Armor

Full-body steel armor of the medieval knight

Plate armor is the full-body armor of the European knight, encasing the wearer from head to foot in shaped steel plates and perfected in the 15th century. Steel plates about 1 to 2 mm thick were hammered to the curve of the body and joined with rivets, hinges, and internal leather straps to cover the whole body, the smooth curved surfaces glancing a descending blade aside. The total weight came to some 20 to 30 kg, but spread evenly over the whole body, so that a trained knight could run, mount a horse, and even roll while wearing it. The gaps the plates could not reach, such as the armpits and groin, were filled with mail, and beneath it all a padded garment (the arming doublet) had to be worn to absorb shock, so that the armor was a whole system. The Italian Milanese and the German Gothic were its two great styles, and since each harness was custom-made, a single set took enormous cost and many months to make.

Transitional armor with iron plates riveted inside fabric

The coat of plates, also known as the pair of plates, is the transitional armor that grew up in Europe from the middle of the 13th century to the late 14th century, in an age in which the mail hauberk alone could no longer take all of the shock of arrows and sword points. Inside a coat of cloth or leather, a number of iron plates large and small were fixed by rivets, and the arms of the family were painted on the outside, so that from without it looked like an ordinary surcoat, but inside hidden plates covered the chest, the back, and the flanks. The order of dressing was set: under it the man wore a thick padded gambeson, and over that the mail hauberk, and over that the coat of plates. These three layers together formed the standard of the 13th-century knight, and with a great helm laid on top, this is the figure of the knight most often shown in the illuminated manuscripts and tomb sculpture of the age.

Armor made of overlapping metal scales

Scale armor is armor made of small metal scales, or scales of leather or horn, overlapped like fish scales and fixed by sewing or lacing to a backing of cloth or leather. One of the oldest metal armor types, used from before the common era, it spread widely across the ancient world. The scales overlap from top to bottom to shed the shock of a blow, so it protected against cuts and arrows while still allowing flexible movement. The Roman lorica squamata and the scale armor of Sasanian Persia are prime examples, and because every scale is the same shape, it was relatively simple to make and easy to maintain, a damaged scale being simply replaced. It is, however, distinct from lamellar armor, in which small plates are laced directly to one another to form the structure with no backing: scale armor instead fixes the scales to a backing.

Armor of small iron plates riveted between fabric layers

A brigandine is an armor made by laying small steel plates between two layers of cloth or leather and fixing them with rivets. The plates are hidden inside, and only the heads of the rivets that hold them show on the outside, in regular rows, which is the brigandine's most distinctive outward feature. A development of the 13th-century coat of plates, it used smaller and more numerous plates to raise both protection and comfort, and its mature form was established in the 14th century. Far cheaper and more flexible than full plate armor, it was favored across many troop types in 14th-to-16th-century Europe, by infantry, lower-ranking knights, and archers alike. The size and arrangement of the plates let the balance of protection and flexibility be adjusted, and the outer fabric could be finished in fine cloth such as velvet for decoration. In East Asia, too, an armor of the same principle, with iron plates riveted inside fabric, developed independently.

Quilted padded defensive garment

A gambeson is a thick padded garment made of many quilted layers of cloth such as linen or cotton. Two layers of cloth are stuffed with wool, tow (scrap flax or hemp fiber), or rag, and quilted in close vertical channels so that a blow is spread and absorbed across the whole garment. It could be worn alone as the armor of a light footsoldier, or under mail or plate as a padded undergarment (the aketon) that cushioned the shock the metal passed through. It came into wide use in Europe around the 11th and 12th centuries and was worn by soldiers of every class throughout the Middle Ages, its protection varying with the quality of the quilting and the number of layers. Surprisingly resistant to cuts and arrows, it was the cheapest and easiest armor to make and yet remarkably cost-effective. In cold country it gave warmth as well, so everyone from levied peasants to knights wore it.

Segmented plate armor of the Roman legions

The lorica segmentata is the segmented plate armor of the ancient Roman legionary, a structure of several curved iron plates, or bands, joined by leather straps and bronze buckles and hooks to enclose the torso and shoulders. Used mainly in the 1st to 3rd century AD, its horizontally overlapping girdle bands and shoulder guards slide as the body moves, like a lobster's shell, to protect it. Stronger against cuts and arrows than mail (the lorica hamata) of the same weight, yet light enough to keep mobility, it could be taken apart into a few sections for carrying on the march. Carved in detail on the reliefs of Trajan's Column, it became the visual symbol of the Roman legion. The name lorica segmentata, however, is not ancient but a later one given in the 16th century, and the name the Romans actually used for it does not survive.

Armor of small plates laced together with cord

Lamellar armor is armor made of small plates, usually rectangular and called lamellae, pierced with holes and laced directly to one another with cords or leather thongs. Unlike scale armor, which fixes its scales to a backing of cloth or leather, lamellar has no backing at all: the plates themselves are laced together in rows, both vertically and horizontally, to form the structure. The hard plates overlap densely to stop cuts and arrows, while the laced joints flex and follow the movements of the body. Originating in East and Central Asia, it spread across Eurasia, and the Japanese o-yoroi, the lamellar of Goguryeo Korea, the Byzantine klibanion, and the armor of Mongol horsemen are all built this way. The lamellae could be iron, bronze, hardened (lacquered) leather, horn, or bone, and at roughly 15 to 20 kg the armor rivalled plate in weight. A damaged plate could simply be re-laced and replaced, which made repair easy, but the lacing itself demanded constant care.

