Good to finally see you in a *real* helmet Matt! Great video, I loved the 'open visor' discussion. People get far too wrapped up in the idea that being as fully encased in steel as possible is the best and most safe option in all situations. They often forget to consider that sometimes having less physical defense and more sensory perception in certain contexts can result in *more* safety than having physically more armor. Your discussion is also why I believe we see *no* evidence for locking down a bascinet visor. The last thing you want to be fiddling with on the battlefield in a time critical context is a strap or release for your visor with a gauntleted hand...
I agree completely. I think the modern viewpoint is because people use visors like a fencing mask - as a safety device to make friendly combat safe. The context is more like historical tournament fighting, but completely unlike battlefield context, where being able to open the visor easily and without assistance is vital. As you say, being able to see, breath and hear better is often of more benefit than having your face covered.
What about those face-mask looking helmet I often see when searching for Byzantine Cataphracts and Samurai Helmets? Is this an example at a tradeoff which prioritize visibility over supreme protection, or was it mostly a psychological thing?
I'm not an expert, but I would suspect that a mempo (the Japanese face-covering armor) would be less effective at deflecting blows and protecting the face than the bascinet visor. The bascinet has a very rounded, smooth, conical visor, which would naturally tend to deflect missiles and other weapons. Mempos on the other hand are flatter and -- in the case of detailed ones with proper faces sculpted into them -- are less smooth. That combination of being both flat and ridged wouldn't be nearly as protective. And because the mempo is so close to the face any direct blow would likely transfer a good amount of the force directly to the face. That said, a mempo would provide far better visibility, seeing as the eye holes tend to be larger and closer to the face. The trade-off would be that it offers significantly less protection (but probably better than nothing). And just to take Matt's favourite word for a moment, the battlefield context of the bascinet vs the mempo is rather different. The weapons and tactics a samurai wearing a mempo was likely to encounter were different than a man-at-arms wearing a bascinet, meaning the two warriors would likely value different levels and styles of protection.
+scholagladiatoria I can't be the only one who'd absolutely love to see a collaboration between you two! I realise that distance is an issue, but surely some kind of remote solution would be feasible.
Somewht relatedly, in modern armored warfare tank commanders more often than not ride unbuttoned despite it exposing them to enemy fire. Nothing like using one's own unobstructed eyes to maintain situational awareness.
Indeed; the highest-ranking English casualty at Agincourt, Edward 2nd Duke of York, is said by some chroniclers to have been "smouldered to death" by "much heat and pressing".
@@BeKindToBirds Hyperthermia is a danger even in cold ambient temperatures... if your body temp becomes elevated & you can't cool down through sweating (because you're wearing kilos of fabric & armour) you're in big trouble. Having passed out from heat stress in mosh pits at outdoor winter concerts, I can attest to how fast it happens & how hard it is to lower your core body temp once enveloped in oppressive heat. It's like you're wearing a sauna 🥵 They also tended to wage war during warmer month back then... no point losing half your army & cavalry on the march to the battleground.
@@medea27 You know, I have often heard of that effect but you explained it very well I think. I always thought it was somewhat a trick how often my winter sports instructors would hammer on the fact you still sweat and need to drink water and often more so because the insulation of the coats fools you so well. You connected the theory with the feeling quite well, I'll certainly take that advice I've heard my whole life a little more seriously. (I'm afraid I heard it young and never witnessed it so after all these years I am realizing I am taking it lightly when it can and has killed outdoorsman every year.
In my experience with amateur boxing , I hated sparring and fighting with the head guard on , it ruins your peripheral vision . The shots you don't see are the worst, because your brain doesn't have time to adjust and prepare for the impact . So even if you don't have time to defend the shot , your still expecting it with no head guard blocking your vision.You will notice now (if you had seen the latest olympics) that senior (over 18s) amateur boxers don't fight with head guards . I imagine this would of been a similar view a knight may have had . The compromise between protection and vision, albeit at a lot more costly level.
In german there's the saying: "Mit offenem Visier kämpfen." It translates to: "to fight with an open visor." It's still used quite commonly and means to be open and blunt in a discussion or to "fight" fairly.
From what we know, it seems the Great Helm could be removed and slung over the shoulder after the most dangerous situations have passed. Under a great helm, a smaller skullcap was worn, sometimes with a mail aventail to provide effective head protection when not wearing the Great helm. I believe Knyght Errant mentions this on his channel; I'm surprised he hasn't popped up here in this comment section yet. Haha!
