ARMS & ARMOR

>>51803967
My guess is it was easier to maintain and supply, not to mention I don't think you need a squire to put mail on.

>>51804072
>not to mention I don't think you need a squire to put mail on.
Can't you put plate on by yourself?

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>>51804081
Generally. Takes a bit, and it depends on the suit

>>51804072
Would squires be obsolete if knights were total bros to each other?

>Hey bro, can you tighten this strap for me
>Yeah bro, I got you
>Righteous

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>>51804081
>>51804072
Both can be done solo, and both are much faster with a squire. Taking off mail solo is a right pain in the ass though. With plate, if you can reach the fastens you can just shake it off if you have to.

>>51803967
>Romans started busting out mail in the late game.

The hamata was used at the same time as the segmentata.

>>51804072
>My guess is it was easier to maintain and supply
This. The vast majority of war is spent marching around, convincing people you can pay for shit, and not fighting.

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>>51803967
Why not both?

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>>51804132
>This handsome bastard

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>>51804132
>>51804221
He's got those eyes all the men have in classical portraits.

>>51804191
It's too heavy

>>51804322
>replied to a picture of someone wearing both

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>>51804132
Taking off maille is also achieved by shaking, trust me I've done it. Ditch your weapons, untie your belt, lean forward and wiggle until it all comes off.

As for putting on maille, it varies. Donning a simple shirt is as easy as lifting it over your head and jumping up and down a few times to make it sit right. Longsleeves present more of a problem since the padding/clothing underneath can get scrunched up by the act of pulling your arms into the sleeves, so it helps to have a friend grab the offending fabric and tug it free.

Coifs can be put on yourself, but if you want everything laced up tight to afford maximum comfort and protection help is needed.

Maille leg armour is the absolute worst though. The usual maille hosen style is pretty simple, but the earlier style that I have which are draped over the leg and laced up along the back of the leg is flat out impossible without a dilligent squire.

All of this takes a few minutes tops, with the exception of said stupid early chausses.

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>>51804928
These are what I'm talking about for the legs. Note the saw-toothed pattern at the back of the leg which is where the it's closed by deer hide thonging.

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>>51803967
There are two main reasons.

The first is metallurgy. Bronze is easy to work with but it is extremely expensive compared to iron. It does not take a very high level of metal-working skill to craft bronze plate, look at the Dendra Panoply for an example over 3 thousand years old. It's crude, and very expensive but it can be done.

Iron by contrast is relatively cheap but much harder to work with. In particular it very difficult to consistently produce large sheets of high-quality iron which is vital for plate armour construction. This is also the reason that during the Early Middle Ages swords were patterned-welded from multiple rods and helmets were constructed from panels rather than being made out of a single piece of metal. Incidentally helmets were the last piece of bronze armour to go, precisely because they could be moulded from a single piece of metal which is more important on the head for obvious reasons.

So the technologies needed to create bronze vs. iron/steel plate are very different. It's not a case of the ancients developing the secrets of plate armour and everyone forgetting about it for a millenia or so. The development of iron/steel plate armour was very closely linked to the advancement of metallurgy, which the excellent book "The Knight and the Blast Furnace" covers in detail (available in the /hwg/ mega). Medieval plate started with small items like knee and elbow cops, gradually increasing coverage on the limbs and it's only until the metallurgy is finally there at some point in the later 14thC that the solid breastplate arrives.

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>>51805377
So in ,say, 500BC, bronze plate is the most protective armour available. Iron working of the time simply cannot produce anything remotely similar in style. However scale/lamellar armours only require lots of very small plates which is possible with the available technology. While less protective the fact that these armours are cheaper/use a more plentiful resource means they are very widespread. Bronze continues to be used for items such as greaves or helmets which are far harder to make in iron due to aforesaid limitations.

Then in the 4thC BC something magical happens. Maille.

The reason why maille is because it is amazingly effective. It's a high quality iron armour that completely sidesteps the metallurgy issue by being made of wire links. It offers excellent protection far above scale/lamellar, it's flexible allows for joint coverage, is easy to repair and modify to the user and is made from that lovely and plentiful iron. The chief downside of maille is the expense of all the skilled labour needed to draw out the wire, but it still cheaper than bronze.

tldr: Bronze is rare/expensive. Maille is really good/still cheaper than bronze. Iron/Bronze plate need different techs.

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>>51803967
More like plate was invented, but then some Celt came up with mail and pretty much everybody who could afford it switched.

Not even the reenactors particularily like segmentata.

Maille is also really good. Retardedly good. We know that from historical accounts that maille with padded protection underneath can survive strikes from lances, being constantly shot by Turk shortbows in the Crusades, and renders the wearer immune to swords for the most part. The only thing you really have to worry about is axes. While maces will certainly concuss you, frankly I'd rather have a mace hit my arm so hard it breaks, than have an axe hit so hard it manages to bust maille links, chop through my akerton, and drive iron links into my flesh which will fester and cause death.


IIRC during the High Middle Ages, the glory age of chivalry and maille armor, Knight mortality rates were at an all time low too, compared to later periods. There's a lot less contemporary weapons in the 12th and 13th centuries able to fuck maille up than there is in the 15th century to fuck up plate armor.

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>>51807390
>IIRC during the High Middle Ages, the glory age of chivalry and maille armor, Knight mortality rates were at an all time low too, compared to later periods

You recall correctly. Part of this is due to chivalric warfare being keen on treating opponents honourably with surrender (and ransom) almost always accepted but it helped that it was extremely difficult to actually kill a knight in armour with the available tools. These two factors go hand in hand, since there are plenty of opportunities to surrender once it's clear one side has the upper hand.

The Battle of the Standards (1138) is good example; with 10,000 dead or missing Scots for one English knight (plus a few ordinary soldiers).

There is another battle I cannot remember the name of where it actually called off after two knights are killed, which is evidence things were getting a bit heated.

It's quite easy to buy in the chivalric "War is Glorious" mentality when you probably sit at the point where defence was at it's peak in relative terms compared to the weapons of the time. Reading the literature of the period the most striking aspect of duels between knights is how it becomes a battle of enduarance as helmets are dented, swords are bent, the maille is ripped, the shields shattered with a growing collection bloody wounds and bruises but the conflict drags on without a knockout blow until one knight begs reprieve from exhaustion.

>>51804106
Not really, everyone knew squires were training to be knights so I doubt lords would approve of their boys not getting work experience they need.

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>>51807894
Doesn't sound very chivalric for the other soldiers

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>>51808110
Why should chivalry count towards people who are not chevaliers?

>>51803967

>So why mail?
Metallurgy was not sufficiently advanced up until the 14th century to produce large steel plates.

>We had plate armor in the bronze age.

Bronze (which is a copper-tin alloy) was much more abundant and work with than steel. Bronze is softer, heavier, and generally an inferior metal to steel. Also while we did have large plates of bronze, it was more common to use lamellar and composite types of armor.

>Romans started busting out mail in the late game.

They had been using mail since at least the 1st century BC if not before, and mail was the dominant armor of the legion for the entirety of its history. Lorica segmentata was only used in large numbers for a relatively short period.

>>51807894
>Reading the literature of the period the most striking aspect of duels between knights
Any examples I can buy?

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>>51809356
To you anon, it's on the house.

Four tales by Chretien de Troyes.

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>>51809624

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>>51809624

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>>51809640

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>>51809648
>filename

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>>51807894
>called off after two knights are killed
>treating opponents honourably with surrender (and ransom)
Battle of Lincoln 1217, also known as the Lincoln Fair, was ended when the Count du Perche has a splintered lance(or sword I've heard and read both) go through the eye-slit in his helmet killing him. That was the only noble death that day, other than the clumsy knight that wounded him, and a third(Not sure who isn't written in the book in my lap.). Prince Louis of France was captured by the flower of chivalry William Marshall who escorted him to the coast personally.

King Phillip's conversation with the messenger is thus.
Is King John dead? Is his son crowned(Henry III)? And is the earl still alive? Yes? "Then I fear nothing for my son."
I'm a chivalry nerd who spends too much of his paychecks on books.

>>51809624
>>51809640
>>51809667
You sir are a scholar and a gentleman.

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>>51809667

There is also Chretien's incomplete Parzifal (which introduces the Holy Grail to the Arthur mythos), which I don't have pdf of but is worth reading just for the opening. One big long joke in which the punchline is always the welsh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanson_de_geste

There are links to the text of most of the works on the page.

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>>51809734
>Battle of Lincoln 1217

Thank you, it was nagging at the back of my mind.

Make the jump anon, live the dream, become a reenactor and never have to worry about your paycheck again because you already spent it on kit.

I'm only an A&A thread away if you need to talk shop.

>>51803967
Dunno if it's been mentioned yet, but STANDARDIZATION.

Once you go from a village/castle smith making armor for men he has access to and can measure easily, over to State Smiths who must make protective clothing for literal legions of who-knows-whos from who-knows-where, mail becomes a massive time and money saver as, once the hard part of making wire rings is over, modifying is rather simple.

