Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

[DrewID]

This... is not how it happened. Maybe. We really have no idea.

I recall one source saying that part of the reason that we have so few surviving examples of period mail is that is makes a great tool for scouring the rust off of cast iron pots. Which is terrific for ye olde beleaguered medieval cooks, but not so great for the mail in the long run.

DrewID

[wolflance]

This... is not how it happened. Maybe. We really have no idea.

First instances of mail on head are starting to crop up at about 1050, and are pretty commonplace by 1200-1250. Thing is, we have no idea how they were worn, if there was a standard method or multiple ways and so on. They could mostly be integrated (Maciejowski bible has these when it's possible to tell), mostly separated or any other method you can think up.

The definite separation of head mail comes around with bascinets with aventail at 1350, but these are no longer mail coifs per se, just bits of mail attached to a helmet.

Mail gloves that are separate from the mail shirt are extremely rare, and only start to show up after 1300. This leads me to suspect a lot of their depictions may be artistic license - an artist trying to depict ye olde armor and just taking contemporary leather or plate gloves and making them out of mail. Things like these do happen and they tend to throw off eager but less informed reenactors fairly often, because you really need to study the exact manuscript to spot them.

Is it? There are quite a lot of surviving mail armors from 15th century onward, and hardly any of them have attached glove (I've heard that some of them are converted from cap-a-pie mail too), so I presume the transition must've happened some time before.

Flipping through Manuscript Miniatures, most knights of the 1300 - 1350s are actually not very different from late 13th century knights. Dudes with what we usually associate with 14th century "transition armor" - plated limbs, coat of plates, bascinets, etc are in the minority, but definitely present and sometimes mixed with older-style knights.

[snowblizz]

2) The famous Battle of Visby, we know that the various armors and items belong to the Gotland militias (that lost the battle). So I'd like to know a bit about the equipment used by the winning (Danish) side.

They'd be wearing state of the art for a continental (western) medieval force. Denmark was comparatively rich and much more "continental" than the other Scandinavian nations. The Danish army would also have been to a high degree mercenary professionals, predominantly Germans.

[Lapak]

Is it? There are quite a lot of surviving mail armors from 15th century onward, and hardly any of them have attached glove (I've heard that some of them are converted from cap-a-pie mail too), so I presume the transition must've happened some time before.

I am not an armor expert, but seeing that my first thought would not have been 'aha, they had separate mail mittens I am missing' but instead 'aha, they must have used heavy leather or cloth gloves as hand protection with this body armor.'

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I recall one source saying that part of the reason that we have so few surviving examples of period mail is that is makes a great tool for scouring the rust off of cast iron pots. Which is terrific for ye olde beleaguered medieval cooks, but not so great for the mail in the long run.

DrewID

So you're saying that just like us, knights used their old clothes as cleaning rags? That's awesome.

(Also, I can indeed imagine mail would function like steelwool, but more resistant to wear.)

[Vinyadan]

Unrelated to weaponry, but they have found the hidden treasure hoard of Harold Bluetooth. https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...hed-in-germany

[rrgg]

Is it? There are quite a lot of surviving mail armors from 15th century onward, and hardly any of them have attached glove (I've heard that some of them are converted from cap-a-pie mail too), so I presume the transition must've happened some time before.

Flipping through Manuscript Miniatures, most knights of the 1300 - 1350s are actually not very different from late 13th century knights. Dudes with what we usually associate with 14th century "transition armor" - plated limbs, coat of plates, bascinets, etc are in the minority, but definitely present and sometimes mixed with older-style knights.

Mail gloves were definitely around in the late 16th century. Handling a pistol required a lot of finger dexterity which limited a cavalryman's hand protection options to either extremely well-articulated plate gauntlets or else gloves of very fine mail (alternatively, you could just wear nothing on your hands at all, which seems to have been the option more and more cuirassiers were going with).

