So these guys fought knights on the regular. Was this half plate half mail armor really enough to be good enough knights?
Sipahi
So these guys fought knights on the regular. Was this half plate half mail armor really enough to be good enough knights?
No, but guns were.
>Was this half plate half mail armor really enough
This is something that fascinates me but I never find satisfactory answers. Same thing for armors of the extreme orient.
We know later christian armor was very good, Timur's men complained their bows struggled terribly against Serbian knights fighting for Bayezid.
Why this half plate half mail was implemented? Technology? Or there are practical reasons. Costs? AFAIK mail is costly and time consuming anyway. Nor should be that lighter.
Better in certain climates? I am just speculating, but could it be that plate is worse in hotter climates, albeit obviously all armors are bad?
Or there is some advantage in flexibility and movement?
Cany anyone answer at least some of these?
Full plate is more expensive (read more time intensive, requires higher skilled labour, etc).
But the half plate half mail thing likely gives better mobility and might help with preventing heat stroke in warm climates? It'll still be horrendously hot in the desert sun though, don't get me wrong.
>But the half plate half mail thing likely gives better mobility and might help with preventing heat stroke in warm climates? It'll still be horrendously hot in the desert sun though, don't get me wrong.
This is what I was thinking about. There must be some practial advancement, I cannot believe they had no means to adopt it, especially the Ottomans.
>Plate armor is typically made to fit the wearer which is an incredible luxury for even high tech nations and mass produced munitions grade plate armor
Weren't the peak ottomans quite rich and organized tho?
>There's also lamellar armor
Isn't lamellar (but with a wider body extention) also essential part of certain chinese armors?
>Weren't the peak ottomans quite rich and organized tho?
They didn't commission armor from European smiths, if that's what you're asking. The ottomans themselves didn't produce plate armor, even for sultans and nobles.
>Isn't lamellar (but with a wider body extention) also essential part of certain chinese armors?
Lamellar was replaced with brigandine in the early modern era in chinese armies. I cannot attest to its effectiveness since it's not as close fitting as the European variant so it might've been a cost/maintenance/fasion issue, not a matter of protection.
It's simple to build but fricky to maintain and lace, especially so that it fits right.
>as the Romans and Germanic kingdoms used them in late antiquity
There's little historical evidense for that statement.
>Isn't lamellar (but with a wider body extention) also essential part of certain chinese armors?
Largely supplanted by brigandine during the early Ming but never truly obsolete until the Qing. Lamellar was still worn by honor guard as well as border garrison cavalry of the Imjin War and Later Jin bayara guard. Preliminary testing indicate that lamellar had better resistance to arrows compared to Chinese brigandine.
Mail and plate is fairly similar to the western brigandine, that is relatively cheap, easily made armor that can fit variety of people. Plate armor is typically made to fit the wearer which is an incredible luxury for even high tech nations and mass produced munitions grade plate armor is only the western european thing that depends on huge supply chains and tons of skilled people. The upside is that plate armor actually became cheaper than mail armor due to the better metalworking and things like water powered hammers, as well as plentiful iron.
Sour grapes turkroach
Brigantine was developed from the coat of plates which used the surcoat with large plates riveted to it. The plates got smaller and following the fashion trends the garment became more close fitted, allowing the plates to sit tight against the body and offering good protection against stabs and thrusts. The brigantines still featured large plates on the front and back like the older coats of plate that later morphed into full cuirass, but the small plates in a close fitting garment allowed good mobility and coverage and the plates were commonly sourced from the scrapped plate armor and reused.
Mail and plate is a different development that arrived to a similar conclusion of using small, cheap plates suspended in some way, with the difference that the nations using it never developed the coat of plates or plate armor and the mail and plate is a direct derivative of mail armor. The overlapping plates offer better protection against thrusts, especially compared to the crappy eastern mail, and the mail fills the gaps between them and holds them in place. The armor is also cheaper due to less mail being used once the production line that can make both mail and metal plates is set up. The armor also doesn't use fabric and so doesn't require as much mantenance and mending as the one using fabric.
There's also lamellar armor which is much older and combines the downsides of both types, having poor coverage, requiring lots of maintenance and sitting too loose to offer good protection in melee. That's why it was mostly used by nomadic horse archer peoples and once they had settled they typically switched to using mail as their way of fighting changed, the ottomans being the prominent example.
