In the late 15th to mid 16h centuries, how common was it for soldiers to wear breastplates with no back plates? Was this the norm or was it relatively rare?

I've seen in art, depictions of what appear to be levies and city militias wearing little more than a breastplate (no back plate) sometimes with a helmet and occasionally gauntlets. It also seems that light cavalry Frei-Lanzer/demi-lance/coustiller armour ranged from gauntlets, a mail shirt worn under a breastplate (no back plate) a sallet and occasionally a bevor to the same outfit with light arm harnesses and knee length leg harnesses added. The lower legs being protected only by boots. By the 16th century you sometimes see Landsknechts wearing a breastplate and back plate and a helmet of some kind and Frei-Lanzers/demi-lances/coustillers wearing a breastplate with backplate and articulated assets, mail shirt underneath (or just sleeves), gauntlets and an armet.

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I asked the same question some years ago, this post should help.

http://myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=33947&highlight=

I've seen in art, depictions of what appear to be levies and city militias wearing little more than a breastplate (no backplate) sometimes with a helmet and occasionally gauntlets. It also seems that light cavalry Frei-Lanzer/demi-lance/coustiller armor ranged from gauntlets, a mail shirt worn under a breastplate (no backplate) a sallet and occasionally a bevor to the same outfit with light arm harnesses and knee-length leg harnesses added. The lower legs being protected only by boots. By the 16th century, you sometimes see Landsknechts wearing a breastplate and backplate and a helmet of some kind and Frei-Lanzers/demi-lances/coustillers wearing a breastplate with backplate and articulated assets, mail shirt underneath (or just sleeves), gauntlets and an armet.[/quote]

I ought not to be a specialist in the given subject, but I would say there isn't a proper answer for you since we lack quantitative information on that. However, there is plenty of evidence of how these pieces would appear depending on what army or social condition we are talking about:

The first image shows a mounted crossbowman, which is bellow the rank of men-at-arms and of which couldn't afford full armor (for example, the book Lisboa e a Guerra had a royal decree stating that people with enough income to afford the weapons and full armor had be promoted from the crossbowmen class to the MAA class)

The second isn't a frontal cuirass, the whole piece is actually underneath the clothes, sometimes these hide fully or partially the cuirass (arm harness, however, is normally worn OVER the clothes). The soldier in the picture is a light cavalrymen. Both mounted crossbowmen and light cavalrymen came from somewhat mid-class citizens who couldn't afford the cost of being a propper men-at-arms. I highly recommend you read Daniel's article on German light cavalry: http://kriegsbuch.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-ap...n.html?m=1

To short the question, by 15th c. there was a trend in continental Europe of providing support cavalry to the traditional role of the MAA; this might have happened also because of the income growth of the gens de commune, who would have increased the amount of equipment but not enough to become a man-at-arms. In France, the supportive role came in the military class of the mounted coustillier, latter even the mounted archers also acquired shock cavalry roles. In Spain the traditional ginete light cavalry embraced a more shock cavalry role, then dropped its javelins, light lances and basically became indistinguished from the rest of Europe. See: http://ejercitodeflandes.blogspot.com/2013/10/jinete-ginete.html

The last two images are representing infantrymen. Veteran and more wealthy infantrymen would manage to get more pieces of armor to be more well-clad; since they couldn't afford the whole suit, they would buy or use the most important pieces for them; that's why, for example, the Jack Chains, or cadenas in Castillian, emerged. Frontline pikemen and billmen, light cavalrymen, veteran and richer archers and crossbowmen often have these partially armored fitting.

It's important to notice that the priority of pieces isn't the same in all places and in all times: who can see a preference for leg armor in 14th and 15th centuries while these basically disappeared from the military by 1500's.

In any case, I would recommend that in every case analyzed you look after if there was an expected amount of armour since this could vary a lot: apparently there wasn't a expectation for armor from the Landsknecht pikemen, though frontline pikemen and doppelsoldner necessarily HAD to be armored. I don't have the picture know, but I remember seeing an early 16th. century colored picture of a Landsknecht formation of which the rearguard was entirely composed of Zweihander-armed Doppelsoldner, all of them using cuirasses with frontal and back plates. This, I presume, was the minimum amount of armor for Doppelsoldner by this time. Have a look at the piece in my files, from another topic of this forum, it's said it was mass produced in the time of emperor Maximilian for the Landsknecht troops

Last commentaries: mail stopped being common by 1500, so except in more specific places (Hungary, Portugal etc), people would either have anything to wear or depend in the cuirasses, whether the full or the frontal ones (the latter being cheaper). Have this in mind before analyzing those periods.

1500's Dolstein description of the swedish army and german Landsknecht soldiers show that frontline pikemen wore full cuirasses, tasset, and arm harness; while both the normal pikemen and the doppelsoldner (by this time only the halberdiers, the two handers not being introduced yet) had at least the frontal cuirass.
Halberdier and dismounted Swedish MAA: https://www.pinterest.ru/pin/408279522442807645/
Pikemen exercise: https://www.pinterest.ru/pin/342203271660547734/
https://www.pinterest.ru/pin/342203271660547732/
Frontline pikemen at battle: https://www.pinterest.ru/pin/342203271660547731/

Extra: "knecht" in german doesn't mean "knight" (that would be ritter; which is different from reiter, this meaning just "cavalry").