That mainly has to do with pistols, but John Smythe seemed to think that there were other situations where it was useful to have more flexible or even removable hand protection. For instance ensign bearers:

"Also I would wish that all Ensignebearers should bee armed in this sort following a light vpright & sharp crowned Spanish burgonet, a Coller, a Cuyrasse with short tasses, or without tasses, and a backe with a paire of sleeues and gloues of fine maile, or without gloues of maile, to the intent that they may carry their Ensignes with the more ease;"

and spear-armed light cavalry:

"I would wish that they should bee armed with burgonets, or else with vpright morrions after the Spanish manner, with collers, cuirasses, and backs, and short tasses, and with sleeues of maile and gauntlets, or else gloues of maile in stead of gauntlets"

There is a surviving suit of very expensive "field armor" which was owned by John Smythe, but it just has mail sleeves combined with plate gauntlets.

Regarding depictions of knights during the transition to plate it might be that some of the changes are just hidden or don't show up very well in artwork. "The King's Mirror" for instance mentions a sort of early breastplate worn under the mail.

Edit: oh yeah, there also seem to have been fencing styles during the Elizabethan period based around having a sword in one hand and a mail glove on the other. Although I'm not really much of a fencing guy.

[Kiero]

Surely heavy leather gauntlets/gloves were a defensive option for the pistoleer cavalryman, too?

[snowblizz]

Surely heavy leather gauntlets/gloves were a defensive option for the pistoleer cavalryman, too?

Yes and no I guess. Riding glvoes are a thing but they definitely cannot be too heavy if you want to be able to handle pistols.

I do find the idea that you'd ride into battle without at least some basic ridinggloves a bit odd.

[gkathellar]

Edit: oh yeah, there also seem to have been fencing styles during the Elizabethan period based around having a sword in one hand and a mail glove on the other. Although I'm not really much of a fencing guy.

I think this is less a styles thing and more that historical single-sword systems tend to make extensive use of offhand blocks in general. Just as a matter of general policy, it's better to wear a glove or a gauntlet, rather than risk a barehanded deflection.

[Tobtor]

Unrelated to weaponry, but they have found the hidden treasure hoard of Harold Bluetooth. https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...hed-in-germany

Yeah... except that it mostly likely did NOT belong to Harold. There is no other evidence that it did than that it included coins minted by him, and that he operated in the area (went to it after a defeat). Could it have been his? Possibly, but why would Harold (the first Christian king), have a thors-hammer with him? Most archaeologist are in agreement that it is either a "pirate"-treasure or possibly linked with the (pagan) Jomsvikings.

It is also (comparatively) poor treasure. Surely kings treasure would include gold (giver of gold is the most used knning for "king").

Real treasure include gold (here the Fæsted treasure which include around 1,5kg of gold):

[No brains]

I'm playing a character in a game right now that wears half plate and I could use some good examples of that kind of harness. Does anyone have any examples of half plate or another form of armor that offers roughly equivalent protection? I imagine some Eastern armors may have coverage that's roughly equivalent to half-harness and I'd like to have some creative options.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I'm playing a character in a game right now that wears half plate and I could use some good examples of that kind of harness. Does anyone have any examples of half plate or another form of armor that offers roughly equivalent protection? I imagine some Eastern armors may have coverage that's roughly equivalent to half-harness and I'd like to have some creative options.

I think you can basically go two ways. One is to leave the back elements off armor. Have just shin plates and shoe covers instead of full metal boots, a breastplate instead of a cuirass, and maybe combine it with a lighter helmet instead of a full knightly visor helmet. The other option is to have the armor consist of less elements, like leaving out the leg and arm plating, maybe replacing them with mail for a step in between. Any mix and match of those styles works as well, like front elements on the legs and body worn over a lighter mail shirt.

A third option might be to save on the complex parts like joints and gloves, but have all of the large plated parts in place.