***** Mmhm, it was. At the time it was called a cervelliere. An early form of bascinet, lacking a visor of course. I didn't refer to it as such to avoid confusion, though.
It was. Apparently it directly led to a major loss for the Crusaders in the Battle of Hattin. That whole area is immensely hot during the summer, Tiberias is below sea level and it is in a desert. It's bad enough just walking around in normal clothes I can't imagine how bad it would be in full armour.
I've seen this helmet interpreted before, (I think) by the military historian Richard Holmes, as a direct evolution against arrows. This explains why the helmet is so sharply pointed, and why the eye-slits are so far away from the eyes and indeed why they are raised from the body of the visor and tapered, and so sharply reducing the vision of the wearer. The visor was intended only to be worn during the charge, when his horse would be his eyes. This would explain why so many surviving contemporary illustrations depict bascinet-wearers in the thick of the melee with their visor up. They had survived the English arrow storm, so, job done.
Arrows perhaps, but I think it is far more likely it was designed for the Lance and pollaxe. Less protected helmets can already proof against arrows, but a great big point to deflect the force of a major blow away and up is clearly designed for the lance
Great video! I really enjoyed the points on fighting with the visor up (or not there) and as a fan of Knyght Errant enjoyed the shout out to him, and the presentation of information that differs from his videos.
Completely agree with over heating in plate and maille. Each year I wear full plate, maille, gambeson for a fete, it's a battle reproduction, I wear it in October, in Northumberland for 6 hours and I drink about 6 lts water and probably sweat out about 2 stone, it simply dosent cool down. Your point about air, movement, functioning etc is spot on, Matt
The lower chainmail portion seems like it's really well made; it doesn't hang from the chin the way some replicas do, but it sill appears to have plenty of room for movement of the head. It feels very authentic.
Very interesting and informative! I was surprised to hear there were alternate visors - one usually associates "modular design" with more modern settings... I'd love to see examples. Looking forward to more videos!
I bought a pig face helmet and it arrived today. Awesome video by the way it's interesting to learn why the helmet is shaped in a special way and i have always been interested in medieval history.
Admittedly 14th century medical care was a different kettle of fish, but modern wound ballistics texts note that even against modern weapons the face is pretty well-protected. I recollect some before and after surgery photos of a South Vietnamese officer who had taken mortar fragments to the face. You'd initially have figured that he was a goner, but once cleaned up and sewn up it was surprising how superficial the damage was. Of course, you have to have the luck to not catch it in the eye.
Haha, at the very moment I saw the beginning of the video (with rather dull sound due to the technical reasons), I thought, "Hey, I have seen this before!". And then comes your reference to Ian's channel. Cool, looks like we have a nice little HEMA community here... Cheers, Jess PS Nice ending, too.
One other fun point- the visor up still offers a good bit of protection against descending blows, and might still be workable against volleyed fire by ducking a bit.
I've been noticing in a lot of artwork that even sallets (with an eye-slit closer to the eyes) are usually worn pushed back (even ones with visors have the visor down, but the helmet back so people can look under them). I guess that follows up to modern times, where bulletproof facemasks exist, but most soldiers don't use them. Protecting the face is great, but if it gets you knocked on your ass or worse by a threat you couldn't see or didn't have the oxygen to evade, then it's not worth it.
Reminds me of what I once read in a martial arts magazine a long time ago about a basic taekwondo sparing match being equal to a long distance run. In that context there is no armor, save perhaps for a foam chest protector and foam helmet and other pieces which weigh nothing, whereas in historical fighting there is armor and weapons all of which effect the fighters while they are also fighting hand to hand.
I enjoy your channel very much. Always informative and interesting. Have you reviewed medieval Ottoman/Turkish weaponry before? For instance like what were the janissaries equipped with and how did they fare against the European forces? My apologies if you've covered the subject before.
I used to wonder why some of my WarHammer Space Marines helmets looked like that. I never cared for them as looks as a kid, once I made the connection. But I do appreciate their function now, and wouldn't be surprised if I ended up with one in a "past life" lol
Hey Matt, have you thought of doing a collaboration with Ian LaSpina? I feel like that's something a lot of people would like to see. Especially the people who are asking for more armor videos (like me)
Watching this, I thought about Otto Carius, commanding his Tiger half exposed through the hatch, or Admiral Togo commanding his fleet from the bridge of Mikasa at Tsushima. The vision slits in Mikasa's conning tower are even reminiscent of a bascinet.
