tent and it does help sometimes especially if you've got longer pieces on your arms it does help if somebody takes it off but the easiest way is get it up as far as you can lean over and just sort of shake the armor off so i think that rather humiliating position is what hundreds of thousands of warriors would have had to adopt at the end when they take their male shirt off and put it away at the end of the battle luckily they've survived it so they probably would not have been worried about how silly they looked taking the armor off [Music] you

Channel: Modern History TV

Views: 403,837

Rating: 4.9543867 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, history, kingsley, jason kingsley, medieval, middle ages, knight, jason kingsely, mail, maille, chainmail, role playing games, expert, Medieval, fantasy, dnd, dungeons and dragons, historical, hema, historical european martial arts, mount and blade, video, game, roleplaying, role playing, rpg, lord of the rings, adventure, adventurer

Id: dlOwK4bwKhk

Length: 23min 53sec (1433 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/funkmachine7]

Mail is a clean armor as only the flats by the rivets can rust or trap dirt.
It's easy to store, rats an moths will not eat the leather or cloth.