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>>51809869
Soon anon... soon...
Planning on making some changes in life.

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>>51810298
Very good. The more the merrier, especially when they are well-read fellows like yourself.

Welcome to the madhouse, muster for battle is at 12.

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A number of reasons.

Originally plate bronze armour was very expensive to make, it takes a lot of bronze and so only the elite can use it where mail can be mass produced and shaped into clothing of different sizes (bronze has to be recaste for this)

Another reason.


Tactics changed, everyone who used phalanx and tight formations usually struggled in small conflict (20-30 men), when you're a Viking raiding party and all you have is mail and wooden shields the formation of your shield wall can move around the battlefield very fast.

Also Calvary

Eventually it went back to slow moving tight formations as seen in the late 1500's and early 1600's when armour caught back up and became more durable and accessible to normal solders.

>>51810298
(different anon) Make it happen brother. It is a small but very cool community and the rewards are huge for history nerds. I hope to see you on the field some day.

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I'M SAVING THIS THREAD

WITH ALL SURVIVORS

>>51804327
But no, it is significantly heavier and once people realized that they didn't need to layer them, they stopped and only used chainmail for parts the plate could not cover.

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>>51803967
>Wearing mail or plate
>Not wearing boiled leather
>Not using a rapier and buckler
I bet you didn't even level dex casul. Fast and light beats slow and heavy. Mail and plate is for pleb soldiers who smash into each other in huge battles and don't have room to parry and dodge.

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Why wasn't scale and lamellar more common? Was it simply expense, or was it worse than mail?

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>>51803967
Because it's absolutely sexy.

So after the glorious bastards got their hunk of iron out of a bloomery, what would be the next steps to turn that into mail? Presumably they'd take small pieces from the chunk and make straight, small not-nails out of it, to then be twisted into circles, right?

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>>51814653
Nope. Much worse. They drew it through a plate by hand.

>>51814324
>Was it simply expense, or was it worse than mail?

Lamellar? According to the manuals? Yes. Probably not in terms of protection, but in terms of maintainance as you had to regularily check the lashing for wear, tear and rot and have them replaced.

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>>51815704
Sounds hellish.

It completely baffles me how they got from this to suits of mail or plate harnesses. Sure, labor was cheap, but still.

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Amongst other things, the rise of plate armour in Europe as more than the odd reinforcing bit seems to come around the same time that furnaces grew large enough that you could make a breastplate out of a single bloom.

Mail on the other hand can be made from small scraps without having to worry about welding things together. A piece of a nail too small to make even a single ring could still be turned into a rivet. Mail is also extremely easy to recycle, just chop up old pieces into sheets of "fabric" and tailor new armour from them, same with the most extensive repairs.

>>51814653
First is primary forging (save fuel, do it while it's still hot form the furnace). The bloom is extremely porous as it comes out of the furnace, and the metal weak form the heat, so it'd fall apart of you looked at it wrong. Start gentle beating it together, and then increase the punishment gradually. This also beats out considerable amounts of slag, which over the years made for huge slag pile to entertain modern day archometallurgists. At the end you have a seemingly solid billet of metal.

This material will do for everyday, non-edged objects, but probably won't cut it for edged tools, arms and armour, or wire drawing. For those, start folding.

Then you can start forging out your long, thin starting piece for the wire drawing.

Also worth keeping in mind is that once you have your rings, it's very important to flatten the ends of them properly and evenly, place the rivet hole dead centre, and get the riveting done just so. Mail fails by links opening up and letting go of each other, and the riveting is pretty much guaranteed to be the bottleneck for the performance of any one ring.

>>51814324
Scale and lamellar were pretty widespread, especially in Asia and Eastern Europe.

The main advantages of scale is that is cheap and very simple to produce compared to other metal armours.

Maille was simply better as armour. It's flexible but also provides at least equal if not greater protection compared to scale/lamellar on top of all it's other qualities. The drawbacks are that it is expensive and time consuming to make.

It's telling that in almost every civilisation with access to both maille and scale/lamellar those with the means opted for maille, or at most lamellar worn over maille. The Byzantines are a good example, the foot soldiers wore lamellar while the cataphracts used maille.

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>>51804075
>9GAG

>>51807894
Keep in mind that most nobles would still die on the battlefield or due to health problems caused by previous battles.

My family line can be traced back to a guy (probably a mercenary) who married a noblewoman from a house that had hit some hard times (and actually went "extinct" after her father died without a male heir).

The entire history of that family can be summed up "And then he died on a battlefield somewhere between what we nowadays call Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark." Alternatively, somewhere near the Holy Land.

>>51803967
>Romans started busting out mail in the late game.
They used the Lorica Segmentata for about 80 years in the first century CE. The Roman Empire fell 1453, its last remnants even later.
Not even remotely "late game".

>>51814316
>rapier and buckler
>not rapier and dagger

>>51803967
Roman plate was less protective then medieval plate and was more expensive for the area it covered. Each one of those plates had to be made one at a time because of the limits of crucible size at the time. Because of the need to fit the plate together Roman lorica segmentata was very skill and labor intensive to make. The only reason why they felt it was a good investment was that it could stop a sword thrust and 1st century BC mail could not. However mail improved over time and by the 2nd century AD it could stop a thrust from the swords used in the area.

It is worth noting that the lorica segmentata and the Gladius started to be phased out around the same time.

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I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I'll give it a shot. In my setting, the non-descript evil horde has bypassed 3/5ths of an army defending a certain city, with only 2/5ths of that army actually stationed within the city, manning the walls, so the horde has a significant numerical advantage. The problem is that the other 3/5ths is aware that they've been bamboozled and are marching hard for the city that's being besieged.

The thing is that the city has defenses arranged in three "rings", like some poor man's Minas Tirith. What I want is for the orcish invaders to quickly take the first ring with as little damage caused to its structures as possible (so later on it can evolve into some Alesia-esque situation). How could this be achieved? The advantages the orcs right now have are:
>More men
>A huge-ass battering ram (so huge, six ogres are needed to operate it)
>A genius general
>Dire wolves that act like overgrown attack dogs
Other than "just batter down the gates, lol", what other factors/strategies might play a part in the orcish army being able to take the outer ring in a matter of hours?

tl;dr: How to blitz a siege?

>>51823650
Easiest option is always the one factor that can always fail: People.

They have an Insider. Maybe it was a guard who knew the patrol routes and secret entrances, or where the walls were a farce; badly damaged years before and never properly repaired. Maybe they have sympathisers who want them in there and have taken control of the main gate in a surprise attack for long enough to get a strong force through.

For most of history, people were the weak link where a city fell quickly. Or part of a city at least. If you can find better than the basically useless wikipedia article about it, the 1648 siege of Prague is a very good one to check out for exactly that: outer defences breached because of traitor, small band inside holding off a much stronger force.

>>51823650
>tl;dr: How to blitz a siege?
Offer terms.

>>51817233
Once they had the rings cut from wire, would they have to be annealed to have the rivet holes punched, and then hardened again after? Or would the forging make some of that unnecessary?

Thanks for the explanation.

>>51806671
Isn't bronze much softer than iron?

>>51823930
Copper is softer than iron. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin.

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>>51808607
When you come with your war horse and shiny armor to pacify some unruly mountain niggers, and you get savagely recked.

>>51823650
have you considered a 5th column situation? Human traitors open outer ring gates

or perhaps infighting among the defending commanders. Glory hungry overconfident 2nd tier defense general screws over outer tier by letting in orcs thinking he will defeat them and be the hero.

or maybe orcs bash through a gigantic gate, flood in, then collapse the gate leaving an enormous pile of rubble that is near impossible to mount and or easily defensible by the orcs.

>>51823878
>>51823906
>>51824079
All good ideas, I especially like the infighting officers one (mostly because I doubt anyone would really be willing to cooperate with the orcs. Also they're a relatively new power in the world so it's unlikely they'd have a lot of informants/collaborators). Some dumb, gloryhound defying orders and breaking formation to 'save the day', effectively screwing over the entire first ring, sounds nice. But I'm afraid that it makes the orcish commander look lucky rather than brilliant. That isn't bad per se and if no other solution presents itself that's what I'll go with, but I'd like something that better exposes the orcish commander's ability to exploit the weakness of the not!Roman elves.

Perhaps the orc commander could do something to bait the elves into an attack that will utterly crush them? Perhaps even demonstrate his courage by using himself as bait? No idea how that would work out in the context of a siege though.

>>51824334
I don't know what kind of numbers your armies have, but the orcs will need a massive numerical advantage against any kind of legitimate fortifications. If they're facing an opponent of roughly equal numbers in total, with 40% of those numbers behind walls, the orcs are utterly befuckled. They would need an insider to open the gates in the middle of the night, or a grotesque advantage of artillery or equivalent magic. Otherwise they're about to get bent over their own breastworks and buttfucked by the other 60% that will be riding up on them before they can so much as draw dick graffiti on the barbican.

>>51824607
Inside cooperation is inevitable then, if I want the plot to progress as planned. I guess it could be justified by some elf (lower) officers getting antsy and simply wanting to be on the 'winning' side, right?

