Warriors have protected their bodies against the weapons of their opponents since the dawn of warfare. Generally, the type of armour worn has been appropriate to the nature of the weapon and as the technology of the latter has changed so has the protective value of the former—although the change has not always been immediate. The concept of body armour has crossed cultural frontiers and been present in any culture in which warfare has existed. A variety of materials have been used to protect the warrior's body and these materials themselves have reflected the level of technological competence attained by that warrior's society. Body armour has also transcended the purely military role, being worn by civilians in fear of assassination and by policemen and -women on certain duties. It has also developed a ceremonial function, as part of the military uniform of the mounted bodyguards of heads of state in western countries. Body armour is one of the few consistently continuing threads which link the modern warrior not only with his primeval ancestor but also with warriors throughout the history of mankind.
Body armour can best be studied by separating it into its principal components as they relate to the body itself: protection for the head; for the body, arms, and legs; and, finally, the versatile protection provided by the shield. The Ancient world was familiar with all these types and areas of protection, just as it was with the differing kinds of armour itself. Broadly, armour falls into three categories: plate, mail, and soft. Plate armour can, itself, be subdivided into three: very large sections of plate, such as the breast- and back-plate of a cuirass; smaller plates laced together; small plates sewn or riveted to a fabric background, itself often padded, to produce the garment generally known as a coat of plates.
The manufacture of metal plate armour involves a similar process and range of skills as that involved in the making of helmets. Since metal helmets have survived from the Assyrian civilization (9th-7th centuries bc), it has been assumed that metal plate armour—in some form—was in use in that culture too. However, plate armour was produced in lighter, more organic, materials than just metal: leather, horn, and whalebone are all known to have been used, the leather hardened and shaped to fit by soaking in hot beeswax to create a material later known as cuir-bouilli. Armour made in leather, cuir in French, has given us the name of the long-lived protection for the human torso: cuirass. Leather was also used as a covering for shields. Covering a light wood or wickerwork frame and suitably hardened, it not only made this most versatile defence easier to manoeuvre, but also it facilitated the shield's decoration—leather providing a welcoming canvas for paint, gold and silver leaf, and embellishment with studs.
Since there has been little survival of examples of body armour from the classical period, other than helmets, evidence for the types and styles of such armour is largely based upon depictions of warriors from surviving contemporary illustrations, such as bas-relief sculpture. From these sources it is known that light armour was worn by the Assyrian cavalryman and aided his independence in battle since it meant that he could dispense with a cumbersome shield. Illustrations, together with the texts of epic poetry, provide evidence for the body armour of the hoplite, the foot soldier of Ancient Greece from the 7th century bc to the decline of that civilization. The hoplite was protected by a helmet, a shield, and a breastplate, with leg protection in the form of greaves. This style of body armour was a developed form of that existing in earlier eastern Mediterranean civilizations. In Egypt the foot soldier's body armour— helmet and breastplate—were of leather, sometimes strengthened with metal; he carried a leather-covered shield too. His equivalents in Minos and Mycenae from 3, 000 bc to 1, 000 bc wore helmets and carried oxhide shields around their necks; later the shield became smaller and was carried on the arm. In India, in the 3rd century bc, the soldiers of the army of the Maurya empire were similarly protected: shields of rattan reinforced with leather and light armour of leather or metal or both.
The body armour of Rome has, of all the armour of the classical period, probably been the most intensively studied and copied, the latter form of admiration not being confined to just 20th-century re-enactment societies. By increasing the size of the shield, which was wooden, covered in leather, and reinforced with metal strips, Rome was able to protect its legionaries' bodies with comparatively light armour. Each of the categories of armour and types of plate armour were utilized by the Roman armies, from the republic to the collapse of the empire: metal or hardened leather helmets and greaves, cuirasses, and other body protection fashioned from leather and reinforced with differing styles and patterns of sewn or laced plates. Enhancement of armour's decorative possibilities was also practised and a hierarchy of ornament established, particularly in relation to the helmet and the cuirass. Roman cavalry, bereft of the infantry's shields, tended to be more heavily armoured, beginning a western tradition continued until the present day. The decline of Rome and its eventual collapse in the face of the Germanic migrations in the 5th and 6th centuries ad resulted in the armour of its soldiers being both adopted and adapted by those of the tribes who supplanted Roman influence with their own. Originally little armoured, these invaders swiftly took over Roman armour, which had—itself—evolved into the beginnings of new styles, and the conversion of late Roman armour into fashions more historically associated with the beginnings of western chivalry is one profoundly affected by the period of invasions and the concomitant decline of Rome.
