Busting Hollywood Myths: Everything you have heard is probably wrong

At some time or another, you have probably heard some of these popular misconceptions about knights in shining armour. Some have been around for centuries, the result of simple ignorance by collectors who tried to assemble mismatched pieces of armour adding rivets and straps where they thought they should go. Others have been more recent fantasies, dreamt up by Hollywood writers and self-proclaimed historical novelists. The reality is much more interesting. The Medieval knight in armour was the pinnacle of warfare for several centuries during a chaotic, often dangerous era. He was the M1 Abrams tank of his day. Every piece of armour that he wore and every weapon that he wielded was specially designed for rigorous combat. If it did not protect him on the battlefield, he did not wear it. If it did not give him an edge over the common foot soldier, he would not employ it. To think otherwise is rather presumptuous. Let us take a look at some of the more popular misconceptions and expose them to the light of truth.

Armoured knights were lumbering oafs

Movie after movie has depicted the Medieval knight as a slow, lumbering ox carrying around a studded round shield and swinging a double-bladed battle axe. He was so over-encumbered that he could not get back up again if someone ever knocked him over. The idea that a suit of armour was too heavy for a man to effectively fight in is perhaps the most outlandish myth of all. The combat load of the modern infantryman is approximately 125 pounds and it is virtually all supported by the torso. The average suit of armour weighed half that, and the load was distributed all over the body. Armourers were experts of their craft. Unlike most modern reproductions that are made from sheet metal, the plates on period harnesses were thinner on areas such as the sides where less protection was needed. That reduced the overeall weight considerably.

I once read from a reliable source that the master armourer who was employed for the production of the historical movie Henry V reportedly walked off the set in disgust when the director insisted upon having the French knights hoisted into their saddles by a crane. While the director supposedly argued that it was an artistic statement to show how haughty they were, such depictions have only helped feed the fanciful flames of myth. So where did the idea originate? There was an account of a peer of England who died on the battlefield of Agincourt but no wound could be found when his corpse was recovered from the piles of dead bodies. Centuries later, some scholar(s) decided that such occurences must taken place because a man so encumbered by armour must have fallen and suffocated in the mud because he could not get up unassisted.

The truth is entirely the opposite. The Medieval knight spent his entire life training to be prepared for war. He was as accustomed to wearing plate armour as an NFL linebacker is to wearing football pads. Here is a period account of the feats that a well known French knight was able to perform:

He made a somersault, fully armed except for his bascinet. He leapt onto a horse without placing foot in stirrup, fully armed. With a strong man mounted on a war horse, he leapt from the ground onto his shoulders by gripping his sleeve in one hand, without any other hold. Then, placing one hand on the saddle pommel of a war horse and the other near the horse's ears, seizing the mane, he leapt from the ground through his arms and over the horse. Next, between two high walls an arm's length apart, he would climb to the top and down again, simply using the strength of his legs and arms -fully armed. Again, wearing a mail hauberk, he climbed up the underside of a long ladder, without using his feet, just using his hands on the rungs. -- The Book of Deeds of Marshal Boucicaut (1368-1421)

I have my doubts whether or not I could perform all of those feats without wearing armour, let alone while wearing my harness. I know for a fact that I could do a cartwheel without some practice and a very good reason, so I have never even considered attempting one while wearing armour. One only has to consider the fact that the average knight had been undergoing physical training since he was a boy for the sole purpose of being able to perform the rigorous tasks that would be required of him on the battlefield.

The longbow killed the knight

Countless American history texts have made the statement that the longbow led to the demise of the armoured knight on the battlefield. Epic movies like Braveheart and The Messenger give viewers the idea that swords could cut through armour like Jedi lightsabers. That could not be any farther from the truth. As Charles Ffoulkes so eloquently noted in his The Armourer and His Craft From the XIth to the XVIth Century (1912), "As soon as the armed man realized that iron and steel were the best defences for his body, he would naturally insist that some sort of a guarantee for his body be given him of the efficacy of the goods supplied by his armourer." At the height of armouring, a single harness could cost more than many workers would make in a lifetime. Who in their right mind would spend such a vast sum of money on something that was so utterly worthless on the battlefield as it would appear in virtually every Hollywood epic ever made? As is often the case, reality is so much more fascinating than anything ever penned by even the most imaginative screenwriter.

It appears that from a very early period in plate armour-making there was a system in place of proving armour using the weapons most commonly in use at the time. Even mail seems to have been proof against arrows at a very early period. While my understanding of Latin and French is derisible, I have been able to find translations of period documents that show that armour was proof against a wide range of attacks. According to Ffoulkes, in the Chronicon Comariense, under the year 1398, there is a statement that the men-at-arms wore armour that negating the wounds of the bow. There are other documents that have definite entries of arrows used for proof, which would naturally have had exceptionally well-tempered points (Reg. de la Cloison d'Angers, No. 6 (1378)). There are entries for such projectiles in 1419 costing 8 shillings per dozen, while ordinary arrows cost only 4 shillings per dozen. Ffoulkes goes on to explain the regulations of setting proof marks on armour. The bottom line was that the wearer would pay handsomely for the very best protection only if it worked, and so the armourer put his reputation on the line.

1347. Regulations of the Heaumers of London (original in Norman-French), City of London Letter Book, F, Fol. cxlii. Also that helmetry and other arms forged by the hammer...shall not from henceforth in any way be offered for sale privily or openly until they have been properly assayed by the aforesaid Wardens and marked with their marks.

The notation "de toute botte" suggests that the armour was proof against all blows (sword, axe, etc.) and also to the bow and crossbow. During later centuries, the terms "high proof" and "caliver proof" and "musket proof" referred to protection against period firearms and appeared often in writings up to the time that armour was eventually discarded. In the case of brigandines, coats of armour that consisted of a series of overlapping metal plates riveted together between two layers of cloth, each of the small plates were often individually stamped with the maker's mark as evidence of proof.

So what did kill the Medieval knight at the end of the 15th century? The cost of putting him in the field. It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's currency to field one knight along with the necessary supplies and retainers he would need. Even more importantly, he had to be extensively trained from the age of 5 to deftly wield sword and lance while wearing armour. That is in stark contrast to the small sum that it cost to put an arbequs–early firearm–in the hands of a common soldier with very little training. Thus it was that with the dawn of the age of gunpowder we saw the sun set on the age of chivalry.

Source: The Armourer and His Craft From the XIth to the XVIth Century, Charles Ffoulkes, 1912.