[rrgg]

Surely heavy leather gauntlets/gloves were a defensive option for the pistoleer cavalryman, too?

Here's the gauntlets from John Smythe's field armor. They do include soft leather underneath, but leather gloves still don't seem to get mentioned as a possible form of hand protection and we still start to see quite a few illustrations where cavalry are bare-handed. It might be that soft leather on its own wasn't believed to provide enough protection to be worth it or many cavalrymen believed that bare hands provided much better grip.





Smythe apparently still thought gauntlets like these made a pistol more difficult to handle and suggested a design where the first two fingers of a pistoliers' gauntlet were replaced with very fine mail. Another option that gets mentioned in a few treatises is to only wear a gauntlet on the bridle hand, since that hand only has to hold the pistol steady while loading while the right hand did the more complex tasks. The bridle hand was also apparently a popular target for sword cuts, and some authors additionally recommend replacing the horse's reins with a metal chain so that the enemy can't slash it apart in combat.

[wolflance]

This... is not how it happened. Maybe. We really have no idea.

First instances of mail on head are starting to crop up at about 1050, and are pretty commonplace by 1200-1250. Thing is, we have no idea how they were worn, if there was a standard method or multiple ways and so on. They could mostly be integrated (Maciejowski bible has these when it's possible to tell), mostly separated or any other method you can think up.

The definite separation of head mail comes around with bascinets with aventail at 1350, but these are no longer mail coifs per se, just bits of mail attached to a helmet.

Mail gloves that are separate from the mail shirt are extremely rare, and only start to show up after 1300. This leads me to suspect a lot of their depictions may be artistic license - an artist trying to depict ye olde armor and just taking contemporary leather or plate gloves and making them out of mail. Things like these do happen and they tend to throw off eager but less informed reenactors fairly often, because you really need to study the exact manuscript to spot them.

I found the answer on my own - around 1320, although I suppose it didn't replace the cap-a-pie type completely.

http://www.berwelf.de/bilder/gegenst...eustlinge.html

[Maquise]

Something I was wondering, did samurai have any orders or brotherhoods similar to the knightly orders in Medieval Europe?

[No brains]

I think you can basically go two ways. One is to leave the back elements off armor. Have just shin plates and shoe covers instead of full metal boots, a breastplate instead of a cuirass, and maybe combine it with a lighter helmet instead of a full knightly visor helmet. The other option is to have the armor consist of less elements, like leaving out the leg and arm plating, maybe replacing them with mail for a step in between. Any mix and match of those styles works as well, like front elements on the legs and body worn over a lighter mail shirt.

A third option might be to save on the complex parts like joints and gloves, but have all of the large plated parts in place.

I like that last option and may roll with that. Thank you.

Can I get an references on extant half harnesses? I believe one of Henry VIII's armors counts as well as the piece reproduced for Secrets of the Shining Knight on Nova.

As for helmet, I was thinking of a kettle hat or morion, but I don't know if those would clash with a half-harness chic.

One wild idea: are there any suits of samurai armor that could be equated to 'half-plate' in coverage?

[wolflance]

Something I was wondering, did samurai have any orders or brotherhoods similar to the knightly orders in Medieval Europe?

No, the closest you can get is some sort of clan alliance(?)

[Brother Oni]

One wild idea: are there any suits of samurai armor that could be equated to 'half-plate' in coverage?

I'm not sure what you mean by 'coverage' as any full tatami gusoku armour set with all the secondary armours is pretty much full coverage.

If you're talking about coverage by solid plates, then not really, as it's only the sets with nanban dou (solid metal breastplate derived from western styles that's often sold with a dent as evidence of the pistol proofing) that starts to resemble western half plate and even then, only the breastplate.

They still look impressive though; here's the armour of Uesugi Kenshin, one of the daimyo from the Sengoku Jidai civil war:

Spoiler: Uesugi Kenshin's armour

Show

No, the closest you can get is some sort of clan alliance(?)