I'm glad someone respected said this. I like open face helmets very much. Especially the barbute kind. Some of my friends who are interested in this kind of thing ridicule me for liking full face shields. The way i see it, if I get hit in the face, I'm dead anyway. if it's shielded, I'll be disorientated enough that the next blow kills me or secures the kill at least. If there are archers, I have a shield to protect my face. If there are archers and melee fighters, I'm probably more concerned with the melee fighters anyway.
Just want to note that if you're fighting in that helmet with your visor up, just about any blow from above (and a downward blow is the easiest) will knock the visor closed and "automatically" protect your face. So at least 50% of blows directed at the head will be intercepted by the visor even when it's open.
I think the Japanese face masks were a good compromise solution. While the level of protection is light, it is better than nothing and you have nearly unimpaired vision and speech. They sometimes had a separate piece for the cheeks and lower jaw. Since the mask is right against the users face, they have excellent field of vision. With an opening right at the mouth, air and sound can pass easily out. The protection is sufficient for light or glancing hits but an arrow or strong hit will probably still penetrate, depending on the materials used for the mask. Were there European examples of using protective masks with open face helmets?
There are european masks found in anglo-saxon graves and roman cavallry and officers probably used masks. The problem I see with masks is that they have to be quite thin and be made out of soft material like bronze or leather which doesn't protect you well. As far as I know it was mainly used to intimidate the enemy.
A hockey mask provides adequate protection from a puck moving at high velocity and they are just made out of common plastic. I suspect a mask made out of any reasonably tough material would provide significant but not complete protection.
Try setting the camera inside the helmet and showing us what you could see. Perhaps even walk around with the camera/helmet mount. That would be an interesting experiment.
How secure is the visor when it's in the raised position? Clearly it doesn't fall while you're standing still talking, but what would it take to make it fall?
Awesome video ! well done Matt You mentionned that hands get hit a lot in combat so why mail mittens were not developed earlier in hisotry despite their significant advantage ?
Is there anything keeping the visor up other than friction? I imagine it would be rather inconvenient to be in a melee and then have the visor fall down and suddenly block most of your vision
It should be kept only by friction as far as i know. Good quality bascinets will have the pivots on the sides positioned little bit offset and the friction can be even tighten. Visor of my bascinet stays open and I actually have to grab it with some force (not significant) to close it or open it. So don't imagine it like to be super oily smooth.
Finally someone who look at the problem; most of the european armor and helmet have this problem. People just see the helmet and the full harness and think that the story ends there, but armor is not only about protection. Is also about overheating, sweating, awarness, field of view, breathing and ventilation. For example, the japanese helmet and the turkish helmet shows some good solutions to the problem. The mask was able to protect the face whithout compromising breathing and field of view, and the neck lames were not to close to the head to allow air ventilation and heat ventilation. We can see similar choice design in europe with the lobster tail helmet
I always thought the lack of breaths on the left half of the visor was so the point of a lance is less likely to catch and wrench your neck when you're on horseback. Is penetration of breaths (spears, arrows, etc) really that likely? (I have an old Terry Tindill fencing mask that's almost entirely 16ga perforated plate, and I've always wondered how effective it would be with all those "breaths" compared to a more conventional historical helmet like a bascinet (sans aventail) or sallet.)
Damn new comment section, can't reply to replies. Anyway you were talking about sallets and someone brought up longer visors, What's your opinion on bellows style sallets? They have a visor which covers up to the chin. Surely with a gorget and a liner it'd be a good compromise?
I think the visor was used only on the last seconds of a cavalry (knight) charge ..or if it was raining arrows during a charge (the horse speed would be enogh to cool the knight inside and he would be protected before the clash from any pointy spears, or projectiles.
Were the fully heavy armored soldiers only for specific tasks like shattering a line or advancing into armor with the lighter armored troops more for all purpose?
WAIT THIS NOW FINALLY MAKES SENSE OF THE "END YOUR OPPONENT RIGHTLY" THING I will assume that the pommel wasn't as hard to remove as we usually think. Once your opponent opens their visor, you throw your pommel into their face. They are encumbered by heavy armor and fail to dodge, get their nose squashed a bit and a big surprise (in the treatise where the technique is shown the fighter is unscrewing the pommel as their still have their visors on, meaning the impaired vision might well cause the enemy not to notice) which gives you a definitive advantage! (im 90% kidding but also: maybe~)
Hi! Thank you for again another great video! Small question, so do you think in big battles you would wear the visor up, but maybe in a one vs one, or small groups vs small group we would wear it down? Thank you!!!!
