Info on ancient armor/weapon?

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Ivonia

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Is there any website (or relatively inexpensive book, like under $50) that describes various types of weapons and armor as well as what they're strong/weak against?

The talks about fighting has got me interested in writing a fantasy story for one of my classes this semester (a fiction workshop class yay :D), and I would like to be as detailed as possible (at least so that instead of "the hero then put on his armor", I can say something like "the hero only wore a short sleeved chain tunic, since that was all he could afford at the present time"). I know that in history, most soldiers couldn't afford to be outfitted in full plate armor most of the time, so what did they wear (or did they really go and fight with nothing more than the clothes on their back)? Did the enemy often use armor they acquired off of dead foes, or did they take it and use it for something else (like melting it down to make a weapon?)

I'm particularly interested in medieval plate armor (and any armor for animals as well if possible, as I intend on using armored horses and perhaps elephants as well).

Weapon info would also be cool. For instance, a short, 1 handed sword might not be too effective against a shield (particularly those large heater ones), but a big, 2 handed hammer would probably break that same shield (not to mention the defender's arms/bones) after a few blows (cause I imagine there's a lot of force being delivered by that small head on the hammer). A longbow would probably screw up anyone that gets hit by that arrow, but if any infantry does manage to make it to the bowman, I suspect the archer wouldn't be able to stand toe to toe with them for long (guess asking this after watching Braveheart hehe)?

Any help on this stuff would be greatly appreciated :)
 

zornhau

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You're asking a lot!

For general understanding, try the "A Knight and his..." children's series (I patronise not) by Ewart Oakshott, esp., "A Knight and His Armour".

For a sense of how weapons actually work, the opening chapters of Guy Windsor "The Swordsman's Companion: A Modern Training Manual for Medieval Longsword"
http://www.chivalrybookshelf.com/titles/swordsmanscompanion/swordsmanscompanion.htm

You could also surf this site: http://www.schielhau.org/, esp. the illustrations from Talhoffer.

Otherwise, for a quick fix, you can't beat Osprey, e.g. English Medieval Knight 1400–1500 http://www.ospreypublishing.com/title_detail.php?title=S146X&ser=WAR&PHPSESSID=47a37edd86ca55b8412f9efd82d223f8

should tell you most of what you want to know about dress, armour and training.

Overall, bear in mind that there's a considerable difference between any given 30 years, so concentrate your research and don't pit weapon combos against each other if one clearly historically supersedes the other.

General rules
  • People chose military weapons which can do the job and no more (i.e. no overkill). So, e.g. in the 1100s a single-handed sword was quite adequate to take down a mailed knight. By 1450s, you need a poleaxe
  • Battlefields favour variety and team weapons. In civilian life, a very small subset of weapons dominate. So, you might take a mace to a battle in order to crack armour, but you wouldn't carry it as a weapon of choice for a streetfight. Similarly, a great flail is fine if you have two mates to keep you alive, but you wouldn't take it to the tavern for personal protection
  • Swords are really cut with properly, hence the proliferation of clubs and heavy bladed falchions.
 

Vomaxx

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"Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight" by David Edge and John Miles Paddock (ISBN 0-517-10319-2) is magnificent: excellent illustrations, scholarly text by real experts, and an invaluable glossary that includes a great number of very obscure terms (e.g., ailette, besagew, cinquedea, niello).
The book is more about armor than weapons; I can't imagine much you would want to know about plate that isn't in it.

-------------------

Don't underestimate those archers. At Agincourt the English bowmen put down their bows, picked up their axes and mauls, and beat the stuffing out of a good many French knights. (The knights were exhausted, having attacked on foot over muddy ground and been subjected to a storm of arrows.)
 

Euan H.

