Armor

[Bill Skinner]

What percentage of the French were wearing plate armor?  Was it iron or steel?  Has there been any research done?  Can someone tell me some good reference material about the armor used in the time frame the English longbow would have been used.  Bill

[svaldrin]

my advice would be to look up the battle of agincourt that should be what you are looking for.

[Bill Skinner]

Actually, I did.  That is why I was asking.  For a weapon that was only able to kill horses and bounce off plate armor, there were a lot of dead French knights and men at arms.  That is why I was wondering if someone could point me towards some good references about the armor of the times.  Bill

[svaldrin]

Ahh i see well its not all French armor but its a good website http://www.armourarchive.org/armour_dukes_burgundy/

[svaldrin]

found another
http://books.google.com/books?id=gXeyZicujL0C&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=15th+century+french+armor&source=bl&ots=Ozi25x0t93&sig=_-jzq1RIoERaMQM_Ztl8Dad__NM&hl=en&ei=m7NuStL0KpTINZ6jod0I&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8

[Cromm]

For a weapon that was only able to kill horses and bounce off plate armor

HHHHmmmmmmmm OK......

[Diligence]

I just read a book by Bernard Cromwell called Agincourt which although fiction, is based on the real life events of the battle of Agincourt (in as much as is known from historical accounts).

Maybe you have read this book, but if not it seems that the sheer number of in flight arrows would be a "rain of death", even with medicore armor.  5000 archers at 5 arrows a minute = 25,000 arrows a minute....that's some serious firepower.

Cheers,
D

[Phil Rees]

Ahh i see well its not all French armor but its a good website http://www.armourarchive.org/armour_dukes_burgundy/

This is all tournament armour .... none of this would have ever seen a battlefield except the Sallet or the Bascinet

[acker]

Here is a doku about it, thea are saying that the armor was made from steel :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib8kGCFpJRo&feature=related

[bow-toxo]

Ahh i see well its not all French armor but its a good website http://www.armourarchive.org/armour_dukes_burgundy/

This is all tournament armour .... none of this would have ever seen a battlefield except the Sallet or the Bascinet

 Or parade armour. Unfortunately, by far the most historical armour still around today is, like the armour in this website, from the sixteenth century or later, when much of it was to show status or look cool.

[backgardenbowyer]

There is some info on medieval armour and its metallurgy in an appendix to Robert Hardy's "Longbow" written by Peter Jones (Hardy 1995: 232-236)

"Summarising it can be said that steels of 0.1 to 0.2% carbon were employed with a strength range from 20tons/sq in (31 kgf/mm2) to 70 tons/sq in (110 kgf/mm2) was available.  Further that face hardening by hammering and carbonising was known.  However, the ductilities and hence the toughness of the steels would be lower than those today." 

I'm not an engineer and can't interpret that fully!

I have also read that the quality of armour varied greatly ie. bespoke armour made for the wealthiest was of a very high quality of hardened steel, whereas the livery armour issued to, or owned by ordinary men at arms was of a much lesser quality - probably iron rather than steel.  This makes sense to me though I can't give you a reference for it.  Most of the experiments I've seen suggest that best armour offered pretty good protection against arrows except at close range and that to penetrate the arrow has to strike the metal almost perpendicularly or it will be deflected.  Even the best armour, however, was only at its strongest and heaviest around vital organs and had to be lighter around the limbs for flexibility.  Again, I'm interpolating, but my guess is that you would have to shoot an awful lot of arrows for a few to get through and this is probably what lay behind the "arrow storm" tactic.

Against the quality of the steel in the armour has to be set the quality of the steel in arrowheads. Mark Stratton has done a lot of work on this - see his chapter in Hugh Soar's "Secrets of the English War Bow" (2006).

All of this applies to plate armour - the evidence is clear that mail offered very little protection against bodkin pointed arrows - I've seen that demonstrated with a relatively light bow.

Hope this helps - I'm no expert!!!! Check out the sources for yourself.

Stan

[Bill Skinner]

svaldrin, thank you.  The book on the french armor in the Hundred Years War is what I am looking for.  I have Hugh Soars book and I think Mark Stretton's prac app tests are some of the more interesting chapters.  Bill

[Bill Skinner]

And I misspelled Mark Stratton's name. sorry.  Bill

[Len]

I'm guessing a very high percentage of the French casualties were wearing some form of plate as most were men-at-arms and their retainers. The percentage wearing plate made from high carbon steel on the other hand would be pretty small as it was much more harder/expensive to make.
 Its also a little misleading to say bodkins easily defeat maille. I've shot through maille armour with just a 60lb bow but the point is maille was not worn on its own but over padding which makes a huge difference.I still think the English longbows would be devastating against anyone just wearing maille but to be honest, most of the longbows victories were against a mix of plate and maille as maille only armour was disapearing from the 1330's onwards. Even at Crecy (1346) no reasonbly set up man-at-arms would have just been wearing maille, it would have been considered old fashioned and most likely he wouldn't have been able to enlist as a man-at-arms if he did as there was certain min armour standards set for different classes of fighters. Early plate was not as good as it was by the early 15thC. but a typical mid 14thC. men-at-arms would be pretty well covered with either iron plate, splint or hardened leather over his maille which makes a lie of the theory that bows got stronger in the 15thC. to cope with plate. For an arrow to penertrate three layers ( iron plate, maille and padding ) of armour means it would have to be shot from a bow of at least 100lb, probably more.As armour improved they were able to drop the three layer system and just wear the plate over light padding which meant if an arrow could get through that plate it would most likely cause a wound.

[Yewboy]

And I misspelled Mark Stratton's name. sorry.  Bill

No you didn't it is Mark Stretton, not Stratton, the Stratton is Steve Stratton, similar name, I know they are close freinds and are working together on a lot of archery related subjects.