Depends - do retired samurai sohei count?

[wolflance]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'coverage' as any full tatami gusoku armour set with all the secondary armours is pretty much full coverage.

If you're talking about coverage by solid plates, then not really, as it's only the sets with nanban dou (solid metal breastplate derived from western styles that's often sold with a dent as evidence of the pistol proofing) that starts to resemble western half plate and even then, only the breastplate.

They still look impressive though; here's the armour of Uesugi Kenshin, one of the daimyo from the Sengoku Jidai civil war:

Spoiler: Uesugi Kenshin's armour

Show

Early O-yoroi type armor is pretty close to half-plate in term of coverage IMO.

[snowblizz]

Early O-yoroi type armor is pretty close to half-plate in term of coverage IMO.

There's also a type of armour which leaves the back relatively unprotected, because that's where the front parts are attached together. It was considered armour for the brave (or foolish probably) because of it's inhernet weakness.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'coverage' as any full tatami gusoku armour set with all the secondary armours is pretty much full coverage.

I'm a bit of a purist here and consider almost all Samurai armour to not really be full coverage. There's just too many weak spots in even the fullest samurai armour compared to equivalent European full plate.

But the munitions grade armours like okashi gusoku would be rather les sprotective than a full harness, so in a sense effectively "half-plate".

As for helmet, I was thinking of a kettle hat or morion, but I don't know if those would clash with a half-harness chic.

I'd say on the contrary they fit well. Morions were usually worn (at atime) with less complete harnesses, cuirasses, shields, morion being the main protection of Spanish rondolleros e.g.

Something I was wondering, did samurai have any orders or brotherhoods similar to the knightly orders in Medieval Europe?

Not really.

Depends - do retired samurai sohei count?

I think the closest we can get are indeed the sohei though the Ikko-icki might qualify as well (a brotherhood of sorts and samurai not really attached to a lrod but an idea), though the latter was more a broad social moment, like those seen in the English Civil War, e.g. Levellers and Diggers.
The vast majority of samurai were in service to a lord, that's sorta inherent in the term, even the sohei had "lords" in the form of the temple they served.
To be fair most samurai clans did sort of start out as a military brotherhood anyway. But a self-sustained military broothehood people could more or less join freely with a organisation living on with no real direct allegiance to a lord, no those did not exist.

Like so much with samurai it's tantalisingly similar to western concepts yet totally removed when digging into it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Questions about horse nomads--

How big were the operational units (families? tribes? clans? whatever you call them, the pieces that would live and move together)? How much area would they roam over/claim/occupy over the course of a year?

I'm working on a smaller civilization that will all winter together and then spread out for the grazing season, coming back in the late fall and need to calibrate my expectations as to group size and total size.

I figure they'd make a loop of sorts (coming back a different path than they went out, and each group taking a different path from year to year to let the area recover). I was thinking that they'd splinter further as they went out (so near the winter camp they'd be in large groups and then at the furthest extent, where they'd spend most of the summer, they'd be a group of several families). Horses and cattle mainly.

The terrain is relatively lush temperate grasslands, better than the Great Plains before western colonists arrived. Some large predators, but no major persistent threats.

[Brother Oni]

Early O-yoroi type armor is pretty close to half-plate in term of coverage IMO.

While I agree O-yoroi is much closer to the same style of protection of half plate (critical areas protected by rigid armour), the coverage given by old style sode is significantly different to pauldrons, and there is no equivalent to the rerebrace (upper arm armour, between the forearm's vambrace and the shoulder's pauldron).

The other problem is that O-yoroi is supposedly very heavy (~30kg for a full set), expensive and restrictive in movement, pushing it very definitely into the cavalryman role, whereas half-plate was supposed to be lighter, cheaper and more flexible than full plate harness, thus intended for the foot sloggers.