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Thanks for the book recomendations, guys. I've just ordered most of them from Amazon. Cheers!
 

preyer

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just remember that i have no idea what 'ailette, besagew, cinquedea, niello's are, so if you want me to know what you're talking about in a story, clue me in. :)

did the enemy take armour off of dead foes and use for other purposes? good question. probably depends. the romans wouldn't have picked up enemy swords to use for their own, that would spoil their battle tactics. i wouldn't imagine they'd need a lot of metal, either. i don't know if they hauled around a forge or replacement war gear, but i don't see why they'd take in fallen armour and swords for that many reasons. most likely, i'd imagine they could make arrowheads, but i'm not sure if that's metalurgically practical. bear in mind, too, that metalurgy was incredibly well-kept secrets and you wouldn't necessarily wouldn't want to (or maybe couldn't) fix your cracked plate with the enemy's by 'welding.'

what they wore obviously depended on their technology, finances and what was available. you mention 'braveheart,' so i'm guessing you've heard that the movie depiction of him rushing into battle wearing a tunic and kilt is pure bunk. would any soldier wear the enemy's armour they plundered? they might, but at the same time it could be a pride thing: is it more honourable to wear the skin of your enemy or fight according to what everyone else has on? there may be some cultural things to consider here.

chain mail armour was actually very expensive. it still is! lol. consider that each chain is a little iron ring which has to be manufactured with the equipment of the time then skillfully set into one another thousands and thousands of times just for one shirt, and you can see how the cost adds up real quick. i think they're probably in the $400 range right now, give or take. at least the one i saw a few years ago at the renaissance fair was about that much: online you're ordering from pretty much the same people who do the fairs, too. i'd hate to pay that shipping, though, lol. those things aren't light.

i'm sure that after the battle the home team salvaged/plundered everything they could, at least those with wont to do so. souvenirs, repair items, (if the home team was an inferior force) yeah, swords and armour. ever hear of 'waterloo teeth'? those were teeth pried out of dead soldiers' mouth around the time of napoleon's era and sold to dentists to use in dentures. nice, eh? plundering? you betcha. i have no reason to believe it hadn't been going on since battle one 5,000 years ago. a traveling army, though, i don't see why they'd laden themselves down with heavy metal they don't need right that instant. i don't know if there are any hard and fast rules concerning any of this. there may be historic prescendent, but at the same time, if it sounds reasonable then i'd buy it.

i've found this site very entertaining:

http://www.lepg.org/warfare.htm

it's interesting to note that finances play a big part in the development of armies. expert bowmen were rare, knights even rarer. those were big expenses. but a bum could be trained to fire a shot in days. in one point, a large part of your army may have been mercenaries.

sorry, didn't mean to divert from your original post. :)
 

zornhau

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preyer said:
Lots of stuff
:)

In short, composition, organisation and motivation of Medieval armies vary over time and place for good reasons. Don't muddle armies and kit from different sides of paradigm shifts, unless you really know what you're doing.
 

preyer

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right. good advise. if you're using a roman army, know how they operated *then* know the enemy if it's possible. something like the romans is probably particularly stressful because so many people will call you on the details. blurring through fictional battles you can get away with, i guess, but knowing some 'what's likely to have happened' will certainly add depth and credibility to the situation. it's useful for fantasy, i feel, to consider some of these things to add, too, just for having different avenues to go down.

at the same time, it's fiction. i used teeth-pickers for a story set long before the napolean era. someone will cringe at the historical shadiness of it, but hopefully the fun-factor of the scene will outweigh any liberties i took with the facts. i did some research on dentures of that era, and i think it's very tenuously possible it *could* have happened. good enough for me. at the same time, the mood of the story was one of 'fun' and not to be taken seriously or meant to be used to garner any real history from. it was my plan to describe any historic liberties in 'author's notes.'

i used liberties again in another story where the premise was based on welsh tales of deliberately wrecking ships using false lights, then plundering anything that washed ashore. again, i moved the practice to a different era and locale, both of which were pushing the boundaries. someone could chew me up and spit me out on that if they really wanted and were a slave to history books, not seeing how it *might* have happened. there's a certain fact i tried tracing down to no good satisfaction, so i'll have to wing it in hopes that the literally three people out there who may notice if i screwed up doesn't read the book.

