[Jeton Osmani]

Hello there, just a silly question, here goes.

Was it practical (Stamina wise) to go into battle wearing a full plate or maille harness covering your whole body head to toe while fighting on foot?

did most medieval foot soldiers get exhuasted really quickly if they fought with full body protection while fighting on foot, or was foot combat something relegated to lightly armed soldiers wearing breastplates or maille huebergons.

what armour did medieval footsoldiers ranging from the 11th century all the way to the late 15th century equip themselves with.




sorry for a nitpicky questions

and sorry again for my terrible english

[Dan Howard]

Leg armour seems to be the first thing that soldiers discard when marching long distances.

[Jeton Osmani]

what about on battles

i saw a video of a guy lasting 2 mins doing strenous activity on full plate armour

[Anthony Clipsom]

[Matthew Amt]

Fully armored men certainly did fight on foot quite often, but certainly not all soldiers were fully armored. And armor absolutely affects stamina, but training can compensate for at least some of that.

Since the men with the most armor are more likely to be your *best* troops, not to mention the ones who will be most effective in combat, you're hardly going to make them sit and watch the battle just because they might get tired, eh?

Matthew

[Hardy Lewis]

I'm really curious about heat stress from long amounts of time in full harness.

All those layers of cloth and metal are going to act like insulation, and hold heat close to the body.

A hot summer day must have been extremely dangerous for someone wearing support garments, maille, and plate, even if a horse is making most of the physical exertion.

[Mark Moore]

I can say from personal experience that just walking around at a Ren Fest wearing mail and partial plate can get tiring pretty quickly...but I'm 52 years old with a bad back.

Just ask a modern-day soldier in full combat gear. ............

[Mikko Kuusirati]

[Dan Howard]

[Augusto Boer Bront]

They did get tired of course, like we do.

We have accounts from the Battle of Crecy where the English were swapping their tired and wounded men at arms with fresh ones.

So the contemporary were aware that fighting in armour was tiresome. How they dealt with that I guess depended on the army commander and experience of the fighters.

[Mikko Kuusirati]

[Anthony Clipsom]

The battle of Mons-en-Pevele in 1304 contains examples of issues with fighting a long battle in armour on a very hot day in August. Some are said to have died from the heat, others to have suffered from thirst. This was, however, a long battle by Medieval standards, beginning in the morning and lasting to evening. However, I can't recall other European battles where the heat factor is so explicit.

[Dan Howard]

[Johannes Zenker]

Having done some exercise in armour and also worn it for some extended periods I'd say the following:

Wearing the armour and moving in it is not particularly strenuous for quite a while.

What kills your stamina is repeated bouts of intense exercise, especially with a closed visor.

I can wear my armour for hours on end, but if I put on my (heavy) bascinet and close the visor I'll be temporarily winded after at most a two-minute bohurt-style bout. Doing about seven of those over 120 minutes gets me really winded, for more than just a few minutes.

I think it's mostly the helm and its visor (pig-face), though, so wearing a lighter, open-faced helm might provide much more stamina already.

[Anthony Clipsom]

[Harry Marinakis]

Modern people are incredibly soft and weak, compared to people of the past. We are so soft that it is difficult for us to even imagine the physical prowess of people of the past.

Remember that the ancient Greeks ran 25 miles in full armor and then beat off a Persian invasion.

I am sure that a maille kit was no big deal for these people.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

I think plate harness in particular was a bit problematic in the heat because it doesn't "breathe" as they say. But certainly the helmet is the worst of that.

You can see in art, and read in detailed battle descriptions, many cases where soldiers or warriors were rotated out of the front line to rest. Sometimes troops moving back for any reason could cause panic so it had to be done carefully and with discipline. The Romans did this and the practice was described in their military manuals which came down to the medieval scholars of the arts of war. The Swiss did this as well as did Landsknechts.

I do believe it was normal when fighting hand to hand to have an open face or the visor open, so as both to see and breathe easier. You can read accounts like that of Jörg von Ehingen in his famous duel against the Moorish champion at Ceuta in ~ 1450, where he killed the other guy by cutting him in the face because his face was exposed.

Visor down was mainly during the lance charge or when under attack by arrows or other missiles.

It was also normal for infantry to be armored on the upper body but not the legs, especially the lower legs. So those would often be exposed too.

In this contemporaneous and pretty realistic painting of the Battle of Orsha, you can see Polish warriors or knights, clad in plate harness, rotating out of the fight, some wounded and removing their armor (center right)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Autor_nieznany_%28malarz_z_kr%C4%99gu_Lukasa_Cranacha_Starszego%29%2C_Bitwa_pod_Orsz%C4%85.jpg

There were also many battles in which one side or the other became overheated and / or exhausted and were overwhelmed. I believe this is what happened at Towton (despite the battle taking place amid snow flurries) and in many battles in the Middle East. The Ottomans had a routine tactic of using 'cannon fodder' (Azap volunteers and foreign auxiliaries) to absorb the initial enemy attack and then hit with their elite troops (Sipahi or Janissaries) when the enemy was 'spent'. This was how they won several of their major victories against Crusading armies.




One other thing to consider about wearing armor of any kind in the heat, aside from general fitness, most of these guys in pre-industrial times were very used to and familiar with their kit. Their kit in most cases would fit much better than most of our modern re-enactor gear (with certain notable exceptions like Daniels fine harness in that obstacle course video) and have all the little tweaks necessary to 'smooth over all the rough patches' so to speak. I remember when I was in the Army in boot camp back in the 80's, when we first started marching everything chafed, suffocated, poked, choked and unbalanced me. Five miles of hiking with that gear was seriously kicking my ass. But after a few weeks, switching out gear, careful balancing, numerous other adjustments (as well as rapidly increasing fitness) I was able to march longer and longer distance with heavy gear without getting so exhausted.

If you were a handgunner or a lancer in 1450, you would have probably grown up with a lot of your gear and had it fine-tuned to your needs. It would fit you much better and you would be much more adapted to it, in terms of your muscles and even your skeleton.

[Dan Howard]

No armour breathes. It doesn't matter whether it is made of metal or cloth or leather or kevlar. Leather and cloth are even worse than metal because they start out by being heavier and then they absorb moisture, which makes them even heavier and more onerous. Lice, ants, fleas, and flies love them.

Most of the accounts of people becoming overcome with heat stress in battle would have happened even if they were simply wearing heavy clothing. That heat stress is accelerated by wearing enclosed helmets, not armour.

[Matthew Amt]

[Philip Dyer]