Middle Age Armor

For thousands of years armor had slowly gotten better and better. Armor advanced from hide to leather to scale to chain mail to advanced plate armors. Sometimes history doesn't always flow in the most logical direction though. After the Romans developed and put their segmented plate armor to good use, they discontinued it and used the cheaper and slightly less effective chain mail. After the fall of the Roman empire to barbarians all of Europe would follow Rome's example and didn't make any strides in plate armor for the next 800 years.

Advancements in middle age armor did occur but as far as body armor was concerned improvements in design happened a lot more than brand new ideas. Mail armor slowly started to envelope more of the body, spreading from just a chain shirt to include chain pants, chain gloves, chain boots and chain coifs(head protection). More likely than not, knights of the time would wear some type of quilted armor or heavy clothes so the chain wouldn't lay directly on the skin. Misinterpretations of the Bayeux Tapestry made historians believe the chain laid directly on the skin but you don't have to be a brainiac to discount that theory pretty quickly. Not mentioning the ouch factor of wearing metal rings directly on your skin, can you imagine getting hit by a weapon?

So why did early middle age armor become so predominantly chain mail? The same reason everything seems to revolve around, money. While plate armors took a highly skilled blacksmith to forge, chain mail required little to no knowledge of the trade to create. All the knowledge required was how to fabricate wire and how to rivet, both which could be learned fairly quickly. The wire was wound around a stick of the desired ring size and it was cut into rings. You can still make chain mail this way if you have good intestinal fortitude.

As oftentimes happens when technology takes a step backward, the better technology eventually becomes more appealing whether for monetary reasons or because the benefits finally outweigh the downfalls. Although chain was relatively cheap and easy to make there were several issues with it. For one it defended poorly against some of the cheaper weapons on the battlefields, arrows and spears. Two, as the armor became older the links would rust and as anyone who as stepped on a rusty nail knows, rust plus an open wound equals a tetanus shot. Unfortunately this was the middle ages and tetanus shots didn't exist yet, so oftentimes minor wounds would kill knights. Lastly chain mail can be quite heavy, some chain shirts weighing in at 30+ lbs. That doesn't include the pants, gloves, boots, coif, or any chain reinforcement added. So entering 1200 AD, plate armor came back into fashion and knights in shining armor would dominate Europe for the next 350 years.