Let us turn back to the armor of the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries, and consider some of the questions which naturally arise in
our minds as we contemplate these relics of the past. In the first
place, was it practical? How could men possibly wear such a mass of
metal upon their bodies and engage in long military campaigns,
interspersed with violent battles? Isn’t it true that an armored man,
once fallen, could not get up again until he was hoisted with a derrick?
No, that isn’t true. The comical scenes in the moving pictures of
frustrated knights floundering about in search of hoisting engines were
put in strictly for laughs. Armor was practical; it was worn by about
all the most important men of more than three centuries; if they had not
worn it they would not have lived long enough to become important! As a
matter of fact armor is not as heavy as one might think. A good military
suit weighs no more than the pack carried by a modern soldier, sixty
pounds or less, and is a great deal more comfortable to carry. The pack
hangs from the shoulders, but a good suit of armor, carefully made (as
all good armor had to be made) to fit the individual body of the wearer,
has its weight distributed over the entire body. The helmet rests partly
on the head and partly on the shoulders. The breast and backplates rest
partly on the shoulders and partly on the hips. The arm and leg guards
are laced to the special undergarment which had always to be worn with
armor, and each limb supports its own protection. The joints come at
exactly the right places to correspond with the natural motions of the
body, and every one of these motions is provided for. A man wearing a
properly fitting suit of armor over the correct undergarment could do
anything that a modern man can do wearing a winter overcoat, and
probably, due to his special training, a number of things that the
modern man could not. He could certainly walk, run, climb a wall, lie
down and get up quickly, and mount his horse without help. To test the
truth of these statements and the implications of the romantic novels of
the past, the writer donned a suit of armor which fitted him only
approximately, yet found himself able to perform all the actions above
mentioned and, in addition, to descend two stories on a rope, hand under
hand.
Two particular devices aided in making such flexibility possible. Where
the body needed protection combined with motility it could be covered
with a series of narrow, overlapping steel strips, each of which was
riveted in turn to one or more leather straps, the ends of which were
fastened to the solid main defense. Then as the body was flexed the
steel strips or _lames_ would slide over one another without exposing
the body beneath them (Fig. 21). It was also possible to join a series
of lames by not more than two rivets for each pair; these would act as
pivots, allowing one lame to rotate slightly relative to the other (Fig.
22). However, if rivets were used with rather large heads with a washer
under the burred end of each, and if the holes for the rivet in one lame
were round while that in the other had the form of a slot, in addition
to the pivoting motion, a certain amount of sideways motion between the
lames would be possible (Fig. 23).
[Illustration: _Fig. 21. The leathering of a tasset, from the
inside._]
[Illustration: _Fig. 22. The pivot rivets of a solleret._]
[Illustration: _Fig. 23. The wrist plates of a gauntlet with sliding
(Almain) rivets._]
Who wore armor? Every man who could afford it. Armor was always very
much of a luxury. Its making required the services of consummate
craftsmen, men who were not only expert metal workers, but also skilled
draughtsmen, expert tailors, and keen students of human anatomy.
Armorers were the aristocrats of all mediaeval craftsmen, the most
highly respected and by far the best paid. It required a great deal of
their time; the completion of a full suit of armor might take a year or
more. Armor was, therefore, in the class of the modern automobile. A
wealthy monarch might have a large wardrobe of beautifully decorated
armor, as a millionaire to-day owns a fleet of expensive imported motor
cars. A simple knight would be proud to possess a single suit, plain,
but nevertheless made exactly to fit him and no other person. A minor
soldier was lucky if he could secure a simple ready-made breastplate and
helmet.
What was the physical character of the men who wore armor? Why do the
suits seem so small? Were people smaller in those days? Yes and no. It
is true that the nature of their life tended to develop men of the
cowboy type, wiry rather than massive. Men who spend their lives on
horseback are likely to have a broad shoulder and narrow waist, strong
thigh and slender calf. It is true too that with primitive medicine and
sanitation man died young; the average age of adult males was less than
it is now.
However the principal reason for the small average size of preserved
suits of armor lies in its inextensibility. A suit of armor cannot be
“let out”. As has been pointed out, it had to be made exactly to fit the
wearer. Men had to learn their military duties very young, they had to
have and to wear armor while they were still growing. Consequently they
usually outgrew their first suit of armor, and it was this suit,
unmarked by the scars of serious fighting, which was most likely to be
preserved. By the time a man reached his full growth his armor showed
wear and tear; when he died he was buried in it, or it was discarded
after his death as too battered to be worth keeping. The suits of armor
in the world’s collections are largely the outgrown suits of young men.