In the first millennium ad the most widely owned, and commonly depicted, form of body armour was the coat of mail. Mail was in use in the classical period from, apparently, the 3rd century bc and may have had an eastern derivation—although there is equally convincing evidence of a Celtic origin. With the mail coat or shirt, the western warrior wore a helmet derived from late Roman styles and known to scholars as a Spangenhelm. Spangenhelms were made in differing styles but their common design feature was a conical form made of separate plates riveted together, sometimes embellished by cheek pieces, a separate neck guard, and a nasal protection strip. The helmet from the Sutton Hoo ship burial in England is of embellished Spangenhelm form, as is the York Coppergate Viking helmet, worn 200 years later in the 9th century ad. Viking warriors are known to have worn mail shirts, as well as ones made from sewn plates—the style known as lamellar armour, but perhaps the most famous depiction of the mail shirt and Spangenhelm combination is the Bayeux Tapestry, in which the armour of William ‘the Conqueror’ and his knights is so depicted. By 1066, the Spangenhelm had generally lost its neck guard and cheek pieces and in its reduced form of a simple cone with nasal protector it remained a common style of helmet until the 13th century. By the 11th century the armourer's techniques had advanced sufficiently for the helmet to be forged from a single piece of iron, thus preparing the way for the armours of the late medieval period.
Mail has a long history and was worn in varying forms across a wide diversity of cultures. Although it exists today as the decorative shoulder chains worn on the blue patrol jacket by officers of some British cavalry regiments, its greatest age as a form of body armour was in the six centuries after the 7th century ad. In this period, and especially during its second half, mail was most widely worn in the form of a coat or shirt, worn over a cloth undershirt, reaching to the knees and often split at the fork either at the back or at both front and back. This garment, known as the hauberk or birnie, often incorporated a coif or hood, of mail too, from which—in turn—developed a ventail or lower face protection. Mail chausses were worn to protect the legs, initially laced at the back and not incorporating an integral foot, but later developed as full mail stockings, gartered at the knee. The arms were protected, initially, by long mail sleeves which later incorporated mail mittens to cover the backs of the hands, leaving the palms and fingertips covered in leather to provide a non-slip surface for wielding weapons. When not at combat readiness, the mailed knight would unfasten his ventail, throw back his coif, and turn back his mittens but, for combat, he would be wholly covered in mail except at the groin and upper face. Mail itself came in a variety of sizes and types but was principally constructed of riveted rings interlinked with each other to lie flat. In some cases, lines of riveted rings alternated with solid rings. In the Orient mail rings were made (until well into the 19th century and even today as reproductions of ancient mail) with butt joints. By the mid-12th century the surcoat was in use, a long flowing garment worn over the mail coat. Possibly derived from Crusade experience as being efficacious in reducing the effects of the sun on a body encased in metal, the surcoat later—by the 14th century—partnered the shield in becoming a canvas for the wearer's personal heraldry or for that of his master, the latter case providing one of the origins of military uniform.
Throughout military history, from the Roman lorica to the modern flak jacket, armour has been used to protect the most vital parts of the body: the head and trunk. The appearance of full-plate armour in Europe in the late Middle Ages was an aberration
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The retention of the shield by the mailed knights is one of the many indicators of the limitations of mail. Able to deflect some cuts, it was not proof against a thrust and the wearer's head—rigid in the skull, vulnerable in the brain tissue, and essential for the body's function—was particularly at risk. The helmet remained essential. Knights continued to wear conical helmets into the 12th century, at which period other forms with round and flat tops began to appear. Foot soldiers, less élite, more numerous—and thus more cheaply armed—were helmeted with kettle hats, a form of low, broad-brimmed Spangenhelm, by the 13th century. The round- or flat-topped helmet, or helm, encased the head completely by c.1300; it was worn over the mail coif and padded inside either with a separate quilted arming cap or integral padding. Eventually, the anonymity provided by the helm resulted in it being crested with the wearer's personal device; these crests and the personal decoration of shield and surcoat had fully developed by the 15th century into the art and science of heraldry. As an additional head protection, but occasionally worn alone beneath the mail coif, a metal skullcap called a basinet was developed. Additional body protection, another indicator of mail's limitations, was provided by quilted undergarments called aketons and padded surcoats called gambesons; neither were wholly effective and so plate body armour began to develop during the 13th century.
