A bit of a departure from our usual format, I wanted to show one of the ways that my living history group. La Belle Compagnie, operates. Yesterday (April 8th 2017) we were invited to participate in Catholic University of America's "Medieval Day" in Washington DC. Most of the time we do 1st person living history in a camp setting, but sometimes, depending on the audience, we will do a more formal presentation style or 'museum tent' type of display. I'm squiring for Tom in this video, who normally portrays our group's Knight, Sir Geoffrey. Bob Charrette, accomplished HEMA instructor, author and one of the original members of La Belle narrates in his early 15th century Italian harness. Sorry about the audio quality. The decision to try and record it was last minute and I didn't have much setup time. I hope to get more videos like these in the future so you can see what we do in action.
6:35 "Around that year, men, in particular noblemen and their squires, took to wearing tunics so short and tight that they revealed what modesty bids us hide. This was a most astonishing thing for the people." Continuer of the chronicle of Guilleume de Nangis, 1350 'Tis a mark of a truly dedicated re-enactor that even his wardrobe malfunction is period. :)
No, he's talking about my visible braies (underwear) ;) The tails are turned down in the back to facilitate me squatting, but the hose are definitely too short *embarrassed* They are being replaced. I found out the hard way that I forgot to pre-wash the wool I made them from!
The beard is a very important and seldom discussed aspect of armor. And I suspect the armor helps promote beard growth. Notice how during the time Ian's been doing videos his beard has just become more and more epic. It's because he's doing armor videos.
We all, the women included, tend to fill different roles at different times depending on the scenario we're doing. We have women who portray all strata of the social ladder, from the immediate family of our 'knight' to the household servants, mercer impressions, and even a medical impression etc.. They actually did a presentation on clothing that day, but unfortunately I could not record it as I was inundated with guests in my tent.
The quality of this filming is awesome, thank you for getting the multiple angles & doing all of the editing. It's a beautiful demonstration, the craftsmanship in this stuff is incredible. Just amazing. Hope you guys had as much fun as it looked & are continuing the living history events
While watching this, I thought that maybe some finely made mail (like the ones employed on the throat) could be sewn on the hosyn to fill the gap on the back side of the cuises, but was it done originally? I'm sure you've mentioned it in your videos and I have watched them, but I can't quite recall it and I seem to lack the time and patience to revisit them, so I hope you won't get offended by my ignorant question.
The first time I donned a full suit of armor I felt both invincible and highly vulnerable. Vulnerable because the sheer weight of the thing left me in awe (and understanding immediately just how much more in shape I needed to be) and invincible because, well, it's knight's armor. :)
Great stuff. You've covered much of the same material in your other videos, but it doesn't hurt to get another coverage of it. And this is a good side-by-side demonstration of differences in armor from just a few decades off as well as a different region. And this is a good presentation. The sound is mostly fine, although the wind is a bit of a problem at times.
A bit hard for them, as they're trying to have armours from many different periods in their game simultaneously. But maybe they can figure it out, some layers are now a mess (Some of my arena characters wear two gambesons at once).
Amazing video as usual Ian! Just started supporting you on patreon! I think a video about jousting/tournament armors and how they differ from combat armors would be a cool video. Also curious about what you think about the armors in the game for honor. Cheers Mike
If anybody is curious, at roughly 14:45 , the gentleman says 'Committing to a *wasp-waisted* armor like these are ...' The captions have partially omitted the 'wasp-waisted' portion of the sentence. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how one would go about editing the captions for that portion, I'll try my best to look into it, though, any help with the task at hand would be warmly welcomed. Many thanks to JTriffic for the captions on this video. Cheers.
I'm willing to bet it's lighter than that in reality (I'm not sure how and when he measured it, and if he's including clothing and weapons), but his coat of plates isn't nearly as light as a later cuirass. Our armors are very similar (same armorer too) with the exception of the torso protection, so it can't be much heavier than mine in total which is closer to the 60 lb mark.