Flexible armor of interlocked metal rings

Mail, commonly called chainmail today, is a flexible armor made of tens of thousands of small metal rings linked one to another. The most common pattern is 4-in-1, in which each ring passes through four others; good mail had the open ends of each ring pierced and riveted shut, while cheaper work simply butted the ends together. It is thought to have been first made by the Celts around the 4th century BC, and the Roman Empire adopted it as the lorica hamata and spread it across the Mediterranean and Europe. At roughly 10 to 15 kg it was lighter than plate armor, and being flexible as a net it did not greatly hinder the movements of the body. It was highly effective against cuts and slashing blades, but relatively weak against a narrow thrusting point and against the shock of a blunt weapon. For that reason it was standard practice to wear it over a padded garment (the gambeson), so that the two absorbed the impact together.

Grand armor of the Japanese samurai

The o-yoroi (great armor) is the classic large-style armor of the Japanese samurai, perfected in the Heian period for the mounted warrior. It is a lamellar armor, built from small scales (kozane) of iron and lacquered leather laced densely together with colored silk cords (odoshi) and finished over with leather and silk in splendid fashion. Above all it was designed for mounted archery: the box-like cuirass wraps the body, the right side covered by a separate piece called the waidate so as not to hinder the bow, and a panel of tooled leather (the tsurubashiri) over the front kept the bowstring from catching on the lamellae. Large square shoulder guards (o-sode) hung at each shoulder, serving like small shields that covered the flanks when the arms were raised to shoot. The skirt of hanging plates (kusazuri) was divided into four sections so the wearer could sit a horse, and at roughly 25 to 30 kg it was heavy armor. From the Heian into the Muromachi period it was worn for some five centuries as the armor of high-ranking warriors.

Polished plate-and-mail armor of the Islamic world

Mirror armor, grown from the Persian char-aina, which in Persian means 'four mirrors,' is a piece of composite armor in which four great plates of steel, covering chest, back, and both flanks, are hung over a mail coat by straps and small hinges. The face of those plates was polished as smooth as a mirror, gathering the high desert sun to a single point and dazzling the eye of the enemy, and this polish made the same seat a place where beauty and the work of battle stood together. Keeping the softness of mail alive while laying a hard plate of one face only over the weakest seat, the chest and the back, the weave runs along a different path from the Western road of wrapping the whole body in one suit of plate, and stands as a core of Islamic war-gear thinking, in which protection and freedom stand at one seat together. A single suit, including the mail, weighed only twelve to eighteen kilograms, far lighter at one seat than the Western full plate of the same age.

Roman legionary chainmail armor

Lorica hamata is the armor that the Roman legion wore the longest, and the very Latin name, hamata, comes from hamus, the hook, meaning the cuirass set of hooked rings. Small iron rings, each linked into four neighbors, were woven together as if into cloth, with one row of rings riveted shut and the next row punched solid alternating, and this weave is its sharpest mark. A single suit was made of as few as 20,000 and as many as 30,000 rings, and on the shoulders a doubled layer was added to make a strong seat against the blow falling from above. The lorica segmentata of laminar plate is the best-known mark of Rome in film and period drama, but in truth the hamata took root much earlier and lived much longer, and was worn alike by the auxiliaries, the cavalry, and many of the legionaries. A single suit weighed about 10 to 15 kilograms, not far above the segmentata, and with the great advantage that a cut ring could be replaced on the spot in camp, the hamata took its place as the most practical single piece of armor in the field.

Korean armor with brass-studded iron plates

The dujeong-gap ('head-nail armor'), the eastern brigandine, is one of the most representative figures of the military armor of the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, an armor made by laying small iron plates close-set between two layers of cloth and fastening them with brass rivets driven from the outside. Seen from without, on a face of blue or red cloth, the round heads of the brass rivets stand in even rows that make a striking pattern of dots, and from this the armor took its very name, head-nail armor. Inside, an iron plate the size of a palm is fastened by each rivet, and so even if a rivet at one place comes loose, the plate at another place is still alive, making a soft and tough structure. In its outside form it is much like the Western brigandine, but its parent line lies closer to the cotton armor (mian-jia) of Mongol and Ming-Qing China, and so it is seen as the result of a separate growth of the East Asian line of riveted armor. From the late 16th century, after the Imjin War (1592-1598) shook Joseon's army, it took its place as standard, and until the late 19th century it was worn alike by foot, horse, and the royal guard.

Lightweight armor of hardened leather

Leather armor is the branch of light armor made by hardening the hide of a beast at one seat, and within it the European cuir bouilli, 'boiled leather,' is the best-known. Despite the name, cuir bouilli was not made by boiling proper, but by setting the hide in warm water of about 70 to 80 degrees Celsius, or in wax or oil, so that the hide grew hard at the same seat while keeping its grain and some of its softness. Hardened by the same method, leather gained at one seat a hardness near that of wood, while remaining much lighter and quieter than mail and plate, and so suited the seat of scouting, ambush, and a light march. The figure often drawn in films and games, of a man wrapped from head to knee in a suit of leather alone, is rather more swollen than the seat in true history. The commonest seat of leather armor was as part of a single great suit, the couter and the poleyn laid over mail at elbow and knee, the small scales of the Mongol and the Japanese, the jack of plates with small iron plates riveted on leather, and a single suit of leather covering a man from head to knee at one seat was rare.