Knights of the Middle Ages: photos and history

The medieval knight is one of the most romantic and embellished figures in the history of mankind. Hollywood films, historical novels, and more recently computer games, paint a very colorful and shrouded warrior charm in glittering armor jumping to the distance, from time to time fighting with the same noble and honest opponents or without any problems defeating the gangs of necessarily vile and unpleasant Robbers (if it's not Robin Hood, of course). Well, an amazingly beautiful and pious girl is waiting for her noble admirer in a high tower or, in extreme cases, languishing in a dungeon, waiting for deliverance.

In fact, the average knight is an extremely pragmatic and not very educated companion who, without much remorse, can turn his jaw to a servant who has given cold water, or give his sister / daughter to his old and terrible neighbor for a piece of fertile land or a pair of thoroughbred stallions.

Cinematic Knights and Their Armor

The vast majority of films (including those claiming historicity) show the knight in full armor plates, with a blind helmet such as a tophelm (full helmet) or arme with a reclining visor. And in this form they courageously cut themselves in battles for several hours, and then, without taking off, sit down at the feast table. You can imagine that this is what the casual clothes of knights looked like. The description of the chroniclers says that this type of protective armor was used only for chivalric tournaments, and only in the 14-15 centuries. It was at this time that the metalworking technology reached a level where the weight of a full armor plate (that is, made entirely of metal parts) fell to an acceptable 40-50 kilograms. And with such a load, the knight could function effectively for an extremely short period of time. What were the actual armor of the medieval knight?

Early Middle Ages

Knight's clothing in battle for this time - usually a long leather armor to the knee with metal inserts and stripes and a metal helmet with an open face. Legs were occasionally protected by leather or reinforced greaves. Quite often there was a quilted armor, or just a quilted trunk (in fact, just a lot of layers of fabric quilted together), or stuffed with horsehair. This "uniform" was reinforced, again, with metal strips. Sometimes lamellar armor was used - made up of metal plates coming in from each other. To produce it went more metal, and therefore, only the most wealthy knights could afford it.

Classical Middle Ages

Here was used mail, brigantine, armor plate.

The chain mail consisted of many rings and was the lightest and most convenient armor. Used it everywhere, but it was more expensive than other types of protective clothing due to its laboriousness. Sometimes pieces of chain mail were simply sewn on leather armor in the most vulnerable places. It is also used a hoorbek - chain mail hood.

Brigantine - a kind of lamellar armor. In this case, the usual clothing of the knight from the inside was strengthened by metal plates overlapping. This armor was much heavier than the chain mail, but was cheaper and better protected from heavy weapons.

Full plate armor was used, as already noted, mainly for tournaments. In real combat in 10 minutes even the most powerful knight would fall from exhaustion, and the militia would beat him with sticks. In battles, elements of armor used - mittens, greaves or bracers, a breastplate.

Later the Middle Ages

Improved armor plate. The development of offensive weapons, in particular crossbows, has made mail armor and armor ineffective. At the end of the era, with the advent of firearms, the very notion of a knight as an effective fighting unit, capable alone to resist detachments of ordinary fighters, goes into oblivion. The last attempt to resist gunpowder and bullets was a powerful convex cuirass - such, for example, was worn by Spanish caballeros - conquistadors - during the development of the New World.

Civilian clothing of the knightly estate

In the early Middle Ages, the knight's main garment consisted of two tunics - the upper, the cottages, and the lower, the kamis. The lower one usually had long sleeves, and the upper one, made of good fabric and richly decorated, was short or completely without them. Tunics necessarily girded, and from above a cloak was put on. Unlike the holochny Antiquity, the clothes of the knights of the Middle Ages certainly included pants - or just narrow, or tight-fitting legs (chauffeurs).

A serious change, which was the clothing of knights in the Middle Ages, occurred at the turn of the 13th century. The emergence of permanent trade routes and interaction with other peoples (especially with the East) and the development of technology led to the emergence of many new cuts and the use of a variety of fabrics.

To the unchanging cottage, which also underwent changes, a purple was added - a short jacket, to which narrow sleeves were sewn, and equally narrow stockings were chauffeurs. Blio and katardi are caftans with different cuts. Naramnik - cloak with a hole in the middle for the head. On the screens, almost all of them are dressed knights of Christ - the Templars, the Hospitallers and others.

The further evolution of the shoulder strap led to the appearance of a surco - narrum with stitched sidewalls. Surprisingly, for most of what men wear today, the knight's clothing served as a prototype. The name of many kinds of men's wardrobe also comes from all the same knightly outfits.

The appearance of such a phenomenon as "mi-parti" refers to the classical Middle Ages. The essence of it was that the suit was divided into color zones in accordance with the arms of the knight - vertically in two halves or, in the future, into four parts.

Let's add a bit of medieval Japan

Japan has always been a bit of a "thing in itself," but before acquaintance in the 16th century with the "southern barbarians", the Portuguese, the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun were almost completely isolated from the rest of the world.

This allowed them to create their own, completely unique culture, including in the military environment. The analogue of the medieval knight in Japan was the samurai. Japanese "knights" wore complex armor, made by the type of brigantine. Metal plates were difficult to combine, covered with varnish, lacing, leather and cloth. Metal helmets were artfully adorned and, as a rule, were equipped with "anatomical" masks.

The civilian clothing of the knight of Japan consisted of three main parts - a kimono, a hakama (wide pants of different lengths) and a chaori cape.