From looking at other pictures, the definition of 'half plate' is a bit vague. As I understand the term, it's a helmet plus rigid plate protection for the chest, shoulders and arms; some only count the torso, there's a bit of flex between a breastplate (front only) and a cuirass (front and back), and others include upper thigh protection.

Questions about horse nomads--

How big were the operational units (families? tribes? clans? whatever you call them, the pieces that would live and move together)? How much area would they roam over/claim/occupy over the course of a year?

I've got some books on Mongol organisation before and during their unification by Genghis Khan if that's helpful, or were you thinking of a less aggressive culture?

[No brains]

Thank you all for the feedback on my question.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've got some books on Mongol organisation before and during their unification by Genghis Khan if that's helpful, or were you thinking of a less aggressive culture?

This culture's pretty isolated and more xenophobic than aggressive, but otherwise quite similar in structure. Having those ballpark numbers would be a great help. Even rough numbers would allow me to start narrowing down exactly how many of these I want and how much space it should occupy (which sets how big the friction is between them and their neighbors for space, as the nomads have religious/cultural objections to permanent structures "on their land" except for the winter quarters, which are sacred).

I was torn between the post-horse american indian tribes on the Great Plains and the steppe nomads (Mongols, etc) of central asia as my touchpoints.

[gkathellar]

Not really.

I think the closest we can get are indeed the sohei though the Ikko-icki might qualify as well (a brotherhood of sorts and samurai not really attached to a lrod but an idea), though the latter was more a broad social moment, like those seen in the English Civil War, e.g. Levellers and Diggers.
The vast majority of samurai were in service to a lord, that's sorta inherent in the term, even the sohei had "lords" in the form of the temple they served.
To be fair most samurai clans did sort of start out as a military brotherhood anyway. But a self-sustained military broothehood people could more or less join freely with a organisation living on with no real direct allegiance to a lord, no those did not exist.

Like so much with samurai it's tantalisingly similar to western concepts yet totally removed when digging into it.

Pre-Edo period, the term "samurai," encompassed a variety of professionally employed, highly trained soldiers. It's true that they had almost entirely co-opted the traditional nobility by the end of the Heian period, but plenty of so-called samurai were mercenaries and assorted troublemakers of low birth whose only claim to the title was that they were, in that particular moment working for someone with money and land. Hideyoshi himself was born a peasant, and while his circumstances were unusual, they weren't unique.

I'm also not sure your characterization of knightly brotherhoods is fair, given they had their own lands, vassals, leadership figures, lineages, and alliances - just as other feudal lords did. Nor did they universally accept everyone, and even those that did often drew distinctions between peasants and nobility who joined. I'd argue that while there's no perfect analog in feudal Japan, that's mostly a product of the multi-national scope of some brotherhoods; I'd say the various warrior-monks are an apt (if imperfect) point of comparison for exactly that reason.

[Max_Killjoy]

Pre-Edo period, the term "samurai," encompassed a variety of professionally employed, highly trained soldiers. It's true that they had almost entirely co-opted the traditional nobility by the end of the Heian period, but plenty of so-called samurai were mercenaries and assorted troublemakers of low birth whose only claim to the title was that they were, in that particular moment working for someone with money and land. Hideyoshi himself was born a peasant, and while his circumstances were unusual, they weren't unique.

I'm also not sure your characterization of knightly brotherhoods is fair, given they had their own lands, vassals, leadership figures, lineages, and alliances - just as other feudal lords did. Nor did they universally accept everyone, and even those that did often drew distinctions between peasants and nobility who joined. I'd argue that while there's no perfect analog in feudal Japan, that's mostly a product of the multi-national scope of some brotherhoods; I'd say the various warrior-monks are an apt (if imperfect) point of comparison for exactly that reason.

Indeed, it's very important to keep in mind that much of what we "know" about "samurai" and "bushido" is seen through multiple filters, such as modern western myth-making, early 20th-century Japanese nationalist mythmaking, Edo-period cultural/political propaganda, etc.