>>51819675
>The Roman Empire fell 1453, its last remnants even later.
>1453
I think you're confusing the romans with the Holy Roman Empire

>>51824665
Inside man works. Most realistically, a member of the defending ingroup that has been socially ostracized somehow, so that they would possess a gut level need to punish their former group, and this need can be supplemented by an offer of enough wealth to escape the inevitable slaughters and potential retribution of any survivors amongst the defenders.

Other possible options to show orc commander studliness would be to take pages from ghengis Khan's playbook, using plaguey corpses thrown over the wall in basic attempts as biological warfare, or request as the price for leaving 10000 housecats, which would have combustibles tied to them and released so they would drag fire back to their homes.

Also something to consider would be if the city has an interior water supply. If they're fed from outside, finding the source of their water and dumping corpses and poisons in would hurt the defenders. Remember, after 3 days without enough water people start to drop like flies, and this is exacerbated by things like dysentery and other forms of the drizzling shits.

>>51824754
He means the Eastern half, you silly goose.

>>51804322
4u

>>51825234
that's even more stupid then, as the Byzantine Empire wasn't really very roman at this point, nor was it much of an empire
the real Roman Empire ruling pretty much most of Europe died in the fifth century

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>>51825346
Shut the fuck up Voltaire, it was funny when you were mocking the Germans but now you're going too far. This is almost as bad as the time you pretended the Prussian system of governance is good.

>>51825400
you stay the fuck away from the prussians, if not for the Potato Revolution you'd still be a malnourished peasant

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>>51824770
what you could do if you wanna make orc general look smart is design into the defense some architectural defect that only the orc general sees.

something that was a necessity due to the land layout (there was a cliff face, or bluff, or unstable sand on a beach something like that). Everyone else thinks is strong and fortified, but just a little X here and a little Y here and boom it all comes crumbling down.

As an idea for this is pic related, can't remember the name of the movie but they're defending the castle and the attacking force puts a bunch of pigs in a mine shaft below the castle then sets them all on fire. Foundation of the wall collapses and boom you're in. If I could remember the name of the movie I'd link it. Ask around


Anyway after that the problem is creating a barrier to keep them all in. Idk maybe the orc brings in all the siege works and crams in into the hole and seals it all up. Or maybe there's a secondary collapse after the orcs have flooded the castle that leaves them cut off and unable to retreat

>>51826041
>can't remember the name of the movie but they're defending the castle and the attacking force puts a bunch of pigs in a mine shaft below the castle then sets them all on fire.
Ironclad.
I only remember it because Lindybeige had an autistic rant about it

>>51807894
Alexios Komnenos survived four norman lance strikes thanks to his armour.

>>51825346
>real roman empire
>literally only ruling stinking barbarians
>east was wealthy and full of civilized people
>west rome is somehow the true rome thanks to having the useless capital full of degenerates

Fuck off retard.

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>>51826079
>Ironclad

That's the one, /tg/ is best board.

>>51826041
Ironclad is cool but assumes a lot more time than OP implied.

And as far as seeing something no one else sees, he's basically given the defenses as three rings of fortifications. That level of investment leaving something open does the opposite of make the orc commander look brilliant, it makes the elf defenders look stupid.

Remember, defensive fortifications are primarily intended to bog down an enemy, forcing them to invest time and resources to overcoming them, and this orc chief needs to move fast.

>>51814653
I've heard of examples of Norse mail where the rings alternated between drawn wire riveted together and solid links most likely punched out of a sheet of metal.

>>51803967
>Was it just a matter of resources? Making loose mail to cover more square inches w/ less metal than solid plates?
I'd say a combination of this with an additional waste associated with plate, and mobility associates with weight.
Romans had a fuckton of people to put armor on, and these people had to walk a good distance to get where they were needed. Beyond this, the list of things that dgaf about mail, and the list of things that dgaf about plate are too similar in that era. The additional expense and wight were definitely not worth the difference.
Also, there was a bit of the 40K Guardsmen mindset. The value of a life was so small that paying top dollar to keep them alive was a waste of resources.

>>51803967
>Romans started busting out mail in the late game.
Bronze doesn't behave like iron, blacksmiths choosing to work iron had to practically relearn how to do everything. And the Roman Segmentata, while a fine bit of body armor, required a lot of maintenance to keep up not helped by the small oversight of having bronze fittings to hold plates of iron together and that regular maintenance needed a lot of infrastructure to make happen, something Rome had in spades during it's heyday, but was lost after the collapse. In truth, mail armor was the next best alternative.

>>51823929
I don't know.

If you could do it without annealing, then you'd get the work hardening there. Though also the embrittlement that brings with it, and it'd of course make it a lot harder to flatten and pierce the ends.

"Proper" hardening of armour through quenching is something most mail would never have experienced. It starts happening for armour in the 15th century, and fads out again in the 16th, and in that period it's by no means universal practice.

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Still my favorite armor I've seen

>>51803967
You can't make steel plates like you can make bronze plates.

>>51819675
Noone cares about the Byzantines you Greek boylover.

>>51829661
From what I understand punching holes for rivets is a right pain in the ass without softening them up first. The hole-puncher-ers must have simply been stubborn or something. Otherwise that all makes sense.

Thanks for the info dump.

>>51829710
Seriously?

>>51830225
Some people just have no taste anon.

I'm saving this bread.

>>51829710
You haven't seen enough armour

>>51804327
You wear a chainmail coif to protect your neck, where it's difficult to fit plate.

What was the reason for the Roman Empire being so much more advanced than its neighbours/enemies?

>>51835835
They weren't.

>>51807390
>frankly I'd rather have a mace hit my arm so hard it breaks, than have an axe hit so hard it manages to bust maille links, chop through my akerton, and drive iron links into my flesh which will fester and cause death.

That is never gonna happen man.

>>51836423
Then what was the reason for their success and not, say, the Greeks?

>>51828859
Squamata was so damn sexy.

>>51829710
It hardly armors anything.

>>51837208
Who brings a baby to a wagon fight?

>>51837227
Someone who wasn't expecting to be jumped by a load of Roman soldiers?

>>51837227
They're effective sonic weapons, just pull a limb off and it'll keep screaming extremely loud for a minute or what until it bleed out.

>>51836857
They gobbled up all mediteranian civs and combined their stuff. The resulting realm could enforce a relative decent peace, enabling poeple to do something else than fighting the city/tribe right over there.
The med is easy mode for civs, because it's a rather tame sea, so you can trade all you want over it.
The gobbling up happened mostly to rather good tratment of allies and having more bodies to throw into the meat grinder than your enemy.
It massivly helped that rome was not /pol/, they were rather open to new shit and people, also they regularely adopted foreign gods into their panteon which again was useful for winning the conquered populations over.

One of their problems was overbearing aggriculture after a couple of decades the land was fucked, which is why most of the med coast areas are a treeless and dry mess now.

Another was corruption and tax evasion:
Rich fucks like senators or royalty owned large sways of land but often did not pay taxes, thus bleeding the coffers dry. No money no fleet, soldiers, roads, baths, firefighters and so on.
Not much of a problem as long as they could plunder the riches of other realms. But once they were overstreched, it fucked them up.
The western part at least. The eastern part was far more populus and had access to great trade routes which kept it going a bit longer.

>>51837286
Huh, I see. Thanks.

I remember reading somewhere that Roman technological progression and even their culture basically stagnated after they ran out of other civilizations to steal stuff off, is there any truth to that?

>>51837272

>until it bleed out.

very ineffective use of it, just smack it in the head and you can reuse it after a while

Oh, then there is also long term use, sadly it takes years but its very effective you just throw it at people you want to kill, they adopt it and when a baby hits puberty they want to kill themselfs!

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What sort of gear would a minor Norman noble, circa 1100, have access to?

Pic unrelated.

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>>51837655
What sort of thing are you looking for? How much detail would you like?

>>51837824
Armour, weapons...

Anything else you think would come up as being necessary for a long trip, I guess.

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>>51829710
is this the most autistic sparring armor in the universe or something? why is so much armor on the hands and if if it is trying to be real armor

>>51836600
Actually very possible. A dane axe or any other two-handed polaxe is going to have the energy to shatter links and drive them into you. It'll fucking suck too.

>>51837879
Not a problem, give me a little bit to type it all up.

What would happen if somebody turned into a werewolf while wearing chainmail? Have a character whose a chevalier + werewolf, want to describe the maille realistically rupturing when the body increases in size by a factory of 1.5.

>>51838426
Pain? Bleeding, I imagine, where the links split and cut into the flesh. Maybe even painful constriction in the places where it doesn't break.

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>>51837879
The early 12thC is a time period where the selection of wargear on offer is fairly slim in the Norman world. Pretty much all knights are going to have the same load-out with only minor variations.

Helmet: The conical nasal helm is universal at this point. There are two variations, spangenhelms constructed from multiple panels riveted together or "single-piece" helms raised out of a sheet of metal with the nose guard welded on. The latter is stronger but more expensive and a noble would probably lean towards that option.