ivonia, i think we're somewhat alike here in that we want to present things as factual as possible without becoming experts down to the last detail, which some writers feel the need to bore the readers with. oops. pick and choose the details well. like most readers, i'm not a historian, but i'll know if something doesn't sound right. ironically, even if it *is* right, the popular view of history could make it seem wrong. when a book says '1495 saw the radical tranformation of blah blah blah,' i take it with a grain of salt and read into it 'give or take a few years' depending if i need something else to happen in the story, know what i mean? don't tell me the dodo bird became extinct in a certain year if i need for that bird to be around ten years later. i'll figger out a reason. that's what we do as writers sometimes, no?

and i expect someone like zorn to be a lot more detailed and realistic about it. that's just the kind of writer some people are, which is great. but for fiction's sake, i bend the rules a bit, such as if i came across a really great reason to make a bunch of armoured knights rally together to resist the change in warfare, then ride headlong into a hundred guys with ball and shot, essentially committing suicide. doesn't even sound reasonable on the surface, does it? the facts don't, at least, bear out (or probably don't stand up to much analysis: good thing i never thought of writing this story before now, else i probably would have, lol). sounds like a readable piece of pathos otherwise, eh? lol. zorn may not touch it with a ten foot pike if he has to use facts shot out of a sawed-off thirty yards from the target, and he's probably a better writer for it (that's just my assumption, Z, i could be wrong). i often have to balance out what i want to have happen, what's likely to have happened, and what the accounts of related happenings are. i don't go overboard with it, but i'm not adverse to stretching things a bit if my research will let me. (sorry, off topice again? :))
 

Vomaxx

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preyer said:
for fiction's sake, i bend the rules a bit, such as if i came across a really great reason to make a bunch of armoured knights rally together to resist the change in warfare, then ride headlong into a hundred guys with ball and shot, essentially committing suicide. doesn't even sound reasonable on the surface, does it? the facts don't, at least, bear out (or probably don't stand up to much analysis: good thing i never thought of writing this story before now, else i probably would have, lol). sounds like a readable piece of pathos otherwise, eh?

What would be unrealistic about that? Soldiers did it thousands of times from the Civil War onward, especially in World War I, and without even the benefit of armo(u)r.
 

TheIT

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I agree with the comments about striving for historical accuracy with one caveat. If you're placing your story in historical Earth, then you need to make sure your technology is accurate to the time period. The characters couldn't use anything from a later era, though it may be acceptable to use something from an earlier era. For example, some soldiers might be equipped with older weapons because they don't have enough of the newer style to go around, or a soldier might carry a family heirloom sword or somesuch into battle.

My caveat is when the story is set in another world. Given that the people of this alternate world have developed with different social pressures and resources, what would it be logical for them to have developed by way of technology? The way I see it, I'm creating my own universe and I have the entire history of the Earth to use as inspiration. As long as I set limits and stick to them, I don't see a problem with choosing items from different Earth historical time periods if they make sense.
 

preyer

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i kept getting errors and trying to 'refresh,' that's why so many duplicate posts, lol. sorry. :)

yeah, there are plenty of suicidal charges. i guess i spoke too rashly. the context of what i was trying to get over was the knights *knowing* warfare has changed, just not accepting it, whereas those civil war and WWI folk accepted warfare for what it was. i guess what i mean is the *reason* the knights charge is based purely on pride and maybe arrogance, which in itself is a good motivating factor, though from a strictly historical perspective of what a knight was, i question whether it would hold up. maybe.

agreed, if it's earth-based, the details have to be there. as long as the story makes logical sense, anything can happen otherwise. who was it one this MB that said, 'just make it cool.' true, dat. i'd rather be entertained by shady history than bored with accuracy down to the minute detail. (anyone seen 'sahara'? whoa, now *that's* taking history to a different level of believeability. k, that's a movie, but it's based on a book by a prominent author whose name escapes me.)
 

zornhau

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Preyer - that would be fine in my book, and did actually happen - kind of - quite a lot. Mixing tech levels is OK, as long as you justify it, and show the consequences.

However, e.g., in a society where plate armour is the standard, a mail shirt is not actually a cheaper option since mutitions armoru is pretty easy to hamme rout using a water-powered hammer.
 
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