+Knyght Errant The guy with the microphone, who says his armour weighs about the same, isn't wearing a coat-of-plates... (speaking of his armour, his shoulder armour seem rather oversized, to my eyes) As far as I've heard, armour weighed no more than 20-25kg. 80lb is about 38.5kg...
Bob is also twice my size and about 1.5 times my breadth at the shoulder, and once again, I cannot confirm how either of them weighed their harnesses and what they're including in those measurements. The same armorer who made both of their armors also made mine, from the same materials etc... I weighed mine very carefully, and only with the plate components and it came to 60 lbs +/- a few depending on the helmet I wore.
Hi Ian! Thank you for your videos. You make top notch quality, and this was no exception. Recently I became interested in an armor called "Almain rivet" by the wikipedia and I cant fully understand its design. Could you explain it? It would be awesome to see it in a video in the future. Thank you for your videos.
The Almain rivet is from the White Harness period. It allows one to have a two piece articulated breast plate without the need for the exposed strap seen on earlier multi piece articulated breast plates.
Thanks for the answer. Im pretty new (i.e.: I know nothing) to armor and armor designs in its details. Could you elaborate the differences between these, or point me towards some reliable sources? For example as seen on wikipedia, where to look on this picture for these features? upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Demi-armure_MG_0793.JPG/220px-Demi-armure_MG_0793.JPG
Well, it's also an English term for the same thing, and a proper period term. Middle English sources sometimes spell it 'Hosyn,' as it appears in the famous Hastings Manuscript 'How a man schall be armyd at his ese when he schal fighte on foote.'
Hosen are different from pants or trousers in that they are not self supporting, and are laced to the upper garment. They also often have intergrated socks to cover the feet.
jelle dijkstra Hosen are vastly different from pants where in each leg is seperated and put on like a sock. then tied via lace on the waist. usually it's tied to what is called a Purpoint. Which can often support the leg armor aswell.
In English, _hose_ are stockings that are pulled up over the feet and legs, as in _pantyhose._ Very much a women's fashion nowadays; but as far as I'm aware, men have only been wearing trousers in the West as everyday wear since the early 19th century.
In my opinion if you ever have a desire to do something with higher degree of historical accuracy in the future, it's really just a waste of money to invest in something you know is incorrect now.
People who play kingdom come deliverance when they start: what are Vambraces? Are they for my legs? People after completing half of kingdom come deliverance seeing this video: wow those Kuttenburg gauntlets have good stats and worth a lot. Too bad he didn't get the warhorse helmet to sell his current helmet which would let him buy Magdeburg pauldrons. Then proceed to kill all of rattay.
Shark Wrestler As far as I know (AKA not very much) for historical accuracy the best steel would be 1050 Spring Steel. If you don't care about that (yet you are here for some odd reason) I suppose you should just ditch steel altogether and use titanium instead.
I'm both going for authentic and a bit of my own style, I want the right steels and mobility builds but also without basing it off of any finds or effigies.
1050 is a good approximation for high quality medium carbon historical steels and a lot of armorers use it (my armor is made from 1050). If you plan to heat treat your steel it is a great option. A lot of people have good results with 4130 also. If hardening is not an option or a desire, or depending on your experience level, mild steels are going to be the most forgiving and can still give you good results (and approximations of historical low carbon steels) but they cannot be hardened (except for case-hardening etc, but not a true quench hardening technique). No modern steel is equivalent to the steels available to our historical counterparts just by virtue of the way it's manufactured today, and historical steels varied wildly in quality and carbon content.
Is the huge shoulder arm on the other guy historically accurate? I don't mean to be insulting. Just curious. I thought I watched Knyght Errant video where he said the big shoulder pieces are only done in video games.