Bodyarmour: Maille. The options here are whether you want sleeves to the elbow or wrist, and a short (mid thighs) or long (knees or just below) hem. Nearly all shirts feature a coif (which is attached and never a seperate garmentat this stage) that the helmet is worn over. Knee length hauberks are standard for knights but the sleeves can go either way. Either way the hands are not covered by any armour.

Padding: This is not actually anywhere near as important to maille functioning as is often said, even without it maille is the best armour pre-plate. The first solid evidence we have of the practice in W.Europe is mid-12thC. If it was used c.1100 it was likely sewn onto the maille, and made by quilting many layers of linen rather than using stuffing.

Leg armour: Maille leggings are known but extremely rare until the late 12thC. A minor noble is unlikely to bother. Style is as in >>51804964, with attached feet and definately worn with no padding even if it is used on the torso.

Shield: Classic "Norman" (actually pan-European) teardrop/kite shield. Almost all kite shield feature a small iron boss, but this will gradually get discarded over the course of the 12thC. Heraldry does not exist yet though some shields are painted with zoomorphic designs.

Weapons and equipment in part 2. Questions welcome.

>>51838802
Depends, there are also helmets with face guards. Basically expanded nasal guards slowly morphing into the transitional great helm that will be used later.

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>>51838802
Swords: Double-edged blades 32"-36" long. Disc, teacosy and brazil pommels dominate and many are mass-produced in Germany then exported. Some swords have either iron or precious metal inlays on the blades, usually either indicating the maker or bearing a prayer.

Spears/Lance: Same weapon in this period, typically 8-9ft, this is the main weapon of battle on or off a horse. Most feature triangular pennants to add a splash of colour.

Seaxes/Daggers/ Fighting Knives: There is next to no solid data on these in the 12thC, though it seems that seaxes continued past the Norman Conquest. 11thC seaxes or 13thC daggers work as an approximation in the absence of useful evidence, but they were obviously not as important as either in the 12thC arsenal/culture.

Broadaxe/Daneaxe: Adopted by the Normans after Hastings, this is the only dedicated 2h weapon in use. Axehead shape is the same as the Viking/Anglo-Saxon versions of the weapon with a haft of around 4ft.

Maces: Known but mostly used as batons of office than weapons, very rare until the 13thC.

Handaxes: Not a knightly weapon.

Bows/Crossbows: Great for hunting (top sport for nobility) and in a siege situation, but in a battle a knight is much better used as a lancer/heavy infantry than a missle unit.

Other equipment:

Warhorse with warsaddle.
Riding Horse (both this and the warhorse probably have copper-gilt fittings)
(Optional) Packhorses if not travelling light and dragging an entire retinue with tents, cookware etc with you.

Do servants count as gear? There's also the clothing which deseves a post to itself but at the least you want to pack a few changes of linen shirt and a few pairs of braes.

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>>51839339
The very earliest expanded nasal helms which I've seen only go to c.1150 and most are firmly the last quarter of the 12thC.

In any case unless there is a find date significantly earlier than any I'm aware, c.1100 is way too soon for those helmets to be even a twinkle in an armourers eye.

>>51837312
Not the person you're responding to, but still.

Not entirely, technology still progressed, but it's worth noting that Rome as time went on grew more and more beleaguered by enemies and corruption from within. The Eastern half managed to progress long after the Western half had fallen(memes about the Byzantines somehow not being Rome aside), it's just that it's hard to progress when you're getting ass-fucked by some invader or plague every couple years or so.

>>51839700
cont.
>>51837286
>One of their problems was overbearing aggriculture after a couple of decades the land was fucked, which is why most of the med coast areas are a treeless and dry mess now.

I am rather interested in this, do you know where I could learn more about it? I always assumed that Egypt was the breadbasket of Rome, didn't know much about their farming outside of it.

>>51829710
Other than the whole "doesn't cover most of the fucking body" thing the helmet/gorget is a p neat design.

I don't know if it'd actually be practical or not though. It looks like it'd be really easy to stab downward into the neck.

>>51837888
The thing that bothers me as a non-realism "muh aesthetic" fag is that they have bigly yuge fistfucker gauntlets but tiny toothpick swords.

If you want obnoxiously huge gauntlets you gotta have matching weapons.

>>51839456
>>51838802
Very interesting, many thanks, anon.

Now, I'm planning a character who is supposed to be an ex-Varangian (this is at the same time as the Norman, hence still in the early 12th century), what sort of gear would he have access to? I'm considering having him be a Viking, but for diversity's sake let's say he's from the Rus instead.

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>>51840553
By this time there are few differences between Norman and Scandinavian knights in terms of equipment. The social situation was different as Scandinavia didn't go for feudalism in the same way, but the kit is the same.

Russia is a totally seperate category though. I'll be honest and say that I only have a basic understanding of Rus wargear but I do know a few things.

The Rus and Byzantines did use lamellar, but as an ex-Varangian your guy would have the resources for maille.

Kite shields are also used, and possibly orignated in the East Med before moving west but that is speculation on my part.

Unlike W.Europe maces are very common throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Most maces are bronze, with pyramidal spikes.

There are a few Byzantine specific sword types, but the vast majority are the same as in W.Europe- either actually imported swords or locally made weapons in the Frankish style.

To my knowledge there is no evidence Varangians ever wore splinted limb armour (the logic being that Swedes living 400 before did which is totally the same as evidence of Varangians doing it). Both Osprey illustrations and that one image with an 11thC and early 13thC Varangian which always gets posted are very sloppy and not to be trusted as sources.

An interesting video I found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b6I3WyvTQA

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>>51823878
>>51823906
>>51824079
>>51824334
>>51824607
>>51824770
>>51825522
>>51826041
I'm back and I have a REALLY stupid way to make the orc commander win, combining some of your ideas with my own stupidity. I looked at a map of the city and rediscovered something I had almost forgotten about:the city is arranged in three 'rings', with a keep in the middle, but what runs from the outside of the city all the way to the inner ring (but not to the keep) is an aquaduct. So I though of this:
>There are four elven groups moving in as reinforcements. An orcish messenger manages to convince the leader of one of these groups that he and all of his soldiers will survive his conquest if they sit on their hands and do nothing (this group was supposed to arrive earlier than the other three groups)
>He besieges the outnumbered defenders of the city
>He breaks the gate of the first (outer) ring, sending his troups pouring in
>Meanwhile, a specially arranged (and quite large) "special operations" group manages to climb the aquaduct and bypass the outer and central ring, making their way to the inner ring where they defeat the relatively light elven force (this was supposed to be a fallback position, which explains why it would be so lightly guarded)
>The commander and the groups present in the inner ring are forced back into the keep, meanwhile these "spec ops" orcs shut the gate connecting the outer and central ring
>Meanwhile, the main orcish force is cleaning up the outer ring
>The bulk of the elven force is now trapped in the central ring, between two orc-dominated rings
>The elven reinforcements arise, resulting in an Alesia-on-crack situation (elves outside of the city, orcs in the 1st ring, elves in the 2nd ring, orcs in the 3rd ring, elves in the keep)
>After long and hard fighting, clean up the middle ring
>The commander in the keep calls it quits, uses a secret passage to sneak what remains of his force and any surviving civvies out
So exactly how retarded is this?

How well does Lamellar armor perform compared to maille?

>>51841709
They're pretty comparable in effectiveness, but maille is easier to armor limbs with than lamellar.

>>51841709
>>51841837

I'm biased as all hell, but I've never seen anything to suggest that lamellar is comparable to maille.

All the in-period sources talk of lamellar being the the inferior choice, and that anyone with the means should choose maille no ifs or buts.

Maille is far, far more expensive than lamellar. If joint coverage was the major difference you'd see lamellar with voiders used given massive price difference between armouring the torso in lamellar vs. maille. The cost of maille isn't justified if lamellar offers similar performance while being cheaper and far quicker to make, and yet maille was the more widely used. Then you have the example of the Romans, where the classic style of hamata doesn't even cover the joints. Again, why such expense if lamellar can cover the same area without major issues?

This is from Book 13 of the Alexiad:
"For he knew that the Franks were difficult to wound, or rather, practically invulnerable, thanks to their breastplates and coats of mail. Therefore he considered shooting at them useless and quite senseless. For the Frankish weapon of defence is this coat of mail, ring plaited into ring, and the iron fabric is such excellent iron that it repels arrows and keeps the wearer's skin unhurt." [Breastplate is a bad translation here and potentially misleading, the Franks had "breastplates & coats" which were made of maille rather than "they had breastplates and they also had maille". As the passage explains it is the maille which is the defence instead of phantom breastplates].

To my mind that is not the account of a lamellar using culture saying "their armour is as good as our troops but with fewer gaps and is easy to repair/modify etc", but "maille is amazing because it makes you arrow-proof".

There is an Egyptian Mameluke manual I read sometime ago which explicitly compared lamellar to maille, but I cannot recall if the relative protection offered was mentioned.

