This is a very short post this week, because I really want to do no more than share the video at the bottom of the page.
Before I saw it I thought medieval knights must have been very clumsy in their armour. I also thought that it would be hard for them to move around. On the other hand, a knight who can’t move is surely a dead knight. It was a conundrum which the video solves.
The men in the video are wearing full armour based on that worn in the fifteenth century. This is a bit later than the period I usually cover, but the video is so good, it’s worth sharing.
Not only does the video show how easily an armoured knight could move, it also shows how much of his body was not covered in armour. Depending on what he was dong, various parts of the body could be horribly exposed, even if it was covered by a gambuson.
I hope you enjoy it.
A Writer's Perspective 
Wow..I am amazed at how mobile they are!..thanks for sharing this April.
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Isn’t it amazing. Sometimes I watch it just for the star jumps and the shoulder rolls.
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Its really something to see…Ill be be re watching too…thanks again.
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Interesting video. I’ve always been fascinated by armour, and some of the strange beliefs about it. Was it the old Laurence Olivier/Henry V movie that showed knights being winched onto their horses? In reality, a knight who couldn’t get himself on or off a horse would have been in serious trouble. And images of medieval knights often showed them in the ornate jousting armour of the Renaissance, rather than the more practical field armour they would have worn.
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Knights must have been getting on and off their horses all the time during a battle. Sometimes they would be fighting on horseback, at others on foot. They might have had to change horses. I can’t picture them asking the other side to hang for a moment while they were winched into place.
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Your idea of a winch break made me laugh out loud.
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I’m now stuck with a Pythonesque image in my head. Two knights on foot are hacking away at each other. One says to the other, “Is it winch break yet?”
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Refreshments could be served as well.
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Yep. Oranges cut into cradles, like we used to get at hockey. And they would have been an even bigger treat in the middle ages.
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We had them, too. I was thinking more a glass of wine and sweetmeats, but oranges work.
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pretty cool. I’m a bid of a nerd about this kind of stuff and wouldn’t have guessed this either
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That’s one of the joys of stumbling over this kind of stuff, it makes you reexamine your assumptions.
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The knights, and other heavy combat fighters (because you must be elevated after you have proven yourself not only at fighting, but also in the many facets of chivalry), in our Society for Creative Anachronism don’t usually wear armor quite as shiny as that seen in your video, but they certainly can move! Thank you for posting this! 🙂
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It is very shiny, isn’t it. The enemy would be blinded if it was a sunny day.
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So true! 🙂
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Fascinating. The men must have had a bit of fun filming this, but I notice they are very young. The weight of the armor on arthritic shoulders makes me wince. It also must have been very sweaty in there. As for the visibility through that slit… scary stuff. Although you do get used to things after a while and loads of practice, I suppose.
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Yes, I’m sure it was heavy. Not all the weight was on the shoulders, fortunately. Some of it was strapped around the waist. I would not have liked to smell them at the end of a day’s battle, either. Apparently the vision wasn’t quite as restricted as it appears, but it wasn’t fantastic. You’re right, practice must have been the key.
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I had a chat to a chap about the weight of armour at a jousting event where they wear very expensive replica medieval armour. He told me the weight was OK because it was spread over his whole body.
His armour weighed about 62 kg (136 pounds). That sounds like a lot, but he said heat was the main problem because of the padded tunic (I forget the proper name) he wears inside it. He came off his horse in a joust once (something that shouldn’t happen, the point being to break your lance) and scarcely felt the impact as he hit the ground because of the padded “shock absorber” he was wearing.
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The weight is interesting. Robyn asked about the weight, so I looked it up in a book about armour, which conveniently gives the weights. There was a suit of plate armour similar to that worn by the chaps in the video and that wasn’t quite 30 kilos. Your jousting chap must have included the mail and the padding. The padding was probably a gambuson.
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Whoops! I think I got the weight of his armour round the wrong way. It probably weighed around 30 kg, which I mentally translated as 62 pounds on the principle of “double it and add a bit”.
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And now I have the topic for next week’s post – provided I can find out the answer in time.
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You’ve certainly got a hot topic here. I understand jousting armour got to be heavier than field armour, but the chap I was talking to wasn’t wearing anything ornate. They give us plenty of warnings at the jousting about keeping well clear when the action starts – the combination of a horse and a man in armour is heavy indeed.
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I wouldn’t like to get in the way of a horse on its own, let alone when it’s a got a man in full armour on its back.
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I just checked my notes on our mutual friend the Earl’s field armour. It weighs just over 61 pounds, but is 3/4 length, so was worn with riding boots.
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Is that just the plate armour or the underclothing as well?
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Just the plate armour, I think. It’s in the Leeds Armoury. I suspect that most surviving suits of armour are well after your period.
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They are. I have a catalogue of a collection of armour in Scotland (I think) and there are about five pages on fourteenth century armour. It’s interesting to see how armour changed over the centuries, though.
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Very mobile but what about the weight?
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The armour worn by the men in the video would have been just under 30 kilos, apparently.
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Less than I thought but still amazing. I guess if they all wore armour any disadvantage would be cancelled out.
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I think I’ve misled you. That was the weight of the plate armour. I forgot about the mail and the gambuson, which might have weighed the same again.
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Good grief! Like carrying around a whole other person.
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Now that you’ve raised the topic, and I’ve been discussing it with Toutparmoi as well, I want to see what I can find out. There’s a blog post in there if I find out something useful.
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I’d be most interested. Thanks April.
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Thinking back, I imagined that armour was worn by mounted warriors in which case the horse bore most of the weight. The video seems to imply that there was hand to hand combat on the ground. Can you enlighten me on this?
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It varied. Edward III surprised the French at Crécy by having his knights dismount and fight on foot for some of the battle. I think something similar happened at Poitiers.
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Another good one
https://mediaserver.unige.ch/play/95567
I think too many folks were influenced by the technique in “The Court Jester” with Danny Kay 🙂
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Thank you. I’m sure that’s a good video, but it kept stopping and starting. It was fun watching him jump onto the back of a wooden horse.
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I had the video open in a new tab until I had the chance to watch it. Just finished, and it was awesome! Thanks so much for passing this along, April!
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It’s great, isn’t it?
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Definitely! I used to be a tour guide in a castle, and naturally there was a suit of armor on display. It always struck me as being so cumbersome – this was totally a light bulb moment! 🙂
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I’ve come across one which I might use in the next post. It shows a chap running, at speed.
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