Pieces in video games are very exaggerated, and usually project well outside the silhouette of the arms and body. What Bob is wearing is a normal Italian style pauldron. The left side will be larger as it's the more defended side in asymmetrical equestrian armors. The large asymmetrical pauldrons would be a hallmark of Milanese armors for the remainder of the 15th century. Bob is also a big guy, so to make them fit him properly, the armor needs to be correspondingly scaled to him. Here are some historical sources for Bob's pauldron design: effigiesandbrasses.com/media/effigiesandbrasses.com/original/dubrovnik_orlando_s287_r5338.jpg cartelfr.louvre.fr/pub/fr/image/3636_s0000352.001.jpg wiktenauer.com/wiki/Fiore_de'i_Liberi#/media/File:Pisani-Dossi_MS_25b-b.png
Bob being a tad overweight probably contributed to the pauldron size because it then has to accommodate his bulkier torso. Has he ever considered mimicking the pauldron style of the Henry VIII 1544 field armor instead? That one would probably be better fitted to his proportions. I'm not saying go full frankenarmor, but maybe keep only the two topmost lames full-width, then reduce the size of the remainder.
Hi Ian, some critique about your civil clothing in this video (please don't take me wrong, I am not trying to badmouth or anything). One sees quite a lot of pictures and videos from reenactors doing 14th or early 15th century and you can see their underwear. I myself have yet not seen any source were you would see underwear while the person is just standing/sitting (excluding of course working people without upper garment, "badies" aka people crucifing jesus etc.) There are german text sources telling about the problem that the youth wears garments that are too short and you can see the bum when they bend over. The important part here I guess though is that it says when they BEND and not while standing normally :) just my knowledge of the sources, and not meant to discredit you in any way! Keep up the good work and keep the videos coming ;)
Thank you, yes you're right. In my defense there are a few things going on here that aren't as apparent to the viewer. One, the tails of my split hosen are not pointed and they are turned down so that I can squat. Two, the cameras are all about 2-3 ft lower than the stage we're on. Three, and the most embarrassing part is that I found out the hard way that I did not pre-wash the wool I made those hose out of, and they are now way too small and short. The new pair was already cut out but not sewn up before this particular show. When I originally made these hose they covered much higher as you can see in my 'soft kit' video, before they shrank. I want to make a video about this very topic in the future.
I'm not sure there's an objective answer to that question as asked. There are a lot more factors and variables at play when it comes to historical mail. Fully riveted mail can potentially allow you to get a tighter overall weave since all the rings can be opened, but demi-riveted mail has 50% less rivet joints that could potentially fail.
Was the solid/riveted mix used in western Europe in the high and late medieval period? Lets use late 14th century as an example if you need a specific date. I seem to recall seeing mention that it was only done in the Roman era, but don't recall where I heard that. Are there any medieval examples, or are all the existent ones riveted only? And if so, around what time-frame is it discontinued?
Demi-riveted (alternating solid links and riveted links) is medieval as well. It was fairly common going into the 14th century when all-riveted mail became more popular in certain areas. The 14th century coif at the Royal Armouries is demi-riveted (collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-21304.html) as is the shirt of mail known as the Sinigaglia shirt at the Royal Scottish Museum (www.erikds.com/pdf/tmrs_pdf_3.pdf). There are several other examples as well. Burgess believed that fully riveted mail became more popular than demi-riveted because it allowed you to get a denser weave of mail for a given wire diameter, since all the rings could be open during assembly.
Very cool, thanks. I figured it would be kind of odd for demi-riveted to go out of style so early, because it just seems like a nice way to make it faster and easier. Hadn't thought of the denser weave with fully riveted mail.That makes a lot of sense.
He's actually wearing my helmet for this. His gauntlets are lot fancier than mine though; they have a lot more gold decoration and engraving up close. In our normal presentation style (1st person, in a camp setting), our armors aren't too different since we all portray men-at-arms of England around the same time period depending on the specific scenario we're doing.