>>51842852
It's not just joints, but the entire limb that maille is better at covering, lamellar just gives you chest and maybe shoulder protection at a level that is similar to (but most likely inferior than) maille.

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Tell me about medieval battles, and I'll dump my Osprey and knight art in return!

What I'd like to know is: how and when were peasants, or folks who weren't knights and nobles, utilised in battle? I was under the impression that during the height of the knight (1100 to 1400?), most battles would be two groups of knights duking it out, and that peasants wouldn't really be used unless one side was desperate - until the Hundred Years War when cheap English longbowmen shook things up. But was it really just knights fighting, or would they merely be a vanguard for a larger army of commoners?

And, in a battle, would it entirely be mounted knights trying to knock each other off their horses, or would you have some knights as cavalry and some on foot?

Of course, I guess it's hard to give just one definite answer given the time and geographical span I'm asking about.

>>51843048
>medieval battles

Too broad, at least give a century.

>>51843081
Not him, but 1100

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>>51843081
I'd be interested in hearing how things change over that whole time period, but if you've only got time to tell me about one century, I like the 14th.

>>51842852
Ultimately the only real way to be sure is to have rigorous testing done in a variety of conditions with weapons and armour that are as-near exact copies of surviving examples down to the material being used in ways that simulate historical usage. Youtubers wailing on maille or lamellar made from recycled cars in their backgardens don't count.

I think that a big reason that lamellar gets a good press compared to maille is that it looks more exotic. That and the caricature that maille is only good against cuts

>>51842969
I know but the chest and shoulders are the most important parts to armour after your helmeted head. And you still have the Republic/Early Imperial style lorica hamata which only armoured the torso/shoulders with no limb coverage at all. Hamata is simply does not make sense if the far cheaper lamellar does the job at a similar level.

I'm a card-carrying maillefag and I admit that, but what reason is there to think that lamellar was comparable given the patterns of usage and opinions of period sources?

>>51843284
I'm not talking overall, only when comparing a single piece of armor to another.

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I just know this is going to start a huge argument, but what the hell.

The description for pic related names the character as "A sister knight of the Holy Roman Empire..."

Is there any historical evidence that something like this was a thing? Not just in the HRE, but in general, in all the history of European feudalism.

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>>51843363
It's fine anon, and sorry if I came over harshly. It's 2am and I should head to bed. If the thread is still here tomorrow I'll tackle the question of knights and peasants at war in the 1100s.

>>51843859
I'm not offended or anything, I could have been much clearer about what I was saying.

>>51814316
.t the guy who gets his shit wrecked by a stray arrow in his abdomen.

>>51843048
This is how I ladder

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>>51803967
I think it was a few things. If the successful warriors of the time are using chain-mail, then the neighbors won't look too deep into it. Emulate the success in hopes of obtaining it. Another thing to think about is that mail is only slightly less effective than plate. Unlike plate armor, which takes a great deal of skill to design and produce without it hindering the wearer, a suit of mail could be made to a basic form and worn by many individuals.

Despite the idea that chain-mail is vulnerable to thrusting weapons, it's not like a simple sloppy stab just penetrates mail. That's movie-tier shit. The rings are very resistant to stretching wide enough to allow a lot of the incoming weapon's point. The stab would get ya... if you were a dumb warrior who did not have padded or textile armor underneath. Together those two armors could protect from a great deal of damage.

>>51844444
Your pents look like a ladder.

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>>51843818
Rarely. Sometimes women from the camp or from a village near the soon-to-be battlefield would move a single soldier or leader to great deeds.

Then you have Joan of Arc. That chick led some fantastic charges despite not actually killing anyone herself. She got some good wounds doing it too. Occasionally queens would rise to the role of leader with great success. They HAD to be powerful, iron fisted, and independent in order to stay in power long enough for a son or male relative to then take the reigns. Olga of Kiev is a prime example of this. If you want some female badassery, just look her up: http://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/classes/rusprimaryolga.html

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>>51844563
What if we are all ladders?

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>>51844590

Hey, so if I wanted to design a bitching suit of armor that was also functional, how would you do it? I'm not worried about anachronism, and I'm willing to sacrifice some of the functionality for aestetic, but I don't want something pepole would point at and say "that wouldn't work". How would I do it? How would you design such a suit of armor? I undestand this is objective since people have different tastes, I'm just asking for your opinions. If you were designing your ideal suit of armor how would you go about it? What would you draw on?

>>51843818
Those that were around were the exception not the rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_de_Clisson

>>51809734
This mans face is a butt.

>>51845906
>Hey, so if I wanted to design a bitching suit of armor that was also functional, how would you do it?
Put a PT belt on it.

>>51845990
That's just the metal strip.

>>51845906
>Armor:
Athenian Helmet
Chain-mail hood underneath for neck protection
Lorica Segmentata - cloth gambeson underneath
Leather gloves
Lamellar cuffs
Samurai greaves (Sune-ate)
Steel plate sabatons

>Arms:
Bohemian Earspoon
Langseaxe
Kite shield

>>51845906
>bitching suit of armor that was also functional
Functional for what? There are all sorts of different armor for different needs.

>>51838426
Depends. Maille itself is very adjustable because of how it hangs. It orients in one direction and the links spread out in the other. Put a maille shirt on a fat guy and it will reach only to his waist, put it on a skinny guy and it will reach down to his lower thighs. The only place I imagine a problem is the neck and shoulder, and that of course depends on the degree of change.

Of course, maille wasn't worn by itself, but with some sort of padding which may be flexible but isn't stretchy. That would certainly constrict just about anyone.

Chances are good your werewolf is dead.

>>51814324
Scale was considered less useful than mail because of its weight, so it never saw widespread use.

>>51803967
cause it worked, mail will protect you from getting cut by a sword. wear a gambeson under it, and you have a half decent chance of not getting your ribs caved in either.

plate armor was designed against lances and arrows, and was typically for mounted knights.

>>51848164
i should also add that mail is very comfy. just don't lean to far or you will fall over, shit weighs over 40 lbs, even if it doesn't feel like it.

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>>51841695
it works.
You should also incorporate bamboo ladders and have the laddermen run up the wall.
I can find no clips or pictures of this, sadly. But they do it in one of the Avatar episodes... blue spirit or Yu Yan archers.

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>>51803967

The fuck am I reading, you knighas can't be serious...

The amswer is obviously metallurgy. It's much more easy to cast large sheets of bronze than of metal. The Romans never ever manage to cast large sheets of metal. The Lorica Segmentata is just scale armour, which consisted of many small pieces for exact this reason.

Believe it or not, but the Romans were not great metallurgists. It took the West until the 14th century to figure out the right procedure and temperature to produce non brittle metal sheets, that allowed full plate.

Basic stuff /tg/, I am disappoint...

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>>51848527
well you COULD read the thread, but...

>>51837227
A quick child sacrifice and you too can have one shot of lightning magic!

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12th century man again, another question.

Well, two questions really. The first is about the well-known English longbow. Were they being used at this point?

Second is a bit more complex, also general. What sort of medicine would someone (a learned person, of course) from Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) know in this time period?

Pic unrelated.

>>51848631
>Hottie photographing DEUS VULT
She knows whats up.

>>51841709
When I was younger, my dad owned a small vest of maille and a buddy of mine had some anime swords, unsharpened, and a lamellar chest peice. We put on our respective armors and swung at each other a few times each. Each time I hit him he stumbled around and was a little disoriented each time. Whereas I, with the maille armor was nearly unaffected save for a few bruises which only appeared afterward.
In terms of protection theyre easily the same, maybe lamellar favored, but the weight and rigidness of it can be a nuissance.

Before anyone asks I have no idea what kind of lamellar/maille the armours were, I was 16 and didnt give a fuck. The swords were replicated from One Peice.

>>51807390
There was a fun battle in 13th century England where only 3 knights died. The crossbowmen were ordered to only target their horses.

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This faggot storms inside your house, looking for his horse. You're the thief who stole his horse. You're a poor fellow with shit gear but you have 5 mates who don't like nobles either.
How do you kill him ? Or better, what would you need to kill him, keeping in mind you're just a peasant ?

>>51808110
>>51807894
>that period in the late14/15th century when outnumbered armies stopped taking prisoners mid combat and all of the suddenly mounted knights weren't the sole deciding factor anymore
>also the time when chivalry starts dying
really tickles your cranium

>>51851333
Flails to bash armored shithead and keep away from his short warhammer

>>51851511
He dodged and pierced the skull of your m8s who was getting hotheaded with his tiny warhammer. You're only 5 left now

>>51851333
HOT OIL

If no oil, just throw some fucking boiled water at him

>>51851333
a knife
have the 5 mates jump on him from his blind spot and hold him down
stab the eyeholes
done

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>>51851333
Shoot him.

>>51851643
You throw your dinner at him, saddened to see all this sweet horse meat go to waste, but he blocks the attack with his shield, before kicking the bucket back into the face of your childhood friend, who curses you before getting back on his feet

>>51851644
He's still in the enclosure of the door, preventing you from conveniently encircling him.