[Galloglaich]

Questions about horse nomads--

How big were the operational units (families? tribes? clans? whatever you call them, the pieces that would live and move together)? How much area would they roam over/claim/occupy over the course of a year?

Mongols organized on base ten, with the largest unit being a tumen, of 10,000 riders. Each tumen was made up of 10 groups of 1,000, each with its own commander, and those were broken up into ten groups of 100 and those in turn into ten groups of ten. The base ten thing was used by many types of steppe nomads in Central Asia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumen_(unit)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol...d_organization

Tribes could be any size of course.

I figure they'd make a loop of sorts (coming back a different path than they went out, and each group taking a different path from year to year to let the area recover). I was thinking that they'd splinter further as they went out (so near the winter camp they'd be in large groups and then at the furthest extent, where they'd spend most of the summer, they'd be a group of several families). Horses and cattle mainly.

That is pretty similar to what the Lakota did (minus the cattle). I don't know what time of year but they came together and formed almost a city for a while before the buffalo hunt, they processed all the buffalo they killed and then dispersed back to smaller family and clan sized groups.

Armor
Worth mentioning as far as mail gloves - Italian burghers commonly wore those in a civilian context when they expected trouble (as noted by George Silver and confirmed by many Italians in their own writing).



For coifs etc., one good place to look are effigies. This one is 14th C. but there are a lot of really good (and precise) ones going back to the 13th. They usually have all the detail of the mans armor and personal weapons quite accurately.

G

[Galloglaich]

Flipping the Samurai thing on it's head - I think a close analogue to the Samurai of Japan were the Ministerials of Central Europe'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerialis

they started out as unfree henchmen with no rights or property of their own, literally serf knights, but were soon admitted into the caste (as opposed to Estate or Class) of the knights and given many of the same honor related rights, and over time they acquired land and titles as well, until (by the later 14th Century) they comprised much of the minor nobility in the Holy Roman Empire.

G

[Kiero]

Questions about horse nomads--

How big were the operational units (families? tribes? clans? whatever you call them, the pieces that would live and move together)? How much area would they roam over/claim/occupy over the course of a year?

I'm working on a smaller civilization that will all winter together and then spread out for the grazing season, coming back in the late fall and need to calibrate my expectations as to group size and total size.

I figure they'd make a loop of sorts (coming back a different path than they went out, and each group taking a different path from year to year to let the area recover). I was thinking that they'd splinter further as they went out (so near the winter camp they'd be in large groups and then at the furthest extent, where they'd spend most of the summer, they'd be a group of several families). Horses and cattle mainly.

The terrain is relatively lush temperate grasslands, better than the Great Plains before western colonists arrived. Some large predators, but no major persistent threats.

I think the inclusion of cattle is problematic here if the intended culture is genuinely nomadic. Simply put, cattle aren't nomadic, they're pastoral. Sure, they can migrate long distances if required, but they aren't built to be almost permanently on the move. Also note that a horse-people don't need cattle for milk and meat - they have horses for that.

I'm referring to earlier peoples like the Skythians and Sauromatians here, rather than the Mongols, but they had huge herds of ponies and horses which was all they needed. Mares gave them milk which could be turned into cheese and fermented into an alcoholic drink, they had enough spares that if hunting was sparse they could kill a small pony and eat it. In their culture you weren't a "rider" (as in a horse-warrior) unless you owned at least four ponies, lords had hundreds of mounts, kings thousands. The way they covered huge distances was by only riding any one mount for a few hours before changing again, leading the remaining ponies on a string behind them.

The other important point is that they weren't independent of settled communities. They ruled over a great area of settled communities providing them "protection" from other nomads. As long as they could keep other nomadic peoples from raiding the settled farmers under their protection, they could claim tribute for the service, including grain and other produce. Those communities were also a source of new recruits, and a place for older riders to retire to. Along with potential places to go to pasture in the winter.