Knight

The Medieval Warrior's (Unofficial) Manual

Michael Prestwich

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9780500771600
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Based on contemporary lives and descriptions and extensively illustrated, this book written by a leading medieval historian provides a vivid picture of what it was like to be a knight in the later Middle Ages: what armour and weapons to buy; what to do at sieges; how to make a fortune from war and how to win at tournaments and impress the love of your life. Manages that difficult feat, presenting a considerable amount of learning in a light-hearted, eminently readable way The humour and serious scholarship are finely balanced.Ancestors.

• IV •

Their armour was almost uniformly a cuirass and a steel breastplate, iron arm-pieces, thigh- and leg-pieces; they carried stout daggers and swords; all had tilting lances which they dismounted to use.

FILIPPO VILLANI, CHRONICLE, 1364

• • •

It is essential to be provided with proper protection, both for fighting in battles and sieges, and for tournaments. You will not be able to manage with just one set of equipment for all purposes; armour is becoming increasingly specialized. You would find yourself seriously limited in what you could do if you tried wearing tournament armour in battle. You will need a range of weapons, the main ones being the lance and sword. A good knight must also have good horses; indeed, your warhorse will be your main item of expenditure.

Mail, leather and plate armour

Several materials can be used to make armour.

•Mail, made of interlinked riveted rings, is a key component. It resists cuts well but, being flexible, does not help to defend against crushing blows.

•Plate, made of metal sheets, can resist both cutting and crushing blows.

•Cuir bouilli is hardened leather; it is relatively light and strong.

•Baleen, plates of whalebone, is another very useful material, which is often used for tournament armour.

Armour has changed a lot over the past century. Old-fashioned mail has been increasingly abandoned in favour of steel plate. The chronicler Jean le Bel, a Hainaulter, remarked that when he went to England in 1327, the English knew nothing of plate armour, but wore long tunics, or hauberks, of mail, with surcoats bearing their coats of arms, and great helmets of iron or cuir bouilli. Within a little more than a decade, they were wearing modern plate. Jean was exaggerating; plate was already known in 13th-century England, but the start of the French war in 1337 certainly helped to bring the English up to date. As a well-equipped knight, nowadays, fortunately, you will be fully encased in a carefully constructed and ingeniously jointed suit of plate armour.

Plate armour is cleverly constructed so as to provide not only strength, but also as much movement as possible, as the joints on this steel gauntlet show. (Photo Corbis, London/Dallas and John Heaton/Free Agents Limited)

Where should you buy armour?

You will do best to go direct to an armourer; that way you can be sure of a good fit. Alternatively, there are some retail outlets in big cities that sell armour; Francesco Datini, an Italian merchant from Prato, had a shop in Avignon for a time, which was useful for knights fighting in the war between England and France. The best armour is made in Italy, in Milan; there are also excellent armourers in Germany, where Cologne is a major centre of production.

A complete suit of armour, made in Milan at the end of the last century. The breastplate is covered in velvet; the body and limbs are completely protected by steel plate. The helmet is a bacinet, with a cone-shaped visor; a mail avantail protects the neck and shoulders. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

The helmet

The most important thing to protect is your head. You need cloth padding first of all, to protect you from the chafing of the mail coif, or headpiece, that you wear under your helmet.

The great helm

The type of old-fashioned helmet known as a great helm is a massive piece of equipment that rests on your shoulders; it probably has a grand crest mounted on top of it. It has slits to see through, which also serve for very necessary ventilation – you will get very hot wearing one of these. There is no movable visor, and with these helmets, the best advice is to not put it on until absolutely necessary. Back in the 13th century the great helm had a flat top, which made it easy to manufacture, but offered little protection to a blow from a mace or war hammer.

This 14th-century great helm has no movable visor, and is more suitable for use in tournaments than in battle. (Warwick Castle, Warwick)

TECHNOLOGY

Improvements in manufacturing methods have made the recent changes to armour possible; for example, the use of hammers powered by water mills has mechanized part of the production process, while water-powered bellows can increase the temperature for smelting. Wrought iron can be bent quite easily; it does not have the rigidity needed for good armour, and certainly would be no use for a sword. Steel is produced if a small amount of carbon is added to the iron. It is possible by a complex process of heating and cooling the metal to temper it, and to control the degree of hardness; in this way an expert armourer can ensure that the outer surfaces of a piece of metal are hard, while the inner retains the malleability than means it does not shatter. Armourers have a number of anvils of different shapes, as well as special hammers, for forming the various different pieces of armour, which then need to be polished and finished.

The tournament helmet

The kind of helmet now used in tournaments developed from the great helm. The flat top has been replaced by a more conical shape, which deflects blows better. The very latest form of tournament helmet could be termed ‘frog-mouthed’. It has a projecting curved lip below the eye-slits, so that when you sit upright or lean back your face is fully protected.

When you put your tournament helmet on, tie the laces at the back first. The laces should not be too strong; a blow in the right place should be capable of knocking your helmet right off. Curiously, this is safer than having the helmet fixed immovably, but you will still get a fearful wrench to your neck.

The bacinet

You could wear a helmet of the great helm type in battle, but the fact that you cannot see much, or even breathe properly, is a bit of a drawback. The bacinet is far more practical. At the start of the 14th century this was little more than a steel skull cap, which you could even wear under a great helm. Then a movable visor was added, which could be fixed in a raised position until combat began. This way you could see and hear what was going on, but still have proper protection. Your neck would be protected by a piece of mail. Modern bacinets may seem rather odd, for the visor is normally conical in shape, making you look rather like a dog, or even a pig. Yet this shape is very practical. It leaves enough air in front of your face so you can breathe, and you are not likely to get a broken nose from hitting your head against the visor. At the battle of Nogen...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• About the Author
• Other Titles of Interest
• Dedication
• Table of Contents 
• I A Knight’s World
• II Upbringing & Training
• III Becoming a Knight
• IV Arms, Armour & Horses
• V Orders of Knighthood
• Colour Plates I
• VI Recruitment & Retinues
• VII Tournaments & Jousts
• VIII Campaigning
• IX Crusade
• X Mercenaries
• XI Ladies & Damsels
• XII Siege
• Colour Plates II
• XIII Battle
• XIV Ransoms & Booty
• XV Piety & Memory
• Map of Medieval Europe
• Glossary
• Timeline
• Further Reading
• Sources of Quotations
• Index
• Copyright