>>51851724
You're a dirt poor peasant, but you remember your grandpa still has an old fireweapon from the hussite wars. You climb the stairs to look for it while your friend yell at the knight and throw chairs at him. The weapon is there, in an old chest, but it's really old and rusty. It looks like it's gonna blow off your hands as soon as you'll try to use it.
Use it ?

>>51851725
I'll just go pick up the remains of the horse meat and hope my friends do the rest

>>51851600
Are we in kindergarten again?

>>51851759
As you bow to get the meat, you miraculously evade an horizontal inoxydable steel warhammer blow. The knight loses his balance as you ingurgitate his horse as fast as possible, but as you raise your head again, you can see the fires of comprehension burning from the holes of his helmet.
He's fucking pissed now

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>>51803967
The short answer was that roman plate was actually pretty expensive even if it was relatively quicker to make. The romans could only make it because of the shear scale of their industry.

Chain became popular because it was easier to make. You could wrap an iron rod around a stick to get rings or just stamp them out of a sheet. The hard part was sealing the rings and I suspect that lower quality mail simply didn't have properly studded mail.

It's important to remember that chain wasn't designed to be used by it'self. Rather, it was an augment to the gambeson, a big quilted shirt designed to act as padding. All the mail had to do was resist being cut and the gambeson would do the rest.

>>51851333
If I am an English peasant who is not a serf me and my mates all have billhooks. Or at least quarterstaffs.

Hit a man in the head often enough with an iron shod stick and he will fall over.

>>51850546
The long wasn't utilized till mid to late 13th century.

They would have knowledge in surgery and not just "saw you foot off" kind. There's knowledge of herbs and plant medicine and acknowledgement of sterilization to some degree.

>>51851767
The knight breaks some of your teeth off with a swift gauntlet uppercut while you're dozing in the middle of the fight, thinking back on your childhood

>>51851751
Scramble the gunpowder into jug, fill it with metal junk, put cloth, fire it and throw into armored knave.

>>51850546
The english longbow as we know it really came into it's own during the 1300s. Before that it was just typical longbows. Granted, the archers were often professional soldiers but the bows weren't anything special.

Medicine tended to be a bit scizophrenic. A lot of roman remedies existed but most were forgotten or remembered wrong. The best you could hope for would be either cauterizing the wound or cleaning it with vinegar and stitching.

>>51851850
>properly studded mail.

Riveted is the word you're looking for. Studded mail has nothing keeping the rings closed.

>Rather, it was an augment to the gambeson

Except mail predates any evidence of the gambesson or similar by a lot.

>>51851887
>The long wasn't utilized till mid to late 13th century.
Hrm, you sure? I've been doing a bit of research and people reckon that it existed beforehand (particularly in Wales) alongside the shortbow, just in much more limited numbers.

It was only after the Normans found out the hard way how dangerous the Welsh bowmen could be that they started introducing the bows into their armies.

>>51851984
While you put all those ingredients together, one of your friends got his leg broken, and the other one his jaw smashed. They're both on the floor, bleeding and crying while the two survivors scream at you, asking what the fuck you're doing, and reminding you that stealing that horse was your idea in the first place.
With a smug smile on your lips, you raise your eyebrow at them as you get back on your feet, ready to fire your new weapon and save the day.
You throw the grenade and duck over. The grenade explodes as expected. The knight is BTFO the house, his shield in pieces, his warhammer away, and his bassinet folded inside his face.
As you laugh of self satisfaction at this sight, you stop when you turn to see your two friends, or to be more precise, what remains of them, everywhere. The grenade could have been cooked a bit less, preventing the pile of burned flesh that is now painting the ceiling of your house.
As you mutter the word "fuck", you hear an angry growling coming from outside the house.

>>51843048
>until the Hundred Years War when cheap English longbowmen shook things up

England's longbowmen were NOT cheap at all.

>inb4 replying to a post from 17 hours ago

>>51852053
To expand one this:

Maille was the more expensive option, and segmentata's chief virtue was being cheap and quick.

The hard part of making maille is dawing the wire out. The idea that riveting one in four links shut is at all comparable to making the links from wire in the first place is just nonsense.

>>51852053
>Except mail predates any evidence of the gambesson or similar by a lot.

This is absolutely correct. Gambesons do help, but maille is more than capable of protecting against lances, arrows and anything else you care to hit it with without padding beyond ones normal clothing.

Maille without padding was the norm across Europe until the 12/13thC.

>>51851850
Read this, and you might learn something.
http://myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html

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>>51852808

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>>51850546
>>51852076

The simple answer is that longbows have been in use throughout the middle ages, but not all longbows are in the same category as HYW-era warbows.

It used to be thought that while being longbows on account of their size, most bows used in warfare during the Early and Early-High Middle Ages were relatively light hunting bows with a draw weight topping at around 70bs. This is more than enough to kill game and unarmoured humans.

However recent finds such as the Ballinderry and Hedeby bows push this figure to 100-110lbs which is comparable to some of the lighter HYW warbows.

The classic "English Longbow" of the HYW had a range of about 100-180lbs. As has been said by others, this version of the longbow was adopted by the English in the late 13th/early 14thC. I have no idea when the Welsh started using bows noticeably heavier than the norm.

tldr: c.1100 bows with a draw weight equal to the lightest "Classic Longbows" were used by everyone, the truly monster bows have yet to be developed.

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>>51852839

>>51848012

I don't know man. I know jack shit about armor. If it can keep.me from getting shishkabobed snd i can move in it i think that's functional.

>>51850546
As for medicine:

Islamic medicine was the best in the known world, but this is not saying a huge amount. The Arabs preserved and translated Ancient Greek texts, which in the 1100s were in turn being translated into Latin in Al-Andalus for European consumption along with lots of other texts on Classical science and philosophy. The 12thC renaissance was pretty cool and someone educated in Spain would be at the forefront of a massive rediscovery of ancient learning with scholars from all over Europe travelling there.

Islamic medicine was based on Greek ideas, but they built on it with a lot of their own developments and Avicenna (Ibn Sina)'s "Canon of Medicine" was the cornerstone medical text in Europe well into the renaissance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canon_of_Medicine

>>51843818
Tangibly related-
In "A Distant Mirror" Tuchman mentions women who would show up to jousts and tournaments in traditionally male clothes, acting like (male) knights as a kind of parody/rebellion against the system. They were seen as freaks and only allowed to be there as long as people thought it was funny.
Of course these proto-performance artists weren't the norm. In a semi-historical or fantasy setting their role might be extended. A woman in male clothing/armor might be allowed as long as she pretended to be part of such a group.

On a more serious note I remember reading a text from Russia about a city under siege, written by a guy who was in the city at the time. He mentions that the "most manly of women" were helping out on the ramparts. Don't know if this was normal or just a case of desperation.

>>51854896
>A woman in male clothing/armor might be allowed as long as she pretended to be part of such a group.
What do you mean "allowed"? Would people really care that much? I can see them making fun of her for it, and a few people finding it insulting, sure, but would they be that bothered to actually go and do something about it?

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Although they didn't realise at the time, the real reason for the ascent of maille was because boobs.

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>>51856061
Funny you should mention that, I read somewhere, ages ago, that Joan used to change clothes with the rest of the men she was with.

Nudity standards weren't what they are now, and this was in France besides.

Apparently someone noted she had "lovely breasts". Wonder if it was La Hire.

>>51856215
Possibly the world's first true Semen Saint.

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Back in Soul Calibur 3 there was a weapon for the Lance style for custom characters that looked something like this. (No results on google images or youtube to screencap and I'm not about to get a Soul Calibur 3 .iso just to get one image)

Is there any historical precedence for such a weapon? Assuming you were strong enough to wield it, would it be any more practical than an "ordinary" weapon (Wielded by someone exceedingly, perhaps superhumanly) strong?

Being a Lance it's pretty huge. I'd wager maybe 8 feet long?

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>>51856923
The closest thing is the Zweihander.

>>51856462
The world needs more semen saints

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>>51856923
Actually I did find one extremely blurry image of it.

>>51856940
Yeah functionally they seem like they'd be about the same too in a realistic scenario. The only thing about it that really caught my interest was the "shovel" grip used in some attacks, allowing the user to stab all the way out to the very end of their arm+weapon's reach.

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This counts, right?

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>>51857026
I don't think Ahlspiess (aka awlpikes) had the shovel-y bit historically.

They normally look like pic related (the one in the center)

>>51857320
there is no armor in this pic
that axe seems too large
not sure what's up with the revolver
that crossbow would have less power than if you threw the bolt yourself
hoods are great for limiting vision without adding protection
so not really

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>>51857600
>not sure what's up with the revolver

Pepperboxes.

>>51823930
Nope. Bronze is actually harder, IIRC, and holds an edge much better than raw iron.

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>>51857665
BONK

>>51853517
It's worth pointing out that the late 10th and early 11th century saw the development of one of the first European universities solely dedicated to medicine in Salerno, Italy, called the Schola Medica Salernitana. It was also, for a brief period, acceptable for women to train there.

>>51855021
People back in the day couldn't take insults nearly as well as people do now.

