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Basic Guide to European Armor

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I made a tutorial on armor. I posted it on Facebook first, so I'm just going to go ahead and paste the descriptions from there...


I know a lot of people have trouble with armor so I put together a handy-dandy guide. I made it in one big piece, but for Facebook I divided it into six smaller parts so you can actually read it. It is NOT designed to be period-accurate to anything. I made it to give people a working knowledge of European armor--how everything fits together, what the names of the pieces are, that kind of thing. So the pieces are drawn with simple, basic shapes, not specific to region or period. There's a couple of historical notes, but not much. As a basic overview, mail (the armor) has been around since as early as 500 BC. After the fall of the Roman Empire, it became the dominant form of armor until about the 11-1200s, which is when coats of plates (and brigandines and stuff) started becoming common (usually worn over mail). Plate armor continued to develop over the centuries (this development, where you could still run into guys just wearing mail pretty often, is known as the transitional period), reaching the level most people are familiar with (full suits, encasing the wearer head to toe) in the Gothic period, which, when you're talking about armor instead of art, was from the early to mid-1400s. It continued to develop through about the mid-1600s, when firearms made it obsolete. 
As a general disclaimer, I'm not claiming to be an expert on armor in any way, shape, or form. I've got a decent knowledge of what goes where and how it works, that's it.

Cuirasses can also consist of a metal breastplate and backplate riveted to a leather harness. A lot of them have sort of a flare at the bottom so that the faulds or tassets can sit better. Sorry if my handwriting is illegible.

Vambraces can also come in two hinged pieces, encasing the forearm better. I've heard that gorgets can sit beneath the cuirass, but I've never actually seen an example. Bevors were developed to be used with open-faced helms (such as the sallet), but they can also be used with close helms, especially for tournaments. By the way, tournament armor in the 14-1500s could get insane. People would have separate sets for tournaments, so they would have a proper fighting set that they could actually move in and a 100+ pound tourney set that they could basically just sit on a horse in.

Tassets have always been kind of a point of confusion for me, because I read somewhere that they can be attached to the cuirass OR the faulds... I dunno. Anyway, if you refer to a rerebrace as the upper cannon of the vambrace, you have to refer to the vambrace as the lower cannon. Don't mix up your terms. Everything to do with armor names is a point of contention because there were so many different languages coming up with names for them at the same time. So there's like five different words for every piece.
Quick note on helmets: if you only had enough money for one piece of armor, you would buy a helmet. Everything else was secondary. EVERYONE who went to war had a helmet (unless maybe you were a longbowman), even if it was just a bucket you cut a hole in.

I don't know what the difference between a pauldron and a spaulder is. I think a spaulder might be a pauldron with no lames, but I'm not sure. Rondels are kind of weird, but basically they're just metal disks that could be attached to your armor in a couple of places. They're there to deflect blows away from your least-armored pieces, like your armpits and your knees.


If you have questions, feel free to ask. I can't guarantee I can answer them, but I'll try and help you figure it out.
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Terror-From-Beyond's avatar
I have a question, do you know if armored skirts, such as the one from the Knight Of Thorns were ever a real thing? If so was there ever any practical use for that?