Interesting facts you know about medieval warfare?

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Knight armor varied in weight, plate mail was lighter weighing about 45-70lbs, while full-plate generally exceeded 150 pounds and was worn by heavy Cavalry only.  As a Marine infantryman who has served in combat my battle load was 20 magazines (I carried 10 extra compared to the standard grunt because I was the squad leader) at 3 pounds a piece. The M-16 is a little over 7 pounds. 2 ballistic plates in the body armor made the flak jacket weigh roughly 30 pounds. The helmet weighed 3.5 lbs. 2 frag grenades 2 flash bangs =5 pounds give or take 1 lbs. 3 liters of water, smoke grenade 3 flares, green red and white parachute, that's another 10 pounds. Last but not least the PRC-119 radio with 2 batteries carried in an ALICE pack with frame is roughly 20 pounds. 
 
Your wrong abouth the armor. What you are claiming abouth armor is just popular misunderstanding. The year is also a huge factor as armor evolved constantly and what is true at one period is not true in another.
Also fighting in platemail swinging a two handed sword is something entirely different than lying your ass down on the ground firing your rifle at some distant target. The two things cant really compare, even clearing houses or beeing in an extended firefight cant compare. Soldiers today have it easy compared to in ancient times when you had to go up close and personal. I was/am in the army too so i know.
 
M0rdred said:
The Vikings did for some reason have less disease (the Black Death for instance never hit Scandinavia very hard)

Just wanna correct you there. The black plauge hit Scandinavia just as hard as everywhere else.

Example is Norway, aprox 50% up to 2/3th of the population was killed due to the Black plauge.
I would call that being hit really hard ^^
 
It really depends on when you consider the end of the "Middle ages" honestly.  Tempered steel armour was much lighter, but some would consider Maximillion armour to be in the beginning of the renaissance.
 
True enough. It also depends on what you mean with full plate, if you are reffering to the monstrous creations that were made for tournaments/jousting they could weigh alot. But they also made it very hard to move around when on the ground. They were pretty much useless on the battlefield where mobilty and beeing able to stand up after beeing unhorsed would have been prefered. The real plate armors of the middle ages would weigh between 20 and 35 kilos i reckon with exceptions here and there.
"From wikipedia: "A full suit of medieval plate is thought to have weighed little more than 60 lb (27 kg), on average lighter than the equipment often carried by today's armies which averages at around 90 pounds"
Hey even wikipedia got it somewhat right, you dont see that all the time! But if they are trying to insinuate that modern soldiers carry heavier id say that weight distribution technology was not what it is today, and the real challenge dont come walking around in it, but fighting in it. :grin:
 
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=403_1347969287 :Guys in plate armour frolicking about. Demonstrating mobility while wearing plate. Hobbyist re-creations of 15th century fighting manuals for the moves I guess.

The thing about weight distribution is not about technology, but about how the weight is somewhat more uniformly distributed around your body, rather than having a combat belt (full of magazines, a shovel, water, rations, grenades, anti-armour mines if you're unlucky, LAWs, extra ammunition for the gunner etc...)  and a shrapnel jacket that puts all the weight on your shoulders and your waist. And whatever weapon you have is always going to weigh more than any sword or pole arm.
 
Malanthor said:
True enough. It also depends on what you mean with full plate, if you are reffering to the monstrous creations that were made for tournaments/jousting they could weigh alot. But they also made it very hard to move around when on the ground. They were pretty much useless on the battlefield where mobilty and beeing able to stand up after beeing unhorsed would have been prefered. The real plate armors of the middle ages would weigh between 20 and 35 kilos i reckon with exceptions here and there.
"From wikipedia: "A full suit of medieval plate is thought to have weighed little more than 60 lb (27 kg), on average lighter than the equipment often carried by today's armies which averages at around 90 pounds"
Hey even wikipedia got it somewhat right, you dont see that all the time! But if they are trying to insinuate that modern soldiers carry heavier id say that weight distribution technology was not what it is today, and the real challenge dont come walking around in it, but fighting in it. :grin:

AFAIK, nobody fights today with ALL its equipment if it can be avoided. So you don´t see many soldiers (there are some exceptions) carrying around 40 or more kilos of equipment while bullets fly all over the place.
 
I'm going to cover a few topics here, and I'm sorry to simply come out and say "you're wrong", but it has to be done. (I'm covering the middle to late Medieval period here) WALL OF TEXT

Firstly, armour usage: Armour was relatively cheap, and munitions harnesses (which was the 'standard' kit of a footsoldier, consisting of a breast, back and arms, sometimes with chain underneath) made up about 90% of armour sold. The whole kit would cost around 12 shillings, which was a month's pay for a footsoldier, and less for a man at arms or sergeant. Helmets and weapons varied, but again, perfectly useable variations were available for around a week's wages.