>>51857707
How brief?

I want crossbows! Pictures of knights with crossbows!

>>51857737
Female students and medical practitioners are noted until the 13th century, when they drop off (coincidentally around the same time Montpellier rose to prominence as a medical school). There was never a large number of them, but they did exist, most famously Trota of Salerno, who wrote the definitive medieval text on women's health.

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>>51857694
That's a break action derringer, pepperboxes are muzzle loaded and you generally rotate the cylinders by hand. At least in the early ones.

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>>51857745
God's wounds sir. If knights started using crossbows, they wouldn't be able to ride and charge people down. Leave that kind of work to well-paid Northern Italians, like myself.

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>>51829710

>>51837208
That's it. I'm sick of all this "Masterwork Gladius" bullshit that's going on in the d20 system right now. Falcata deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that.

I should know what I'm talking about. I myself commissioned a genuine Dacian Falx in Romania for $20,000 (that's about three cows and a pregnant lamb) and have been practicing with it for almost 2 years now. I can even cut a scutum in half with my falx.

Dacian smiths spend years working on a single falx and fold it over one time to produce the finest blades known in Carpathia.

Falcata are twice as sharp as Roman swords, and thrice as long for that matter too. Anything a gladius can cut through, a falx can cut through better. I'm pretty sure a falaxe could easily bisect a legionaire wearing full Lorica Segmentata with a simple vertical swing.

>>51857692
But it's far more brittle. Bronze swords, for example, were razor sharp and resisted corrosion better. However, blades were prone to chipping and it was not unheard of for the weapon to snap under the right conditions. What makes iron and steel superior choices for weapons and armor is how they can spring back into shape, whereas bronze breaks.

>>51803967
>We had plate armor in the Bronze Age
Do you mean those Greek Muscle Cuirasses & Roman Musculata?
Because only The Best Dudes To Ever Dude (Generals, famed soldiers, etc.) got those.
Not to mention, they were made of Bronze.
Which means you can cast them.
Your average Greek Geek fought in either just a tunic, mail, or a Linothorax, a layered linen cuirass hardened with glue.
>Romans started busting out mail in the late game
No, Romans busted out mail in the early game.
Only for a short while in the empire was the (overly-famed imo) segmentata (segmented plate armor) standard-issue.
It then became too expensive again for too little reward, so they reverted back to hamata (chainmail.)
For a majority of Rome's history, therefore, hamata was most prominent.
>Everyone went majority mail for centuries
Well, everyone already was majority mail, but to be frank society kinda went back to that "majority dudes in tunics with shields and a helmet" phase. Good mail is expensive as shit yo. Basically only noble retainers could have that shit for a while.
>Why did it take so long for plate to come back
European barbarians doin' barbarian things kinda set things back a while desu.
With the rise of the guild in a predominantly aristocratic society came innovation and wealth. With this wealth, Nobles & their retainers wanted to find better forms of protection, and now that there's all this prosperity, population increases, which means more people to mine, which means more metal for the smith, which means he can try some kUHRAAAAZY new shit, which means BOOM BITCH, PLATE.
>loose mail
Mail is actually very protective and quite form-fitting. It may look puffy but that's cus of the padding underneath.
Mail died out not so much because it's so much worse than plate but because it's actually more resource and time consuming to make.
Plate armor is a few millimeters thick at most.
Mail consists of a couple-mm thick rings but...
There's like a billion of them in a suit.

>>51860306
Another thing to mention about mail,
Though it's alot more time/resource consuming to make, a good thing about it is that it's recyclable and quite easy to repair.
For this reason, mail didn't completely die out until relatively recently (whenever people stopped wearing plate.)
For centuries, it wasn't just plate. It was mail and plate.
This is seen in transitional-period armors especially, but even in the age of full harness mail was seen in conjunction with plate armor. There are just some places you CAN'T put plate, like the armpits, elbows, back of the knee, basically all those joint-y places that let you move.
So, if you still need armor for those areas (or at least more armor than that aketon/gambeson/padded jack is providing you which is already hella alot), you're going to need something flexible, that being mail.
And assuming you're a noble, well, your great-great-great-great grandparents probably commisioned some mail aeons ago, so why not just tear that up and stick some under your pits, huh?

>>51823930
Yes.
>>51857692
Why would you lie on the internet like that?
Bronze may hold a better edge, yes, but both bronze and wrought iron are equally soft.
>>51859829
No.
Bronze does not snap.
Iron and steel do.
Bronze does not chip.
Iron and steel do.
Bronze does bend.
Bronze does warp.
A bronze edge is nothing compared to a late iron/steel edge.
Iron's virtues are that there's an absolute fuckton of it and it's cheap.
Steel's are that it's hard and resistant in armor and it reverberates in weapons (particularly swords.)
Bronze's virtues are that it gets prettier with age and is nigh-unbreakable and can be work-hardened. You can always bend a bronze blade over your knee to fix it.

>>51852053
>>51852359
You do realise that we don't have archaeological evidence of gambeson (or at least some sort of cloth armor) because they're made of organic materials, right?
There's good evidence the Romans had a type of quilted "subarmalis" in older mosaics.
I saw a depiction of Mars, violent be thy name, that had what looked to be some sort of quilted armor once.

>>51807390
This.

You see a lot of tests of people absolutely ruining mail armor with arrows and axes and even swords. No, that's bullshit. They're going against inferior butted mail. Good quality European mail was riveted mail and was many times stronger.

>>51860580
Nigga, "classic bronze" is described as a "hard and brittle" metal by fucking science textbooks. Iron's (and to a greater extent steel's) virtue is not just because iron is plentiful, but because wrought iron is both strong and flexible. Iron swords were frequently bent back into shape, sometimes during battle. This is attested by battlefield accounts. Please note that cast iron, which would be similar to how bronze is cast, is more brittle.

Getting away from bronze and into a more general rule, the more rigid something is, the more brittle it is. Knowing what we know about the metals, what do you think that infers about classic bronze?

>>51859829
Here's some dumbass on the internet bending a bronze blade chopping wood, then bending back into shape be chopping wood with the reverse edge.
Just in case you need visual proof of how wrong you are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngjMtzJ6xgQ

>>51860960
Persian mail must have been god-tier, then.
It was 6-in-1 and riveted.

>>51814324
If my first set of SCA armor was any indication, the drawback of scale armor is the weight.

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>>51859829
>weapon to snap under the right conditions
>iron and steel superior choices
>bronze breaks
Right conditions is right. I can think of more than a few examples of bronze bending out of shape in battle but never snapping. However if the weapon was passed down for generations it could possibly become work hardened (bending back and forth for so long) and bust. Bronze is an amazing material for weapons and armor though.
Now as far as iron goes it is more readily available than bronze and can make decent (or incredible if processed into a good steel) weapons if smithed properly. So depending on the time period the sword is made you could end up with brittle iron that will crack, shatter and break, or iron so soft the bronze will laugh at it. Which is probably why Beowulf breaks every sword he swings... or maybe that's his super strength breaking the blades.

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>>51803967
Plate is expensive, and time consuming to make

>>51856923
Google "long handled sword". They were used by a variety of cultures. One example is the nagamaki from Japan.

>>51862006
RICHARRRDS!
*Ahem* Sorry.

>>51837227

Dacians.

>>51837208
is the thing the shirtless guy wields an actual weapon? it looks more like a farming tool

>>51862858
It's either a falx or a rhomphaia.

>>51862858
>>51862863
It's a falx. Shirtless guy is meant to be one of the Bastarnae.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastarnae

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Alright, tell me about copper weapons. Did they even exist? I know copper tools did.

>>51863262
They did.
The Sumerians used them, that's for sure, as did the Native Americans.
There are tons of examples from all arouns the world, as unlike iron, copper doesn't really corrode that much.
Copper was quite a bit better than stone too, and like bronze, isn't given enough credit.
Like Bronze, it's easily work-hardened. It can become quite hard after a day of smacking it, unlike the human penis.
It's also easily-cast as well, and isn't too hard to remelt.
The reason we used them in the first place was because they're easy to melt down, anyways.

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Please help me /tg/ your my only hope, what kind of armor is this?Does it have a term? I fucking love the mixed look that isn't too bulky but should be functional.

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>ctrl+f, "maille"
>1 of 58 matches.
slow exhale

>>51863704
Pure fantasy.

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Could someone tell me what the thing in the middle is.

Or is just a one off meme sword.

Does anybody happen to know the best place to buy a generally accurate reproduction cutlass for murdering milk bottles and such with in the UK?

>>51864407
Looks like a rapier with a huge handle.
Complete guess it is a bastard sword made for a child.

>>51855021
>What do you mean "allowed"?
Many places in Medieval Europe c. 1450 had extremely strict laws regarding what people could and could not wear. Commoners should not try and look like their 'betters' in the knightly and noble classes, men should wear men's clothes and women wore women's clothes etc. If a lady walked around in garb that made her look even remotely male or knightly she'd be in big trouble.

Note that one of the accusations leveled at Joan of Arc during her witch trial was that she wore men's clothes during her time leading the French army.