I have been studying iaido for a couple of years now and we have been taught to block or parry with the side (or spine) of the blade. a friend of mine and myself are curious about hema and fighting with a doubled edged weapon, would blocking and parrying be the same when it comes to sword vs sword (rapier for example) in combat or in a duel?
There are versions of this going on now. I've heard stories from US veterans of the war in Vietnam in which they ditched their helmets in favor of lighter headgear to save on heat fatigue and weight. Some of the photos and video I've sen from Iraq and Afghanistan suggest this is still a consideration.
If you're just using the visor to protect against missiles and then lifting it up once you get into melee then couldn't pretty much the same thing accomplished by an open faced burgonet or morion? According to Humfrey Barwick, all a 16th century infantryman advancing into a hail of arrows had to do was tilt his head forward to protect his face and he was good to go.
I thought klappvisor is a term for visors with one hinge at the top. Just hearing or seeing the word makes me visualize the visor flapping on its hinge. I used to like the appearance of later helmets like sallets and armets considerably more, but these 14th century pieces are growing on me over time. Well, greathelms still look the most badass. :)
Kaucukovnik666 Klappvisier has a totally flat face but it basically the same as the pig faced one :) Also yeah me too, I prefer the common footsoldiers equipment the most though. There's some really cool looking helmets from these periods :D
Why did the "spangenhelm" (which is similar to the burgonet in style) go out of fashion? I suppose the simplest explanation is "arrow fire," but if this was the case, and bascinet-wearers removed their visors anyway, why not simply continue using the "spangenhelm" but with more face protection (in the minor of the classic "viking" helmet).
Even modern protection understands all of this. Mobility, visibility, and comfort is more important than protection. Most Armour can't stop a rifle round anyway so there's no point overburdening a soldier with inefficient protection when they could have that extra bit of mobility or ventilation or reduction of weight. If you look at modern plate carriers and helmets you'll see that over the last 10 years they've been steadily shaving away material bit by bit until now all we have is literally 2 plates that are connected by straps and a helmet that only covers the front, top, and portion of the back of the head. When you're fighting for extended periods every ounce starts to feel like a pound.
A point that the RU-vidr Metatron said was that moments before engaging in melee during a charge Samurai would look down and because the strongest part of the helmet is the top. Is this the sort of thing Knights and Men at Arms would also do? I there any evidence of it?
There's jousting helmets designed around this sort of concept - the most obvious example is the 'frog-mouth' helmet, which is actually used in the reverse method (charge looking down, and then look *up* at the moment of impact).
Lots of originals are strongest towards the top front, and (where they have a visor) across the front of the visor. There's nothing specific instructing it, that I'm aware of.
But the mask that they used doesn't have the problem of a visor when it comes to overheathing, breathing and seeing, or awarness of the battle. Not as good in terms of protection, in fact is useful to secure the helmet and give a fierce look to the warrior, but can be worn all the time, preventing direct hit to kill you
I assume there were never any helmets that experimented with using glass or something other transparent to protect the eyes with? I would assume not, because I've never heard of it, glass is kinda fragile, and a hard impact across the face could perhaps shatter the glass into your eyes.
***** Pretty much what I thought. Transparent visors should perhaps be explored more in fantasy, where you can have fictitious transparent materials more suitable for armor.
Why didn't they have like a metal grille one the face (not the eyes) with ~1cm "holes" , like on a fencing mask, just with a lot thicker (and rare'er) metal "rods"? Something similar to sabre hilts. That would probably stop spear and sword thrusts. And it shouldn't impare vision or breathing too much. Or did the majority of kills not come from opportunistic face stabs? Come to think of it, how did the majority of deaths happen in plate armored fights? Is it even known? (video, please)
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/0e/d6/2f/0ed62fb8f6e8b294d5490820484d5e23.jpg Not the same thing, but a similar concept. Maximilian period helmets also had a similar theme of lots of small openings over the entire face.
Greetings Matt. Completely off the topic. Will you be making a video about that weapon hanging from the brown cord with the white hilt? What weapon is it?
