[Rodolfo Martínez]

Ja ja! Of course, if they have enough skin to afford them, they could buy the armour what they wanted. I´m not saying that they can´t have any other armours than full ones, i´m saying that i prefer to wear a full suit as you can prefer any other type of armour depending of your personal demands. From my point of view, i would prefer a full suit with a ¨proof¨ breastplate if possible. If i´m not wrong, spanish heavy cavalry were less armored than other cavalry like french, italian or burgundian, despite you can find spanish XVI century full suits too.

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Now, here is where we should start seeing things based on their perspective--the perspective of men who actually fought and died back then rather than our modern opinions. There ought to be some people ready to drop in with primary source accounts about the differences between half-armor, three-quarters, and full suits of plate.

I'm not sure pistol-proof (or stronger) plastrons/breastplates would have been used with full harnesses. The only examples I can recall out of memory are used with three-quarters or half-armors, except in cases where the "proof" capability was attained with the use of an additional plackart attached to the plastron. I may be wrong, though, since I'm too lazy to take the arms and armor references I have just a few meters away in my bedroom. The only thing I can emphasize is that when we talk about "proof" armor we need to establish what kind of "proof" standard they were tested to.

As for Spanish heavy horsemen, they were less heavily armored up until the late 14th century--the period of French and English intervention in the disputes between Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. Afterwards, they seem to have caught up pretty quickly and as I recall their heavy horsemen were actually among the forces that were most reluctant to discard their armor in the 16th century. But then, it depends on how you define "heavy horse." The gendarmeria remained heavy all along, although they soon lost horse armor and were finally converted into lighter caballo corazza/lanza in the 17th century. But if you also include the caballo ligero and the herreruelos--both being "light" only in comparison to the gendarmeria, and being in fact heavy cavalry as far as their tactics were concerned--then their level of armor was roughly equal to the forces available elsewhere, except for perhaps the armor-loving French.

[Rodolfo Martínez]

when i talk about heavy cavalry i usually refer to the full armored horsemen, maybe a very simplistic view cause i´m not very concerned in their tactics.

I´m a bit confused about their ¨heaviness¨. Had burgundian and italian heavy cavalry men-at-arms with armored horses and full armored riders during the XVI century, or the spanish regulation of horse armour was adopted by other ¨countries¨ too?

[Dan Howard]

The confusion arises because the terms "light" anmd "heavy" are unrelated to the equipment carried. A "heavy" unit is one whose primary purpose is "shock" tactics. Whether these men were naked and carrying large shields and spears or wearing full plate and riding horses is irrelevant. "Light" troops are mainly skirmishers.

[Rodolfo Martínez]

Thanks a lot Dan.
There was a horse armour regulation in Spain during XVI century letting only the frontal armour parts be equipped in horses, and, despite there are italian, german and french horse full armour examples from XVI century, i´m not sure if they were used as parade armours.
Do you know if horses still used full armour during the XVI century in Germany, Italy and France?

Thanks

[Jonathan Hopkins]

I was just paging through a copy of the Royal Armouries Yearbook Volume 3 1998 and it contains an article entitled "The armour of the Kinghts of St. John, Malta" by Karen Watts. If you can find a copy of this publication, it looks to be a good read (photos are black and white).

Jonathan