>>51824058
>Islamic medicine was the best in the known world, but this is not saying a huge amount.

That seems to be a post-medieval maymay as period writing doesn't share that opinion at all. They mostly talk about specific cases in which either practicioner out-performed the other.

You gotta remember that hygiene in euope took a real dive during the early modern period and only started to recover during the 19th century.

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>>51864407
It's an extending rapier, shown extended. The grip sits on an extension that can slide in and out.

Probably more of a novelty than anything else, some sue could perhaps be gotten out of the more or less unexpected extra range, but I rather doubt it'd be worth the reduced durability.

>>51865118
Good ol fashioned sumptuary laws
Also the color yellow was reserved gays and pederasts in medieval-renaissance Venice.

>>51861662
Depends on the rivets tho
4-1 Wedge rivets are superior to 6-1 round rivets

>>51854621
What's this
A picture of my favorite 14th century battle, coincendentally using my favorite armors?
Thanks Anon

>>51866084
Rosbif detected. My favorite hundred years war battle is Castillon, because it was the last one and had many english shot at point blank by french canons

>>51866177
We'll the English had to withdraw anyway
The Wars of the roses were literally right around the corner

>>51866270
The army defeated at Castillon was directly sent from England to """"free"""" Bordeaux and the Guyennes tho, those rats weren't leaving nicely

>>51852808
Does anyone know what the hell those cloth things at his waist are called?

>>51866357
A skirt

>>51866309
Too bad the English still kept Calais

>>51866357
Would say it's a surcoat.

>>51866366
Thanks anon

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>>51866368
Not for long. Everybody wanted that shit anyway. Still better to let them keep it a bit longer, holding it for us while we put some discipline into those southern ruffian traitors

>>51866377
A surcoat goes up to the chest, it's more tunic like, similar to a jupon
>>51866366
>>51866377
It's actually called a Base, very popular in late 15th century Italy

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>>51866386
Always there for you

>>51866387
*cough*
The Italian wars
*cough*
Battle of Fornovo
*COUGH*
STRADIOTTI COMING THROUGH

>>51866409
>A surcoat goes up to the chest
Well, there is some kind of metal all over his chest, so it's hard to say if this fabric stops at his waist or not.

>>51866437
I was talking about southern french who wanted the english back, but yeah italians are based

>>51804106
now I'm imagining knights to be like SoCal surfers
>yeah brah try this mead with me brah
>yeah totally righteous braaah

>>51866498
They are
Tbh the French sort of ruined them
As soon as those german and Burgundian mercenaries went back to their hamlets and told everyone of nice warm lands full of riches only defended by mercenaries who would not fight even if their was the slightest chance the battle wouldn't go their way, the Italians just sort of got swamped after

>>51866458
I can't tell if the fabric is attached to his C belt along with his plate tassets or an extension of what he's wearing underneath, but Tabards, surcoats and jupons always go over the chest armor
>>51854621
These guys are wearing surcoats

>>51866527
That and the fact they progressively got more independance when they were part of the HRE in the past.

>>51866594
True dat
At last their mercenaries developed some serious fashion sense after the Italian wars
Looking at you, Landsknechts
(Too had they were only a thing for 50 years)

>>51867978
>Being that small and lightly armored on a medieval battlefield
D E S E R V E D
E
A
T
H

>>51868292
Hardly her fault that she's small. Probably malnourished at a young age, didn't grow very much. And as for being lightly armoured, she doesn't look to be wearing any less armour than the guy holding her, aside from a helmet (which he probably took off her).

Hopefully someone will find this useful.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ur4xxj41z8oopad/Metallurgy_of_Steel_for_Bladesmiths_%26_Others_who_Heat_Treat_and_Forge_Steel_-_By_John_D._Verhoeven_%282005%29.pdf

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>>51836600
>he believes in the "muh impervious maille" myth

>>51869934
He doesn't though?

>>51851465
>>51807894
>>51807390

You should all consider the fact that this was only during the most optimistic outcomes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stilo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_on_the_Raxa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vlaardingen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_on_the_Marchfeld

P.S. modern tests have found that the Lorica Segmentata of Ancient Rome was found to offer greater protection than both the scale mail and chainmail available to the legions respectively.

It fell out of fashion because it was costlier and more complex to manufacture and repair in the field.

>>51825346
Autism
Protip: countries change over time

>>51870358
The anglo is eternal

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>>51870309
>modern tests have found that the Lorica Segmentata of Ancient Rome was found to offer greater protection than both the scale mail and chainmail available to the legions respectively.

Which tests would these be, and were the armours used at all representative of historical examples being used in a manner which simulates historical usage? All but absolute the best commercially available reproduction maille has a number of serious flaws compared to historical maille which greatly reduce the protection it affords.

The first post outlines said flaws.
https://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=19189I

I'd also like to see sources for Segmentata being more expensive than maille since this article by the same chap (who happens to a respected historian specialising in Arms and Armour) states the exact opposite. I find this doubly strange given how maille is almost always the more expensive armour due to the sheer amount of skilled labour to draw the wire and make the links, when comparing it to everything from scale to lamellar to 15thC plate (pic related is extract from Knight and the Blast Furnace). So where exactly is the evidence for segmentata being more expensive?

http://myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html

>>51866357
If you mean the armor segments hanging from his waist, they are called tassets.

>>51852174
Weren't they, for the most part, peasants who were going abroad to fight for loot and wages, and as they were peasants they didn't need huge sums as payment? Plus, they were obligated by law to train with bows from a young age, so it's not like the king had to pay for their training or had to hire elite longbow mercenaries.

>>51874898
Only peasants in as much as they were not of noble birth. They were free men of decent enough personal wealth to finance their own equipment to a decent standard, being payed as much as a skilled craftsman was expected to earn.
They were essentially elite mercenaries under contract, not serving due to feudal obligations. The training thing just made sure there was a large pool of archers available and for expeditions the king could select from the best and still build a large force.

>>51871496
>whole thread says maille was more affordable and offered roughly the same protection
>actually it's the opposite
okay

>>51836600
You're right. I can't say I've heard of any cases of maces striking armored foes so hard that they break.

File: Aztec just sitting there like 'look at the metal axe I made'.jpg (45KB, 475x434px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 475x434px

>>51863262
The Aztecs did, but they were most likely tools that COULD be used as weapons. They were a form of payment too

>>51864626
How much are you willing to spend?

>>51876117
>that file fucking file name
KeK

>>51804322
lots of suit were hybrid because they could make articulating plates cover certain parts

>>51826194
Real Rome was the Republic

not the byzantine dictatorship

>>51826139
I think he wore klivanion, not maille.

File: phrygia.jpg (29KB, 412x600px) Image search: [Google]

29KB, 412x600px

i need phrygian armor

>>51856215
I read it was her squire, who'd help her dress up in armor and take care of her wounds

>You'll never be Joan's personal squire
>You'll never share a slightly awkward yet resepctful intimacy with the Maid of Orleans
>You'll never stand by her side as she leads France to victory

Why even live?

>>51865973
And jews elsewhere

>>51863704
Autism-directed fantasy.

>>51863778
I'll call it "maille" when I'm for some reason compelled to start using the middle-English phrases for everything else.

Thou knave.

>>51881922
Who was that? I want to look this up for myself.

What would the people of the middle ages actually call eachother?

For instance, what did the Christian peoples of Europe call the Muslim populations?

>>51804075
God that sword is sexy

>>51884467
Varies, by the 1500s, the Portuguese were using the phrase "Mohammedan" to refer to Muslims in Indonesia and India, which is a bit late but still one of the closest examples I can think of at the moment. Saracen was used during the Crusades though I'm not sure how widespread that was. While Turkopole or Turcopole was a phase that came about later to talk about Muslims who had converted to Christianity.

The Alexiad is a bit funny for how antiquated it is in some regards where Anna Komnene calls the Normans Franks or Turkic people Scythians.

>>51884467
Infidel. No really.

>>51883388
The article I read:
http://www.stjoan-center.com/military/stephenr.html

>Her squire d’Aulon helped her into her armor every day that she was in the field and it was he who dressed her wounds.
>He testified that he often saw her naked legs and breasts and that". . . she was a young girl, beautiful and shapely. ..’ D’Alençon said
>". .. I slept with Joan and the soldiers ‘on the straw,’ and sometimes I saw Joan get ready for the night, and sometimes I looked at her breasts, which were beautiful.

>>51824334
How about an insanely 'noble' defending commander that the orc general insults or lures out of the defences, leaving them wide open for capture. A 'battle of champions' could lure him out or a faked retreat then counter attack. Perhaps an incredibly insulting banner is put on display, causing the hothead to lead a charge into the orc lines?

>>51837227
Boudicia's army. It was eventually defeated when it got trapped between the romans they were fighting and the wagon train that had been following them with their families.

>>51884467
Ottomans or Musselmanns is what the germans called them.

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>>51814316
Say that to my face not online and see what happens

>>51886720
>replying 5 days later

>>51886733
Replying

>>51803967
>being this uneducated