Nine questions from a newb

[QTipConnoisseur]

Hi, I've been lurking the forums for the past few weeks, and have learned a lot, but i havent been able to find the answer to a few questions:
1: How is the whole harness held together? What is strapped to what? etc.
2: Which goes underneath, the gorget or the breastplate/cuirass?
3: Is there any other hip/upper leg protection besides faulds and tassets?
4: What do you prefer, full arms, or bazubands?
5: How come the back of Clang's 15th century italian cuirass looks like its articulated? is it just a style?
6: Why is the hilt of a heater or similar shield in the upper corner?
7: What is used for padding underneath plate armor besides an arming coat and cap?
8: Is chainmail commonly seen worn in conjunction with plate armor?
9: Does anyone have a pair of Carlo's grand pauldrons that they can critique for me?

Thanks for your help.

[Effingham]

Most of your questions can't be answered, as they lack a critical "by whom" and "when" factor.

Armour was not a monolithic thing through history and across cultures. An answer that would be correct for 15th C. Milanese armour wouldn't hold true for a 14th C. transitional armour from England, or a high Gothic armour from Germany.


Effingham

[justus]

Two of your questions are closely related so I'll giv eit a shot.

3: Is there any other hip/upper leg protection besides faulds and tassets?

8: Is chainmail commonly seen worn in conjunction with plate armor?

Having a good understanding of the evolution of armor in the middle ages will give you a base to work from.

Mail came first, for a long time a full suit of armor, was entirely mail head to foot. Then as folks realized that you could still get broken through mail, they started adding rigid plates to certian vunerable spots.

A rigid plate spreads out the impact of a blow to a larger area, something mail by itself doesn't do. The first areas to get extra protection were the joints. This is for the same reason that in the SCA we are primarly concerned with armoring the joints. Joints are the weak links, if you get hit in the thigh, no bigge, but the same ammount of force applied to you knee, could cripple you.

So the joints came first, then people started adding extra armor to the torso, the next most vunerable spot. A spear in the guts is a really bad thing. So plates were attached directly to the mail in the front of the torso. This gave way to the Coat of Plates design that was worn over the mail.

You can see how one plate at a time, you are starting to encase the whole body in rigid protection. At a certian point say mid, 1300's you had people wearing almost full mail, under almost full plate protection. ( These guys must have been like tanks. )

My guess is that as plate armor became more advanced, and armorers got better at making it, you could start to rely on the plate to be proof by itself and not have the "Saftey net" of mail underneath. So the are coverd by mail began to decrease.

But certian places are very hard to armor.
The underarms, the hip joint, the neck and the crotch are all very difficult to armor with plate. Mail was used to armor these places well after it dissapeared from the rest of the body. Arming clothes, often had mail patches attached under the arms for example.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/justus1199/179896800/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/51/179896800_fcac109e71_o.jpg" width="199" height="297" alt="mailsleeves_156" /></a>

Mail was hung from the basinet to protect the neck, though at some point I think there was a rigid neck piece that attached to the shoulders and helm, good protection, but you could'nt move your head!

Eventually, rather late in the game, plate armor advanded to cover just about everything, with good articulation for the neck and faulds for the hip joint ect. I don't know if they every fully got the underarm.

-Justus

[justus]

6: Why is the hilt of a heater or similar shield in the upper corner?

It isn't always, sometimes it is in the center, but the upper corner with an arm strap in the center is the most common.

Why? It works best there. You could have your arm strapped straight across the heater, but that position is kind of always "half way" and it's uncomfortable to hold a shield that way for long.

Having your arm bent upwards towards your head is a strong position. You are also bracing the shield on the diagonal, which makes it very hard for your opponent to spin the shield on your arm.

If you had your arm strapped straight across the shield, and your opponent struck the top of the shield with say, a lance powered by a thousand pounds of horse, the top would roll backwards towards you, the bottom would flip out and you would be skewered.

With you arm at a diagonal, the shield still wants to roll, but it rolls on the axis of your arm, which directs the lance point away from you to the left rear. (or, less desirably, across your body to the right rear) Either way it won’t flip straight back and allow the lance to continue.

