13 Spider Bloody Chain said:
How do we know that the originals were constructed like that in the first place? (Internally, of course, externally it's obvious how plate armors were constructed).
Because we have hundreds, if not thousands, of the originals available, plus several books detailing the construction methods of various types of armour from the periods in question. In fact, depending on the precise period of plate you're talking about, it's possible to buy and wear a suit from the time (assuming you can afford it and would want to wear it. Never know where it's been
).
Plate armors slow you down.
Most suits of plate armour we have recovered weigh between 50 - 70 lbs. A modern soldier is expected to carry 60 lb's worth of equipment into battle. On a weight front, then we can pretty much rule it out as being an issue on the grounds that it's actually slightly better (in terms of distribution of weight) than the modern equivilent. We have no reason to assume that gravity has changed considerably since the medieval period, nor that medieval men (bearing in mind you could be looking at as little as six to nine generations) were significantly weaker than ourselves. In short, there is no reason to conclude that the armour slowed them down simply from the armour itself.
You get in one, and you're like a tank with holes; slow, heavy, and can't run, jump, or barely move.
You can disprove this quite easily (before any sources get involved) by the application of common sense. If a man wearing plate were unable to move, how would he fight? He may be impervious to enemy attack, but unless he can actually fight back he's no obstacle (and no doubt they'd soon find a way to bring him down).
The second is to look at sources, both written and illustrative. There's plenty of accounts of people running around (not so much jumping, but then there's not much call for that in the middle of battle), charging and the like while wearing full plate. As said above, you can even put the plate on yourself and run around, jumping and the like.
The proviso to this is that it depends on the armour's construction and maintenance. Obviously, if you're armoursmith forgot to include knee joints or they sieze up with rust then you're in trouble. However, we've no reason to conclude this was common practice (certainly we've not found an account of this happening). Nonetheless, there are likely going to be cases where the armour, whether through a construction flaw or simply a bad fit, may have restricted the agility of the wearer, but it's not going to be a common thing.
You need a winch to get you up and down horses,
Not only have we never found such a winch, but there's no account of it in written records (bearing in mind that books on dressing correctly and the like were incredibly popular in medieval times, to the point where entire feuds were based on whether to start buttoning shirts from the bottom or top. We've plenty of manuals, opinions and accounts of how Ye Proper Gentleman dressed for everything from going to war to going to clean **** from the stable). You can also apply the direct test as mentioned above - people wearing the armour, or reconstructions today, have no problems mounting a horse or standing up.
To be honest (going on 'educated opinion' here) the whole myth that plate was this restrictive probably grows from a misunderstanding of the aforementioned books. A wealthy or at least well to do man would never dream of dressing himself, instead his manservant(s) would do it for him. This applies while on campaign as much as it did at home, thus we have accounts of knights whose armour was placed on them by their servant or squires, who would also assist them onto the horse. It seems that some people then concluded that this was a necessary step rather than a voluntary one (always a danger when one concentrates on a piece of evidence from a single perspective - history has always required multi-discipline study). In other words, you're ignoring the common practice and ettiquette of the time (not to mention it fails to account for the less well-to-do troops in heavy armour who would have to dress themselves), looking only at what is being done rather than the why.