Greaves are probably the _most_ finicky piece of armor as far as sizing goes. The breastplate, less so, if you have a similar build, but the helmet, as long as your heads are roughly the same size it should fit, perhaps requiring an adjustments of the liner suspension. It may not be a perfect fit, but it will function, whereas an improperly fitted greave may not even go on, and if it does it might hobble you.
Knyght Errant Yeah I remember when I tried getting into armor smithing and when I got to planning out the greaves I was thinking "Well looks like I'm about to get to spend a lot of quality time with my ball stake." Never actually got to it though, I decided that I was going to do the cuisses and poleyns first and I just could not get the shape of my first one right and got so frustrated that I gave up
I'm wondering what would happen if you would put iron sabaton on top of a modern, military boots. The leather of medieval boots was soft, I think a regular medieval soldier would prefer a solid boots made of hard leather. But the question is: Would that be possible? If so, what about mobility of your feets?
I wonder if Bob's armour is perhaps more of a jousting-model than a battlefield armour. The concept of recieving lance-strikes on the left side is, as far as Im aware, limited to jousting with a tilt. Techniques described in fencing manuals mostly deals with opponents on the right side I believe.
Similar armors are scattered throughout Fiore's armored combat sections for use in non-tournament settings. When Bob fights on foot, he often removes the left pauldron entirely, another technique shown in Fiore. But all surviving field harnesses from the 14th through 16th centuries that display asymmetries almost without fail have a more defended left side.
Well I have no reason to doubt your expertise in this area. It is a bit peculiar though. If we look at later treatices like Mair, allmost all of the mounted techniques are done with the opponent on the right side. Could it be that armours where perhaps not allways specifically intended for one or the other (battlefield vs jousting), but sometimes in a sort of gray area in between? Or is there another way to interpret this?
I'm willing to bet it's lighter than that in reality (I'm not sure how and when he measured it, and if he's including clothing and weapons), but his coat of plates isn't nearly as light as a later cuirass.
What I don’t like was the repeating of the modern myth that the bigger plates were connected with bigger furnaces. You could easily weld bigger pieces together like used in Construction parts like wall anchors, ship anchors or clappers of big bells.
This isn't a modern myth, it's the result of the metallurgical research done by Dr. Alan Williams in _The Knight and the Blast Furnace_. Forge welded armor, if there was any, was not common enough to show up in any of our surviving pieces, so they apparently didn't think it was a technique appropriate for use in armor.
So the author is not right because all Steel was folded and welded to be refined. It, doesn’t matter if you use 20 or 40 little pieces at the beginning. You have to look at the production of steel. You can see it still used in the Japanese art work of producing blades today. There is no evidence to doubt that is was not in the exact same way in Europe, only several hundred years earlier. It doesn’t matter if you forge a big plate to be used to cover a strong door or to make a breastplate. I can’t see any argument form the standpoint of making it. It must be something else. I see that like that horrible “documentation” about Viking swords and they where made with Indian steel.
After thinking about this for a while and consulting with people more knowledgeable than myself, I'm inclined to agree that there was something more to it than the big blast furnace enabling the production of larger plates. Blooms, both before and after the invention of the blast furnace were routinely cut and re-welded, or blooms joined to other blooms to form larger blooms. Bigger furnaces probably made the production more efficient and faster, but weren't the needed ingredient. The amount of waste in materials, especially the charcoal, might have simply not been worth the effort except in rare cases when it came to plate armor production until either the larger furnaces made it not quite so wasteful, or battlefield conditions changed enough to drive its development.
