Weapons
The purpose of armor was to protect the wearer from injury. Against some types of weapons, the armor was very effective. However, some weapons were still very dangerous to a knight. Some worked by piercing the armor, while others smashed it into the soldier’s chest.
Swords weren’t effective because they couldn’t make a hole in the armor. A war hammer had a hammerhead and a spike, which could pierce armor. Maces used a different approach. They had a heavy metal head on the end of a long stick, which would generate enough force to dent armor and hurt the person inside.
Jousting
Jousting, also known as tilting, was a very popular sport during the medieval period. In a joust, two mounted knights armed with lances would charge at each other repeatedly attempting to knock the other off his horse. The knight who fell from his horse first would lose the joust.
Initially, jousting was meant to be used to train knights, but it becomes a sport in the 12th century as it gained popularity. King Richard, I set up five jousting arenas in England where knights could participate in tournaments
Joust Armor
Knights needed to have different armor for jousting because there were different risks in the joust compared to combat. A knight only needed to be protected from his opponent’s lance rather than all the various types of weapons on the battlefield.
Jousting armor needed to protect a knight from his opponent’s lance, so it was usually heavier on the left side. Some suites of armor, like the one on the left, have a shield built-in while others didn’t have any protection on the right side. Support for the lance was sometimes added to the right side of the chest armor.
A frog-mouthed helm was a helmet made for jousting that had an eye slit that the knight could see out while leaning forward. He would lean back just before hitting his opponent, protecting his eyes from slivers.
Fashion
Fashion was an important part of designing armor. If you had new, expensive armor, it told everyone that you had a high status, and if you had old, worn armor it told everyone that you had a lower status. Most of the time, fashion didn’t have a large effect on how well the armor worked, but not always.
Ceremonial armor wasn’t made to be used in combat. Instead, it was used at high-class social gatherings and ceremonies. It was heavily decorated and provided very little protection because it did not cover some parts of the body and was made of soft metal. It usually weighed 30-70 pounds, which was very light compared to the 80 pounds of battle armor
Knights’ shoes indicated status as well. A long pointy shoe (B) was hard to walk in, so it meant that the knight didn’t walk often, a mark of high status. A rounded shoe was easier to walk in, indicating a lower status.
Guns
Very simple guns, which were essentially long metal tubes packed with gunpowder, came into use during the 14th century. Over the next several centuries, locks, mechanisms that made guns easier to fire, were improved. The main types of locks were the matchlock, the Wheelock, and the flintlock.
The earliest was the matchlock. When the trigger was pulled, a burning match ignited a small amount of gunpowder, which fired the gun. It was slow to use and didn’t work in wet weather.
The next was the Wheelock, which rotated a piece of metal that scraped against a piece of pyrite igniting a small amount of gunpowder. It worked well but was too expensive.
The best was the flintlock, which produced sparks by scraping flint (a rock) against steel, igniting gunpowder which fired the gun. This type of lock was the easiest to build and use. It was used by armies for centuries because it was cheap and weather-resistant.
Guns vs. Armor
The use of guns had a big impact on medieval armor. At first, guns were noisy and not very powerful, but they quickly became dangerous weapons. A bullet could punch a hole in plate armor and kill the knight inside.
To make armor more effective, it was made thicker. This made it bulletproof, but also much heavier. This changed the parts of the person that armor covered. For cavalry, this meant less armor on the legs, and for some infantry, the armor only covered the most vital organs -- those contained in the chest.
When a gun was fired at older, thinner armor, the bullet would break through and kill the soldier wearing it. In this example, the bullet would have hit the lung, possibly causing a fatal wound.
Guns & Shields
As guns changed how armor was made, they also changed how shields were made. Shields were being used less by the time guns started to be a problem. However, those shields still needed to be effective, and various methods were invented to make the shield work on the changing battlefield.
The simplest way to keep the shield effective was the same thing that was done to normal armor -- make it thicker. Some knights would use thicker, bulletproof shields. These were also used by the infantry (foot soldiers) because they were particularly vulnerable to gunfire. Shields like this were given “proof marks” like armor.
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