Heavy armour would have exhausted the French at Agincourt, say scientists
Would the battle of Agincourt have turned out differently if the French had worn lighter armour? Perhaps, say researchers who have discovered that the heavy steel-plate armour worn by the French would have exhausted them before the fight with the English had even started.
No self-respecting medieval knight went into battle without a suit of shining steel armour. A typical suit would have comprised steel plates covering the chest and back, plus leg and arm components, all weighing at least 30kg. Compared with wearing no armour, the steel plates would have doubled the effort required to move around and fight, according to Graham Askew, a lecturer in biomechanics at Leeds University, who led the research.
He asked staff at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds to walk and run on a treadmill while wearing different types of armour. All were exact replicas of armour made in the 15th century and included English, Milanese and German designs.
"While they were doing that, we were collecting the air they breathed out," said Askew. "We were able to measure how much oxygen they were using and that tells us how much energy they're using as they're moving at each of those speeds."
The results, published on Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, showed that people wearing armour expended up to 2.3 times as much energy while walking and 1.9 times as much energy while running compared with wearing no armour.
The doubling effect was greater than could be accounted for by the extra weight of the armour alone. The researchers worked out that if the knights had carried the total weight of the armour in a backpack, they would have experienced just 1.7 times their unloaded energy expenditure.
"Carrying a load of about 30kg spread around the body requires more energy than carrying the same load in a backpack," said Askew. "This is because, in a suit of armour, the limbs are loaded with weight which means it takes more effort to swing them with each stride. If you're wearing a backpack, the weight is all in one place and swinging the limbs is easier."
In addition, the armour constricts breathing. "Being wrapped up in a tight shell of thick steel makes one feel invincible, but also unable to take a deep breath," said Federico Formenti of the University of Auckland, who was a co-author of the research. "You feel breathless as soon as you move around in medieval armour, and this would likely limit soldiers."
He speculated on how the burden of all the armour might have affected the course of the battle of Agincourt in 1415, in which Henry V's lightly armoured soldiers defeated the French army. A key feature of the battle was that the French knights had to advance across a very muddy field towards English archers.
Formenti said there would have been a very high cost associated with moving through mud in heavy armour, suggesting that the French knights were exhausted by the time they reached the English. "[This] contributed to the killing of a lot of the French knights, despite the fact that there were many more French than there were English soldiers."
Interesting study, but I am tempted to say "No sh*t sherlock". I can also see one or two potential weaknesses with the methodology:
1) As mentioned in the article the battlefield was calf deep mud - walking across a ploghed field after a rainstorm would be similar....see how that feels even without the plate mail and arming jackets. A treadmill is not an accurate simulation.
2) The study also ignores the disorientation effect of constantly being barraged by longbow arrows raining down on your helmet, forcing you to look down at your feet. The wieght of the battle helm, which is heavy and designed to be worn with a straight back, then unbalances the man at arms, and makes walking in armour much much harder. These are the arrows that dont find a chink in your armour and cripple or kill you. Imagine sticking your head in a steel bucket and getting someone to rapid fire ball bearings at it...the equation is pretty simple - around 5000 to 9000 arrows falling every 10 seconds.....now lean forward so you are looking just in front of your feet through a narrow slit, and try walking.
3) Whilst they did use a battle re-enactor from the Royal Armouries Museum he is in no way anything like a fully trained knight of the period, who would have worn armour almost every day and trained in it constantly. He wont have the same familiarity, he wont have the same musculature. Forensic evidence from skeletal remains of men at arms shows they were extremely powerfully built from constant practice and battle. A modern re-enactor is not an adequate substitute. Ancient weapons experts like Mike Loades repeat that in documentaries again and again....we are not the same as men back then, who were shorter but built like brick outhouses.....we get tired a lot quicker than they would. Maybe if they had used a marine or commando it would have been a better comparison.
4) It was raining earlier on the day, so the thick padded arming jackets worn under the mail, and the heavy cotton tabards worn over the plate with the knights insignia on it would have got wet. They should have chucked a few buckets of water on the guy on the treadmill, who also from the vid wasnt wearing the tabard overjacket part, or carrying a broadsword/hammer/pick/axe.
5) Most of the French at Agincourt were not wearing full plate mail...just the posh gits in the vanguard would have been able to afford such luxury. Most would have been wearing mail hauberks and arming jackets underneath with odd bits of plate on their legs and arms. The lower down the social ladder you were the less armour you wore.
It was the mud that killed the French, and their arrogance and stupidity. They forgot the lessons that Edward III and his men taught their ancestors at Crecy and again at Poitiers - that the English Longbow used en masse is deadly at 350 yards, and that charging a position of entrenched bowmen behind stake walls across 400 yards of wet and muddy field, whether on horse or foot, is pure suicide. Even if they had, as they were expecting to, used their horses at Agincourt the result would have been the same...as was proved at Crecy.
still...an interesting study all the same.
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