God point; the need of charcoal. It must depend very much on the location of the Steelmaker and than that of the smith if it was welded to bigger parts or not. I think the deforestation of wide parts of Europe can be part of it.I think it would be worth to be further investigated. Think of the costs for big Machine parts like hinges on gates (nice example is a side gate of Notre Dame in Paris from around 1180-1200 I gestimate each bigger piece to be around 60kg), Anchors and other big thinks welded together to up 1t and even over. If you are interested in historical European Steel or iron production you will find that therare not many books left. I found interesting: Georg Agricola De Re Metallica Librie XII And the books form Peter Tunner (later knighted and than Peter Ritter von Tunner) I fond the second edition of “Stabeisen und Stahlbereitung” Freiberg, 1858; very interesting. Sadly for you, only the uncorrected and smaller first edition, I found in English. I have also some more modern books about african and Japanese traditional steel making.
Hey Ian, great stuff as always! :) I do however want to point out a flaw in your clothing that we get to see in this video, so feel free to convince me otherwise, but your linen underpants (breeches or however you'd call them) should NOT be visible at all. While it might be acceptable while you're kneeling or when you stretch your arms upwards much, even when you're just standing without moving at all, a big part of them visible both in the front and the back. Showing underwear like this would be considered extremely indecorous for pretty much anyone, and even more so for people in a more middle or upper class attire. In pretty much no example of all the many late 14th century depictions I've studied do respectable people show their underwear like this, yet it seems to be something that I see among reenactors quite often. Either the doublet is too short or the hosen don't go up far enough, or both. Try hosen with three points for lacing and a bit longer doublet, or try an interpretation of a very early joined hose - those are a matter of much debate, yet they definitely existed already in the late 14th century to cover up the now exposed groin area due to the doublets getting shorter and shorter. Either way, just wanted to address this since it's a very common error that's relatively easy to avoid.
Yes,I know, it's embarrassing. They used to fit right until I discovered thatI forgot to pre-wash the wool. A new pair are already cut out and ready to sew. If you watch my soft kit video you'll see how they used to fit. I also have the tails turned down in this video so I could squat (they are multi-point hosen), and the low camera angle makes it look even worse. I lost several inches of length on these when they came out of the wash much to my dismay :(
Oh dear! Sorry to hear it, that's really annoying! Well, don't worry then, it happens to the best, and when you're aware of the mistake and already correcting it, then that's perfectly fine. :) Just wanted to point it out since I see it so frequently and didn't want anyone to copy it or see this and think it's fine this way. Yeah you're right, I didn't realize they were the same ones in the soft kit video, that makes sense.
Conner Halsy I'm not French, but I'm pretty sure it means "The beautiful company". I've had 2 years of French classes and also speak a romance language, so I think "belle" should mean "beautiful", although there is the word "bélico" in my language, which means "warlike" and seems to have no translation to modern French. They could be using old French or something and "belle" could be an abbreviation of "warlike" in French, and in that case you would be correct.
French here, you're right it does mean "The beautiful company" (belle is feminine, beau masculine). In medieval french the way to write it was different (biau instead of beau) but the meaning was the same (the only difference was that it was also often used as a sign of affection, wich can still be done today but is done much more rarely). The latin origin of beau/belle (biax/bel (medieval versions)) isn't "bellum" but "bellus" wich also means "beautiful". So no nothing to do with war.
You have a bit of a breeches problem. One should not be able to see your underwear. Its an reenactorism, that one does pretty often on many reenactors ^^ I have many other flaws in my display, so i am not judjing from above. Far from that. Its just a thing i noticed :)
I have the tails on my hose turned down in the back so I could squat. From the front they used to keep me covered, but I recently discovered that I forgot to pre-wash that wool, it's why on the facebook page I recently showed myself cutting out a new set of hosen :) I'm fully aware of it being wrong, but it's an artifact of shrunken wool, not a bad pattern. The low camera angles don't help either. If you look at them in my old soft kit overview video you'll see how they used to fit before I ruined them... doh! :/
That's why you could put nails in them. But then it becomes slippery on hard surfaces, wich where not so common back then. So you have to make a choice.
+English Heart two 15th century treatises on the judicial duel do describe knotted laces as use for tread on shoes, but it may be isolated to that context.