The important thing for middle-late medieval warfare is livery and maintenance, which is where you would wear a lord's livery (colours) and follow him, and he would pay for your food and equipment (maintenance). Lords would buy armour and weapons in bulk for their troops, which obviously could get expensive. The thing is, it happened despite the cost as soon as the longbow became widely used. If you turn up with a bunch of peasants, archers will slaughter them en masse, or armoured troops will massacre them. Also, if you take your peasants to war, there is nobody taking in the harvest. Because of the cost and the risk, you ended up with small, professional armies. To reiterate an important point, pretty much all troops, even archers, had munitions harnesses, but only the "fancy" armour has really survived, so that is what we think of. They were also the closest thing the period had to a modern workshop, where numerous shops would put out thousands of pieces.

The next point is full plate armour. Knights and nobility began to really use it in the thirteenth century, but it was so expensive that the poorer squires chose not to be knighted because they couldn't afford the armour. A few people had it before them, and you will see them in tournaments, where its early efficacy is doubtful, because you constantly hear things like "the earl of x was gravely injured and died a month later from his wounds" and "x had his armour hacked from his body". Bear in mind this is with blunted weapons. As the armour became cheaper and more effective due to things like fluting, it was more widely used, and people stopped using shields, which slowed you down and weren't effective at all. What we think of as shield fighting is completely wrong, as shields were used for deflection, which is why they were curved. Knights ended up using their arms and hands to fend off blows.

Which brings me to the final point, the mobility of full plate. Lots of people talk about weight, and about how replica armour can't give you the full picture. I invite you to find a video from the curator of the wallace collection, who (unfortunately) took out an authentic suit of armour from a king, and wore it, filming a few videos of him sprinting, doing forward rolls and getting up off his back. Full plate, towards the late medieval period, made almost no difference to mobility, and made people very hard to kill. However, it could be done, as evidenced by a few sources, including one from the wars of the roses, where a displeased noble killed his captain in one blow from a warhammer.

 
Tubby McChubbles said:
it could be done, as evidenced by a few sources, including one from the wars of the roses, where a displeased noble killed his captain in one blow from a warhammer.

Oh yes, i remember that part. The killer landed a blow in the place where nobody would really want to survive after that.  :???:

 
Ok, how about this: every knight was a man at arms, but not every man at arms was a knight. But one could not tell apart the noble men at arms from the non-noble men at arms except by their heraldry. And peasent levies? That's fiction, if an army had a large portion of poorly armed peasants then it was a peasant uprising, and even they would be well armed and led by nobles. The last medieval peasant uprising in Europe was in Finland, called a "club war", but it turns out they were led by rich estate owners and equipped with plate armour, arbalests, cannons and the works.
 
Just found out this interesting video about how archers really shot their bows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zGnxeSbb3g
I think having this on M&B would kinda upset the balance of weapons :wink:
 
Fel1 said:
Just found out this interesting video about how archers really shot their bows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zGnxeSbb3g
I think having this on M&B would kinda upset the balance of weapons :wink:

Very interesting.. thanks for sharing this gem.

Saxondragon
 
Fel1 said:
Just found out this interesting video about how archers really shot their bows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zGnxeSbb3g
I think having this on M&B would kinda upset the balance of weapons :wink:


Wow, that's amazing! His weapon proficiency must be in the 1000's  :grin:
 
Fel1 said:
Just found out this interesting video about how archers really shot their bows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zGnxeSbb3g
I think having this on M&B would kinda upset the balance of weapons :wink:

That guy is crazy-fast... I don't even -- WTF I call shenanigans! :smile:

-Loth
 
He´s fast and practised quite a lot, yes.

But what you don´t know or are told is:
What weight draw has his bow?
What bow is it?
How often did they retake the shots till it was 100% hit quota?
What is the distance the guy shoots at?

So before you go bat**** crazy about that guy keep those things and a lot of other little details in your mind and take the video with the scepticsm it deserves.

Ninjagoofing around with a short recurve composite bow shooting light fibreglass arrows with modern hardened steel tips on moderen hardened mail mounted on a wooden dummy proably isn´t exactly what people in the medieval period did in europe when shooting arrows on a battlefield. Shooting arrows at point blank range (<10m as it seems) isn´t something you want to do very often if you you´re an archer. If you  need to do that, something has definetly gone totally wrong.

This video clip does show though, that with enough training, one´s able to pull off quite some tricks. And the way he´s using the handgrip as some quick ready magazine is interesting as well. But other than that? It´s not as if he´s showing something really new or amazing.

He should call Mike Loades though. I´d like to see that ninjagoof guy be the one who follows him on the horse and shoots on the silk balloon on his back.

 
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