If the point does strike square, and doesn’t shatter the lance, or worse, go right through your shield, it will force the whole shield back against you, and probably knock you off your horse. And while that may be unpleasant, it’s better than getting skewered.

-Justus

[audax]

Hi, I've been lurking the forums for the past few weeks, and have learned a lot, but i havent been able to find the answer to a few questions:
1: How is the whole harness held together? What is strapped to what? etc.
2: Which goes underneath, the gorget or the breastplate/cuirass?
3: Is there any other hip/upper leg protection besides faulds and tassets?
4: What do you prefer, full arms, or bazubands?
5: How come the back of Clang's 15th century italian cuirass looks like its articulated? is it just a style?
6: Why is the hilt of a heater or similar shield in the upper corner?
7: What is used for padding underneath plate armor besides an arming coat and cap?
8: Is chainmail commonly seen worn in conjunction with plate armor?
9: Does anyone have a pair of Carlo's grand pauldrons that they can critique for me?

Thanks for your help.

Greetings and welcome to the Archive,

1. Depending on where and when you're talking about, it could be leather straps or lacing the armor to what are called points, which can be grommets or a tab of leather riveted to the supporting garment called a pourpoint. It very much depends on where and when you are as armor evolved a lot over the centuries.

2. When I had a BP, I put my gorget on first. It seemed to work better that way but I've seen it done the other way as well. Most period stuff I've seen shows the gorge under the BP.

3. Hips and upper legs are hard to armor because of how they move and the need for freedom of movement whilst fighting. Getting hit with a mace in the hip was a certain death sentence, but it would be long and agonizing as you died from peritonitis. So tassets and faulds were the method invented in period. If your question relates to SCA and you want to do a pre tassets or faulds harness, you can use a well padded gambeson with a few judiciously applied pieces of plastic or try one of the various kinds of modern sports armor, like football pants or the pants made for crazy mountain bikers. Oh I forgot the tonlet. This pretty much looks like a womans skirt made out of steel. Henry the VIIIth had one.

4. Bazus any day for me. I also like a simple cop and vambrace arrangement. I find I have more mobility this way and still remain well protected.

5. It is articulated in the Italian style.

6. For better balance while strapped. You should come to the dark side and use a center grip heater. Or better yet no sheild at all.

7. That was pretty much it. During the age of mail, padded gambesons were worn. The padding under plate is mostly to keep your own armor from biting YOU when you got hit. The plate spread the impact out and blocked cuts fairly well by itself.

8. In the early period it was mail alone then over time, as Justus has explained, bits of plate were added. So during the transitional period you would see mail worn with plate until by the end of the 14th century it was plate all the way unless you were poor.

9. Sorry, I'm from 1300 so I don't use pauldrons. I can be of no help with that one.

I hope this is of help.

Regards,

audax

[Konstantin the Red]

Arcenarius, welcome and well come to the Archive!

To kind of fill in a corner or two after all these responses have pretty much covered the topic for western European armor: the time for prominently visible mail on a harness that is largely plate is the time 1350-1400, roughly. This is the tail end of a century of extensive experimentation and comparatively rapid evolution. The fourteenth century began with mail head to foot, plus helmets and helms, and ended with a nearly complete harness of plate, which then dominated the next two centuries plus. Two places, particularly in the SCA game, where mail really shines is giving both protection and mobility to the neck and to the hips, which are both demanding to armor in plate because of the kind of motions they have -- ball and socket motions are harder to follow and keep covered than hinge joints which can be properly dealt with by the cop and lames system covering elbow and knee, and which is itself a series of hinges.

However, this wasn't the only way to cover a joint. German armors evolved an arm covering that wasn't held together by its articulation rivets and suspended from the point of the shoulder, but which was instead in three pieces and laced, or pointed, to an underlying sleeve and came in three pieces that were tied on with points. There was a rerebrace, a separate elbow that was not properly an elbow cop but an object that was basically two cones intersecting, into which rather bracelet-like object the arm is inserted -- and a couple of points lace the thing on. Then the vambrace is laced on and there's your German-style arm. This method wasn't used for legs because it would have been inconvenient for riding in a saddle.