Randall

You mean something like the standard in the British Museum:

[ Linked Image ]

[ Linked Image ]

James,

Thanks you very much for that close up picture of the standard. It looks very much what I was thinking. What I am curious about is why it is so much more. If it was used like in this picture you posted of a very dense mail weave that could be a clue. Thanks for the pictures. Sadly the museum is closed the late and high medieval sections at the BM. Luckily they will reopen with a totally remodeled look in DEcember!

Jean,

Prince Edward son of Edward III. I was just speaking to a person who I think is very knowing on mail and the subject of mail getting thinner came up. I haev never seen this trend and he seems to indicate it as well. I really am not sure mail in general gets thinner. I think mail though does vary a great deal in any time period though.

RPM

I never said that mail gets lighter later in the period. I said that mail tends to be lighter when it is used as a secondary defense and this is more often the case after plate becomes more widespread. When mail is the primary defense it is almost always substantial regardless of the time period. Of course I'm speaking generally. It is the only way one can speak on a discussion forum.

Well... I'm better reading than writing in english...

Hi... This is my first post in myArmoury, and I'm not a great expert in the knowledge of ancient arms and armour... The only "swords" I have are two brazilians Facões (Machete in spanish) and I use to train with the two... I also use a waster to train the longsword fencing, using the material that I can find on the net, and I use to train with all the farming tools I have in my farm as if they were medieval weapons(train with the 20 pound maul isn't easy...) I want to buy some longsword replica one day.... I dressed a mail shirt once, and i haven't felt secure inside this armour, felt like someone with a barbecue espeto could kill me easily...

I haven't read all the posts, but reading the test of the armour made me think about some questions... I'm tthankfulif someone explain them to me...

1- Would be reasonable to say, by the tests on the mail and the jack, that a warrior dressed in a full set of rivetted mail, gambeson and jack would be immune to any kind of arrow/bolt shot, including heavy crossbows? If this is true, the common knowledge that says the english longbow made armour useless is not true, so how did the english managed to win the battle of Agincourt using ostensively the Longbow?

2- How much would weight a full set of this armour (gambeson/riveted mail/jack)?

3- The test cut on the jack was interesting to show the legendary slicing power of the katana(it made the european swords ridiculous...), however... A look on the european swords used on this test shows that they have a design more adequate for thrusts than slices or cuts, and I wander how a viking age sword, made to cut, would work on the jack... I read an essay once saying that a viking sword could even cut through the viking era chain mail, a deed that not even the katana would do... Is that true?

Thanks

At Agincourt, longbow did more damage to horses than knights...

Agincourt is an odd case; it is not that the longbowmen killed so many knights with the longbow it is that they broke the knights charges, knocked them off the horses to get trampled by the next row of horsemen, they killed many lightly armored crossbowmen, they injured and captured many French knights and later murdered them when the rear train was attacked by the French to prevent these men from escaping and rejoining the fight. There were many more factors to the English victory at Agincourt than the archers. That said plate protects well against arrows but it is not perfect, people lifted their visors and took arrows to the face and arrows found weak spots and gapes in the armor.

Crecy on the other hand shows how the longbow was overtaking maille armor; many men in maille did die from arrow storms. More plate armor started showing up after Crecy.

No armor is perfect at stopping arrow it is only good at stopping them.

So, general perception is mistaken about Agincourt and the longbow...

I may sound a little stubborn, but...

I think that few arrows would hit the weak spots of the armour, or uncovered faces... It would be very expensive to shot so many arrows for so little damage... thinking that just a 20 layers jack would stop almost all arrows is strange... It was said that a edged blade would cut easily through the jack... Wouldn't the bodkin arrow head have been edged at that time, diferently from the arrow used at the test?

Jacks are more of a late 15th c thing. I read recently that looking at all the data from the War of the Roses the side goaded into charging first always lost; the battles always started with and exchange of arrows. Longbows works as a psychological weapon more than a mass kill rate weapon after a time and it shut down Calvary for the most part, it is only one cog in the war machine.

In these battles I think more of the horses were killed than the riders, which effectively broke up the cavalry attack. Most of the horses were not fully armored, some were not armored at all (particularly remounts etc.) Other factors then made it very difficult for the injured knights to fight as infantry (sloping ground, mud etc.)

Incidentlaly this debate about longbows vs. plate armor etc. has been debated ad nauseum in this and many other forums. You may want to do a search.

It looks like only the brass decoration rings to be butted and they ar an addition to the standard rings.

Jean

I am unsure if they are a repair or not but those dangling triangles of maille added on are a historical practice you can see in art and effigies. As they are layered on top for decoration there is no real reason to make them riveted; they are not part of the defensive structure.

Sorry it took so long, but as promised, I tested some more swords against the jack samples. The results were surprising, and didn't require photographs.

Albion Duke: Type XIII, very sharp, devastating against tatami, noodles, meat, etc. could not cut the jack at all...not 30 layers, and not 20...not even the first layer was cut.

Albion Trionia: same exact story.

Albion Allectus gladius: could not cut, but pierced a 30 layer jack like it wasn't even there....if the words "like a hot knife through butter" were ever applicable to a situation, this was it. All the way to the wood every time.

These results were very surprising, as I expect the XIIIs to make short work of the jack (being so heavily cut oriented). I was so surprised that I thought I was off my game and tried to cut with the Brescia Spadona to see if either I was having a bad day or months of lying in my garage somehow made the linen harder to cut. The Spadona cut through the 20 layer jack just as easily as before, so it was neither me not the jack. The XIIIs could not get through.

As for why they could not cut...if I had to guess, I would say that their flexibility is what hurt them. When they struck the jack, the blades were in a U shape (not that extreme, of course). Because the blades are so wide and thin, they tend to deform in the air even before impact. I tried both hacking and draw cuts with both swords, no difference. The Brescia Spadona is not as sharp as either my Duke or Tritotian, but is substantially stiffer and because there is so little mass near the point, there is no deformation in the air prior to impace. Both the Duke and the Tritonia are notorious tatami killers, so considering the results of these tests there is no doubt in my mind that they were mend for unarmored flesh.

And, yes, for those who may wonder, I did cut with the COP with the correct edge orientation.

Assuming that these swords are accurate represenations of medieval originals (and I have no doubt whatsoever that they are), I would at this point not hesitate to conjecture that layered linen defenses either did not exist in the 12th and 13th centuries or were no where as popular as people tend to believe these days.

On the other hand...

Maybe our modern heat treat that we like to think of as superior makes the swords a litle too prone to flex and vibrations. Period originals were sometimes "poorly" heat treated (by modern standards) and some had significant unhardened or iron content...perhaps that made for a better sword in that it made them less prone to flex (but more pone to bending) and vibration and therefore made them better cutters (harmonic "deadness"). Perhaps our superior modern heat treat is not so superior after all. Certainly it makes the sword more durable, but better? Maybe not.

One thing is certain...the Brescia Spadona rocks. :)

But building a sword, the size of the Baron just for maiming unarmoured opponents would be pretty pointless, since that can be accomplished with a much smaller, one handed sword. So i guess it must have had a very special purpose. And just beating the snot out of a maille-clad knight would work much better with a big club. Please don't understand me wrong, but could this result be related to a mistake in using the sword? Have you had another person try on the target as well, or is that out of question? But never the less, great testing and very interesting results! Even if they leave more questions than answers in this particular case! I'm pretty surprised by the performance of the Brescia Spadona, and the Katana.