Plate body armour seems to have begun as defences for the arms and legs, which were vulnerable in their mail sheaths, less well defended by the shield, and essential for the warrior's function. Elbows and kneecaps were the first to be protected, respectively, by couters and poleyns—known by the end of the 13th century. Shoulder protection, by espaulers, arrived soon after, as did gauntlets for the hands. During the 14th century the lower leg became protected first by schynbalds—a metal shin-guard protecting from the front only—and then by greaves, which encased the lower leg. The thighs, which had been protected beneath the mail hauberk by padded, or gambossed, cuisses in the 13th century, received plate cuisses early in the next century. Sabatons for the feet arrived contemporaneously. Vambraces were provided for the arms during the 14th century and by the end of that century, the western knight was fully covered for combat in plate armour. In the West, the age of mail had been supplanted by that of plate.
From c.1400 until the end of plate armour in the 17th century the story of body armour in the West is one of gradually increasing sophistication of style, of decoration, and of diversification followed by a sharp and rapid decline as the increase in the power and use of firearms contributed strongly to the rendering of armour anachronistic and obsolete. It would be oversimplistic to ascribe the decline of armour solely to the invention of gunpowder and the portable personal weapon. Heavily armoured French knights at Agincourt were toppled in quantity by the penetrative power of the English arrow tipped with an armour-piercing bodkin point and 400 years later, at Waterloo, British infantrymen recorded hearing the sound of their musket balls bouncing off the cuirasses of the French cuirassiers and carabiniers. Armour and gunpowder coexisted uneasily for some time before the latter triumphed and, even then, tactics on the battlefield and changing attitudes in post-Renaissance Europe were factors in the decline of armour almost as significant as the great chemical leveller.
Once the body had been finally encased in an armour composed of its different component parts, the concept of the garniture began to appear. This reached its apogee during the 15th century and was paralleled by a growth in the quality and quantity of decoration of armour and in the establishment of national design and decorative styles: once technology could advance no further, aesthetics took over. Principal among the centres of armour design and manufacture in the 15th century were northern Italy, centred upon Milan, and southern Germany, centred upon Augsburg. Burgos and Seville in Spain, Bordeaux in France, and both Lombardy and the Low Countries all contributed to the making of armour and each centre had its own characteristics. The 15th century also saw significant developments in the tournament and those led to the concept of the armour garniture, whereby different types or components of an armour would be used in differing combinations for the various types of combat practised in the tournament: foot combat with pole arms would require a different style of dress from the joust in the tiltyard. Since the tournament, and especially the differing types of joust, were popular—and codified—in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, it was from German manufacturers that the function-specific components of the armour garniture sprang. The most popular forms of joust, developed in Germanic areas, were the Gestech and the Rennen. Both involved mounted combat with lances; the former was a peaceful joust, using blunted lances and seeking to score points by splintering lances, the latter was a warlike joust, using pointed lances with unhorsing the principal aim. Specialized armour was developed for both. For the Gestech the knight was bolted into a very heavy and largely inflexible armour equipped with a lance rest; jousting almost standing in his stirrups he was virtually impregnable—which was the idea. For the Rennen the armour was lighter above the waist and flexible—more like the armour worn in combat, for which the Rennen was practice. In decorative terms the period was marked by a growth in engraving and etching and a decline in the painting and cloth-covering of armour; cut designs were usually heightened with gold and would frequently have a linking theme or style throughout the components of an armour. At the same time as the rich were commissioning decorated garnitures for both the field and the tournament, they were buying, in bulk and ready-made, rudimentary armour for their retainers. The ordinary soldier, fighting on foot, was armoured in accordance with his battlefield role: all wore helmets, increasingly of the sweeping aerodynamic shape called sallets; the handgunner wore a breastplate over his mail shirt; the pikeman a padded, metal-reinforced coat called a jack, a small shield, and some form of protection for his right arm; the archer wore two layers of quilted body defence and protection for his arms and throat.
