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

Many sources suggest that the wearing of armour allowed knights to behave more
courageously on the battlefield. The Rule of the Templars distinguishes between
sergeants who wear armour and those without, instructing that:
... the sergeant brothers who are armed in mail should conduct themselves under arms
as is given for the knight brothers; and the other sergeant brothers who are not armed,
if they act well, will receive thanks from God and the brothers. And if they see that
they cannot resist or that they are wounded, they may go to the back, if they wish,
without permission, and without harm coming to the house.
There were also dillerent expectations for the behaviour of knightly combatants faced
with unarmoured knightly opponents. The biography of William Marshal tells us that
when Marshal confronted Count Richard - the prince who would eventually become
'the Lionheart' - outside Le Mans the latter reminded him that to kill him 'would be
a wicked thing to do, since you find me here completely unarmed' to which Marshal
replied that he would let the Devil have Richard and aimed a lance thrust at the
Count's horse, killing it.
Studies of the armour itself or of the remains of those killed in battle would seem to
be a much more definitive source of information than the exaggerated claims and fantasy
of written and visual sources, yet even here the evidence is patchy and unsatisfactory.
It is often of little value to look for indications of use on arms and armour. Marks
on the edge of a blade are often lost to corrosion and whilst some armours do bear
scratches and dents that show their use in combat inevitably the pieces that completely
failed their owners will have been discarded or cut up and re-used. For similar reasons
the majority of surviving armour dates from the 14th century or later; cuir bouilli and
mail armour degenerates more quickly and is more readily re-tailored.
Since no curator or collector is going to allow their precious arrowheads or sword
blades to be used to strike their equally precious breastplates or bascinets, testing
generally takes the form of metallographic studies of small sltvers of metal taken from
unobtrusive areas. This gives some indication of the quality of the iron and steel used
and, therefore, of the manufacturing processes of the armourers and the hardness of
the armour. This can enable penetration tests of metal of a similar microscopic
structure. However, in lab conditions the test tends to consist of a shaped weight
striking a flat metal plate at an angle of 90 degrees which, while sufficient to give an
approximation of the force required, does not accurately reflect the shape of armour
plate, nor the way in which weapons tend to impact upon it. Nor do the tests usually
take into account underlying layers of padding or that a standing human does not
present as solid a target as a lab bench. Conversely, studies which try to recreate
ARMS AND ARMOUR •*}*•
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