Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

stopped the wearer's head from being snapped back from a direct
lance blow.
In the late 15th and 16th centuries the rules of the games
became even more refined and the armour more specialized. The
15th-century German Bundrennen, for example, saw the combatants
unarmoured except for a single shaped plate that covered
the chest, neck and face. Tonlet armours - the tonlet
being a wide steel skirt that protected the warrior's groin
whilst allowing full leg movement - were developed for
one-to-one foot combats in the 16th century; their use
was often combined with a globular helmet, the visor
of which was pierced with many holes in order to
maximize visibility and ventilation without offering
an opening for either sword-point or the pick of
a pollaxe.
SHIELDS
The knight of the 11th century carried a shield that
was very different from the shield of his
Scandinavian and Carolingian predecessors, which
was large and round, with a central steel boss. By
contrast, the Norman shield was designed specifically
for a man who spent the majority of his time on
horseback; it was kite-shaped and the length of the man
from shoulder to ankle, since it needed to protect the full
length of his body and especially his unarmoured legs.
As these became encased in mail and then plate there was
no longer a need for such a long shield and it began to shrink
so that by the mid-13th century it had taken on the archetypal
'heater' shape, a Victorian name bestowed because it resembled the base of a flat-iron.
This was sufficiently large to be able to cover the area most vulnerable to a lance strike
but also manoeuvrable enough to be used to deflect blows over much of the body.
The construction of shields remained the same throughout the period. Individual
planks of timber, usually lime or pine which offered the best combination of lightness
and protection and were the materials of choice for the making of shields in the Viking
period, were nailed together and covered in a layer of parchment or leather ready for
ARMS AND ARMOUR •*}*•
(ousting armour for the
German competiton of
the 'Hohenzeuggestech',
c. 1500-20. As the joust
became a more structured
and regulated sport, so the
armour worn became
much more specialized.
(Bridgeman Art Library)
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