I am a pastor and I need help preparing an illustration concerning armour. can someone tell me where the exposed places of a warrior's body would have been in med. times?
Is there a weak place in armour that can be exposed by an enemy?
thanks,
carl
need help with basics
What time/country/region?
"Medieval Times" covers 1000 years and a lot of different countries so its kind of hard to give you what you want without knowing more.
That being said, in general... I would say the Eyes would be a big one (hard to see without having your eyes exposed). Backsides of joints (knees/elbows, armpits etc) are also difficult to armor effectively - although they did do so particularly the later you get in medieval period.
"Medieval Times" covers 1000 years and a lot of different countries so its kind of hard to give you what you want without knowing more.
That being said, in general... I would say the Eyes would be a big one (hard to see without having your eyes exposed). Backsides of joints (knees/elbows, armpits etc) are also difficult to armor effectively - although they did do so particularly the later you get in medieval period.
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Mad Matt
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Probably your best bet would be to go to a library and pick up "Arms and armour of the medieval knight" By david edge and miles paddoc.
You'll be able to see from the pictures and you'll have photo references for your illustration. The text in the book is good also. The book covers several centuries and many different regions.
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The budding mid 14th century German Transitional guy.
Mad Matt's Armory
You'll be able to see from the pictures and you'll have photo references for your illustration. The text in the book is good also. The book covers several centuries and many different regions.
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The budding mid 14th century German Transitional guy.
Mad Matt's Armory
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Konstantin the Red
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Horsemen's armor had no coverage of the buttocks and inside the thighs, for the sake of sitting the horse. While these and the groin were pretty well covered so long as he was in the saddle, an armored man would be rather vulnerable there were he unhorsed. The neck is another area that is, well, demanding to armor and allow it to turn, nod, and so forth. Field armours, intended for war, did allow this by various expedients depending on the century, while advanced tournament armors, optimized less towards maneuverability than towards safety, encased the entire neck and head rigidly.
As has been pointed out above, the vulnerable points are generally at the joints. Taking the full-plate harness of the fifteenth century as a general example, it's going to have soft spots inside knee and elbow joints, a distinctly vulnerable point around each armpit, and a lesser vulnerability about the groin. These areas were usually covered with suitably shaped patches of mail. Backplates were lighter than breastplates, and the reason for the pauldrons covering the shoulders also covering so much of the pectoral muscle and shoulder blade is because metal doesn't move the way cloth does; breastplates need surprisingly deep cutouts ahead of the shoulder joint to allow the arm to swing forward and across, so there is some vulnerability there too. By the fifteenth century the neck was pretty well defended, and often in depth, having an articulated gorget which was itself protected by haute-guards -- those plate fences that stick up from pauldrons and amount to outworks for the neck.
While knightly swords got reconfigured to become better suited to dealing with harness this determinedly protective, becoming more pointed, thicker, and stiffer, with two-handed, thrusting techniques evolving, striking for soft spots if at all possible, other weapons with less need to probe for soft spots appeared: the war hammer in its several variations -- imagine a medieval geologists' hammer and you've got it, and a twohanded version for footmen called the Lucerne hammer, also the pollaxe and halberd. Probably a Swiss invention, the halberd quite literally made an impression on the armored men who bore its brunt: one well-known Austrian aristocrat was laid low in the early fifteenth century by a halberd stroke that split both helmet and skull to his teeth.
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"The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone..."
As has been pointed out above, the vulnerable points are generally at the joints. Taking the full-plate harness of the fifteenth century as a general example, it's going to have soft spots inside knee and elbow joints, a distinctly vulnerable point around each armpit, and a lesser vulnerability about the groin. These areas were usually covered with suitably shaped patches of mail. Backplates were lighter than breastplates, and the reason for the pauldrons covering the shoulders also covering so much of the pectoral muscle and shoulder blade is because metal doesn't move the way cloth does; breastplates need surprisingly deep cutouts ahead of the shoulder joint to allow the arm to swing forward and across, so there is some vulnerability there too. By the fifteenth century the neck was pretty well defended, and often in depth, having an articulated gorget which was itself protected by haute-guards -- those plate fences that stick up from pauldrons and amount to outworks for the neck.
While knightly swords got reconfigured to become better suited to dealing with harness this determinedly protective, becoming more pointed, thicker, and stiffer, with two-handed, thrusting techniques evolving, striking for soft spots if at all possible, other weapons with less need to probe for soft spots appeared: the war hammer in its several variations -- imagine a medieval geologists' hammer and you've got it, and a twohanded version for footmen called the Lucerne hammer, also the pollaxe and halberd. Probably a Swiss invention, the halberd quite literally made an impression on the armored men who bore its brunt: one well-known Austrian aristocrat was laid low in the early fifteenth century by a halberd stroke that split both helmet and skull to his teeth.
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"The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone..."
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Steve S.
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Hi Carl!
As has been mentioned, the book you want to check out from the libary is <u>Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight</u> by David Edge and John Miles Paddock.
It is a great overview of arms and armour from the 9th or so century until the 16th or so century.
Armour varied greatly over that time period, so it's difficult to generalize about the weak spots in armour. Often times a dagger was simply pushed into an eyeslot as a means to finish off unransomable opponents.
Steve
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Forth Armoury
Highly authentic, affordable riveted maille.
The measure of a man is not in the steel of his skin but in the steel of his heart. - S. Sheldon
As has been mentioned, the book you want to check out from the libary is <u>Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight</u> by David Edge and John Miles Paddock.
It is a great overview of arms and armour from the 9th or so century until the 16th or so century.
Armour varied greatly over that time period, so it's difficult to generalize about the weak spots in armour. Often times a dagger was simply pushed into an eyeslot as a means to finish off unransomable opponents.
Steve
------------------
Forth Armoury
Highly authentic, affordable riveted maille.
The measure of a man is not in the steel of his skin but in the steel of his heart. - S. Sheldon