>There's also lamellar armor which is much older and combines the downsides of both types, having poor coverage, requiring lots of maintenance and sitting too loose to offer good protection in melee. That's why it was mostly used by nomadic horse archer peoples and once they had settled they typically switched to using mail as their way of fighting changed, the ottomans being the prominent example.
Lamellar has the great benefit of being simple as frick to build and being able to be combined with mail for a quick and easy reinforcement, as the Romans and Germanic kingdoms used them in late antiquity
I mean Russian armor of that period is nearly identical to that of the Ottomans and Mongols.
russians were just imitating the iranians and byzantines who they were trading with extensively and a lot of their armor was actually iranian in origin and simply imported over.
imagine being so technologically backwards that you have to pick sloppy seconds after the iranians, of all people.
Looks kino to me
cool picture, do you have ones with elves too?
>imagine being so technologically backwards that you have to pick sloppy seconds after the iranians, of all people.
>implying Iran was backwards
post-mongol invasion iran was a shithole that was constantly, continuously bodied by the turks all the way until the British came around
>imagine being so technologically backwards that you have to pick sloppy seconds after the iranians, of all people.
But enough talking about shaded drones
> Russian armor
So you mean - it cannot be exclusively the climate, Russia and Egypt have different ones.
> Advances in furnace sizes when hand to hand with increases of single piece weapons size: two hander swords, single piece helmets, breastplates all needed big furnaces first.
Thank you anon.
So overall you mean it's a matter of euro know-how.
Battle of Ankara is 1402. So XIII century armor I guess (generic, I know).
Timur won, but Stephan Lazarevic managed to take away to Constantinople Bayezid's son and treasury. He could have save the ottoman empire. BTW in the meanwhile the venetians were shuttling away ottomans from Timur's onslaught (at a price of course, you know Venice).
>lamellar armor
>XIII century armor
XIV-early XV, I am moronic.
>Why this half plate half mail was implemented? Technology?
Technology and armorer's skill.
For technology good read is "Knight and Bakst furnace" for making big single armor/weapon's piece you need big piece of iron/steel. Ancient furnaces could only produce smallieces of metal 2-4 pounds and this is maximum size you sn make (also reminder when hot hammer iron it oxideses it reduces in weight the more yo work with it. Advances in furnace sizes when hand to hand with increases of single piece weapons size: two hander swords, single piece helmets, breastplates all needed big furnaces first.
Seconds is armorer's skill. Making plate is very skill intensive, you hammer piece of steel into thin sheet, and it's very easy to ruin it, you hammer one place too much and you hammers hole through and it's ruined, also like I said steel shrinks (burns) when you work with it. If so if you was clumsy and worked with steel too long you end ul having not enough steel left and it's ruined again. Productivity of plate production can be much better especially after introducing of water powered massive hammers, but it's great art to be a le to make plate. It requires decades of knowledge accumulated in guilds and years and years of armorer's practice.
Making armor from small pieces doesn't need all of that.
European armor had similar phase as Ottoman's in armor. Coat of plates had similar ideas, and it same made form small pieces , doesn't need big furnaces and armorer's skill. But Europe moved further whene coat of plates evolved first into solid breastplate then I to full plate armor. Asians stuck in the pre plate transition era.
>Timur's men complained their bows struggled terribly against Serbian knights fighting for Bayezid
What kind of armor were these Serbs wearing? And what kind of role did they play in the battle? I've only read (very) summarized accounts, they talk about how Big B left a good position only to have to march right back and attack the same, but very little tactical detail beyond that.
Knight's armour are really overrated
You dont need this much defense, it screams insecurity
Kek
>Plate armor is typically made to fit the wearer
This is my first guess as to why one might prefer using minimal plate and substituting with plate.
A one size fits all approach can work with mail while poorly fitted plate is worse in terms of mobility, weight distribution and protection.
They armor the places that knights aim at, so they can match knights for less weight. They don't armor the places infantrymen aim at, so they're more vulnerable to infantry.
The armor was great for what they were aiming for: heavy cavalry that can work as horse archers. Plus, it was just good armor in and of itself; the plate segments were located where the heaviest blows would land (plus protecting the most vital organs), and the mail was good for flexibility. Plus, the Sipahi used a lot of armor-piercing weapons like maces, axes, and warhammers/pickaxes to fight the knights with.