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I've seen Dolnsteins drawings and they are very interesting. However, while some of them show men in the front ranks in light plate arm harnesses, others show these men wearing only breastplates, possibly back plates and tassets. Plus, other images, like the "Schlacht vor den Toren Nürnbergs"/"Schlacht im Walde" show men on foot wearing breast only and guys on horse back wearing breast plates under a tunic and bits and pieces of plate arm armour over their tunic. Some of them wear only pauldrons and couters over the tunic. So I'm guessing they'd have worn mail arm armour under the tunic because when these guys wore a light plate arm harness the entire thing was usually worn over the tunic unless it had wide puffy sleeves to accommodate the couters. Another thing is that I have been rifling through Mathias Goll's dissertation and I found what looks like 'back plate upgrade kits' for breast only plates. and I think one of the guys in Dolnstein's drawings is actually wearing one of these (the one with an X on his back).

Finally, about mail, it was worn far into the 16th century. Generally I think a lot of cavalry began to shed full plate as early as the 1470s. The images from the Hausbuch are emblematic of that. I don't think the lancers in that book were wearing arm harnesses, the sleeves on their tunics could not accommodate the couters with sleeves that tight. They might be wearing back plates, it is impossible to tell with them wearing those tunics. After Pavia the lightening trend was only re-enforced. By the 1540s I'm seeing people in three quarter or half plate suits. I've seen images of cavalry from the 1540s and 50s wearing mail sleeves with a full plate cuirass and gauntlets, bourgonet or even an armet and by now carrying pistols and a war hammer.

P.S. I think the back plate in the last image which is tied to the mail shirt may be a fake but it gives an idea of what these retrofit back plates looked like when worn.

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Something interesting I came across is that Pietro Monte actually did suggest at the start of the 1500s that for a skilled fighter in single combat it might be beneficial to leave the back parts lightly armored or even unarmored, and just not let the enemy hit him there:

"But the skilled should be otherwise armoured, especially in single combat; in this place or way of fighting we say that it is more inconvenient for someone to be too weighed down by arms than if he would leave some limbs uncovered, such as the back parts, or that they are at least lightly armoured. For he who knows how to govern himself in the way we have already prescribed can be very easily protected, to keep him from being caught by the back part, or even by the sides, so that he is not only lightly armoured on all parts, and strongly where needed."

http://mikeprendergast.ie/monte/

As far as military treatises go, even those that start to advocate lighter and less complete armor generally continue to specify both a breast and back plate for both infantry and cavalry (though the backplate would have been less thick). The idea may have been that in a pitched battle as opposed to single combat it was still too difficult to pay attention to where every blow was coming from at all times and so it was still necessary to have some all around protection in case someone unexpectedly hits you in the back.

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In the section on Cuirassier training in his 1632 cavalry manual, John Cruso suggests that if you don't manage to kill or unhorse your opponent from the front, you should try to slice at his back as you ride past in hopes of cutting some of the straps that hold his pauldrons/vambraces on.

I went through a couple of illustrated Swiss chronicles, the Luzerner Schilling and the Schodeler Chronicle (both illustrated around 1515 or later), which it turns out contain a large number of battle scenes to conduct a simple survey of the types of armour they show. The results were kinds of interesting. To sum it up in a simple typology:

Type 1: Foot soldiers and horsemen with breast and back plate. Usually with helmet and arm harnesses but often also with only helmet and breast/back but no arm harness. Occasionally a mail shirt (or sleeves+skirt) was worn underneath. A plate skirt is almost always fitted to both the breast and backplate.

Type 2: Foot soldiers and horsemen wearing only a breastplate attached with straps across the upper back, a belt around the waist and fitted with a plate skirt. Worn less often with a helmet than Type 1, sometimes with arm harness and occasionally with a mail shirt worn underneath. These breastplates are sometimes upgraded to type 1 with simple back plates that have no plate skirts fitted. A relatively small elite of the horsemen wore full leg harnesses.

Type 3: Foot soldiers mostly wearing a mail shirt and a helmet. The mail shirts are sometimes worn with a set of plate arm harnesses but no back or breastplate.

Type 4: Completely un-armoured solders who occasionally wear a helmet.

The Luzerner chronicle shows mostly Type 1 solders with the rest being mostly Type 2 with retrofitted back plates and a sprinkling of guys wearing mail shirts and others who are un armoured.

The Schodeler Chronicle, particularly volume 3 which was drawn by a more talented artist than volume 2 shows a lot more soldiers of Type 2 than the Luzerner Schilling.

It would thus seem that the breast only plates were used at a ratio of roughly 50/50 vs the breast and back version and that retrofit back plates were a frequent choice. Also, arm harnesses were usually of the half-tube type where only the upper half of the arm, both above and below the elbow, was protected. What really surprised me was the extent to which mail shirts were still used during the 1st quarter of the 16th century and the fact that some soldiers actually preferred to add arm harnesses to a mail shirt and wear no breastplate. Another surprise was the complete absence of tassets any kind except the articulated type that remained popular into the 17th century. Given Dolnstein's drawing I figured I'd see at least some rigid single plate tassets.

Finally, I agree with Matthias Goll. After at least 1450 or so, there were no sumptuary law type restrictions on what armour you could wear depending on your social class (at least in the Swiss Confederation and the Holy Roman Empire and probably Italy as well) and if there were any they were universally ignored. If you could afford it you could wear it. Wealthy and aristocratic people sometimes wore armour in the commoner style and rich rural people and rich burghers wore armour some aristocrats could not afford.

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