By the beginning of the 16th century, the power of the musketeers, protected from their mounted armoured victims by the pikemen's 18 foot (6.3 metre) pikes, was significantly changing the nature of warfare. After the battle of Pavia in 1525 it was clear that armour had, at best, a parade use and, although it would be worn in combat for the next century and a half, the art of the armourer turned increasingly to decoration and away from function. It is ironic that not until the early 16th century did England have its own centre for the manufacture of armour—that established by Henry VIII in Greenwich in c.1511 and utilizing the skills of imported Italian and German armourers. Greenwich remained an important centre for much of the 16th century, while the importance of armour gradually declined in battlefield terms and was focused increasingly on the forms required for the stylized combat of the tournament. By the end of the 16th century few soldiers in the West went into battle fully armoured and the trend continued during the wars of the early 17th century.
Battlefield role after 1600 continued to determine the type and degree of armour worn. The pikeman's head was protected by a high combed morion in the Spanish style, rather than the earlier sallet; he wore a breastplate with attached tassets over his thighs and—if an officer—a gorget to protect his throat. The musketeer wore a thick coat of buff leather and a morion but, by c.1630, would exchange his helmet for a broad-brimmed hat, sometimes with an iron skull cap or ‘secret’ beneath. Three-quarter armours, reaching only to the knee, were worn by heavy cavalry—known increasingly as cuirassiers—who also wore heavy knee-length boots; arquebusiers, or light cavalry armed with firearms, wore breast- and back-plates over buff coats and protected their left forearms, or bridle-arms, with long metal or buff leather gauntlets. Cuirassiers retained the closed or ‘close’ helmet; arquebusiers adopted the continental Zischägge or ‘lobster-tail’ helmet with its triple-barred visor. Once the decline of armour was complete, by the end of the 17th century, the cavalryman's cuirass and the infantry officer's gorget were all that remained: both were retained into the 20th century as symbols of their wearer's status. Cuirasses are still worn by mounted bodyguards, such as the British Household Cavalry, and the gorget remained in some western countries, worn by both officers and, especially, military police.
From the 1680s, functional body armour disappeared from the European battlefield, although it was retained in extra-European cultures, such as in India and in Japan—where it continued to have both a functional and formal role. Not until the 20th century did it reappear, first with the readoption of the steel helmet on the battlefields of WW I in 1915 and then with the use of the heavy steel breastplate, especially in the German army, by machine-gunners, snipers, sentries, and other troops in exposed positions. Body shields of differing types were sold by private manufacturers, the greatest variety and use being, apparently, found in the British army; some officers had their uniform tunics reinforced in front with metal plates. Britain led the way with army body armour in WW II too, an initiative copied and developed by the USA, first, for the crews of its bombers and then for other branches of its Armed Forces. Having taken up the initiative, the USA then promoted the development of the ‘flak’ jacket through the Korean and Vietnam wars, in which variations were worn by the US Marine Corps, the army, and helicopter aircrew. The combat role of the latter arm militated against too much weight being carried and this was a major factor in the development of flak jackets utilizing non-metal protection such as ceramics or glass-reinforced plastics. Floating flak jackets were developed for the crews of the US Navy's inshore patrol craft. Terrorism has inspired its own body armour reaction in the last quarter of the 20th century as new materials, such as the aramid fibre developed by DuPont under the name Kevlar, became utilized for flak jackets and vests. Development is progressive in this area and so soldiers and other members of the security forces worldwide have new types of better, lighter body armour made available to them, in their roles as troops, policemen, or as bomb-disposal personnel. Consistently, as through history, each new missile provokes a new protection as the twin technologies of attack and defence keep pace with each other.
Bibliography
- Blackmore, David, Arms and Armour of the English Civil Wars (London, 1990).
- Blair, Claude, European Armour (London, 1958).
- Dunstan, Simon, Flak Jackets: 20th Century Military Body Armour (London, 1984).
- Edge, David, and Paddock, John M., Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight (London, 1988)
— Stephen Wood
