Occidentals had always been more creative than orientals in the creatin of armor....

...The Chinese invented firearms why did they not invent the matchlock or continue to use the matchlock after the flintlock and caplock had been invented-partly ignorance and partly beaurocratic log jams

Leave out the racial spin. The European 'occidentals' (Westerners) efforts need balancing with Chinese first starting to make armour as early as Shang 16-11th century BC. What were our ancestors doing then? Don't embarrass Europeans like me by starting a petty point scoring on ideas of racial mind-sets when Chinese have plenty over on the West for the greater part of their history. It won't do anybody any favours to compare score cards when it isnt as simplistic as you make out. Even by the second century BC I would prefer Han steel laminar over a celtic 'chainmail', given chainmails shortcomings. Useless again missile fire or impact, and if you look at fighting by the second century BC in China chainmail would already be unjustifiably labour intensive and of limited use given the existence of excellent crossbows from the 4th century BC.

Funnily enough a few of the 'orientals' here could teach you a little about English grammar and spelling, chum.

At the siege of Abergavenny in 1182, Welsh archers, using longbows, pierced an oak door four inches thick with their arrows and William de Braose was hit by a Welsh arrow. This arrow went through his chainmail, into his thigh, through the saddle and penetrated the horse he was riding.

{chainmail} offered little protection against impacts such as those from an axe or mace.
..the rings of chainmail could be burst open by an arrow and this lead to the development of a barbless arrow which tapered to a point which could more easily enter the link and burst it open.

The Needle bodkin took a long slender shape designed to penetrate chainmail and was used early in the medieval period such as at the Battle of Poitiers. Most others took a shorter profile. The Roman style bodkin used from Roman times throughout the Medieval period were common.

I have taken a 45lb bow and needle nosed 3" bodkins (not field points) buried them to the shaft in a pumpkin covered in an padded arming cap and a riveted stainless steel coif at 40 yards. I never had one of those arrows bounce off the chain mail That might not prove anything historically but I would not want to pull those suckers out of my cranium and would hate to think what arrows tipped with bodkins designed to defeat chain lofted to altitude en masse by 100lbs + bows would do.

Keep it down.

Glaive, I think your saying Occidentals were more creative than Orientals is definetly asking for some trouble here, whether you actually meant to prove some sort of superiority or not. Try to avoid saying "X was more ____ at ______ than Y". For either side, of course.

Styles of armor came in many different designs. Chinese DID use forms of plate, though nowhere near the full coverage of a fullplate. But back on topic. Make a new one if you wish to discuss this.

Gee. I just saw one piece for sale and wondered if it really was for armour. It did look like it was backed by something so if Gary said he found fabric it seems even more likely.
I couldn't quite match up the shape but the side are perforated for attachment so could well be lamellar.
Quite odd that there hasn't been much talk of this in academic circles to my knowledge.

I dont know why you feel chainmail is something superior to the 'orientals'. It tends to be plate that we agree on as a real achievement since chain is the earlier form and has its shortcomings. Its shortcomings are well known, and are demonstrated in televised experiments of armour penetration. Some people point out chain is not as effective without a proper backing material. It inability to stop impact (becuase it is flexible) is clear and the ability for arrows to enter it is historically known. Look at the armour. Look at an arrow point and consider the below.

[

Well, this is what's left of Tang period iron lamellar, I took the photo from Beijing military museum.

Keneth the main reason is that both lamellar and scale existed in the west before mail and mail drove them mainly out of use and spread from the celts to the middle east,india and the far east.

All the tv tests were done with poor padding and on mail rather than double mail and mail is not a single thing,it varies both in construction,the size of the rings and their thickness.We know today that the ancient celts invented mail and double mail and that they both were in use continuously in europe.Completely discredited is the idea of the victorians that art work showing double mail was mail with leather strips dranw through it to thicken it.Double mail represents a much thougher barrier to penetration than simple mail does.

Very interesting thirdgumi;but cotton was still an expensive import during t'ang with silk being the common fabric for everyone and the bronze scales you've show beg the question was this just some sort of ceremonial court armor or real armor?

When there has been footage of longbows demonstrating penetrating metal plate (but not 'plate' armour mind you) it always seems to be well inside what is point blank range, i.e 30m or less, and using a compact arrow point. Bodkins versus plate then seems quite dubious.
Even the range that archery was used on the ancient battlefield (firing commencing) has much variation. For purposes of visualisation in other forum discussions the idea of 'effective range' and 'maximum range' was part of the confusion.
With the crossbows of the Han & average draw-weights of 360lb it appears the maximum ranges (since they are sighted on the mechanism for 'flat' trajectory fire) would be far less effective than flat trajectory. In an arc armour penetration would be drastically reduced in effectiveness.
We hear of bowmen engaging (or archery practice) in the realm of 200m or 200 yards etc. This is still 'effective', but surely at this range so is armour. The weapons can engage at further ranges but given the amount of bolts/arrows in a quiver it is not worth throwing away on the battlefield. The old 'whites of their eyes' idea.
The ranges of engagement from discussions on CHF appear to be much shorter than actual maximums (this is general discussion from Tang era manuals, or other members comments on when commanders urged archers to fire).
Chinese used a rank system like musketeers and cant have been as compact as the longbow formations I have read on SFI.

In this way the 3 ranks ready to fire may well wait for ranges like 60m as has been suggested, fire three ranks in rotation quickly, and have few from the opposing formation being likely to turn such missile fire with their armour. If these same crossbowmen were to be firing out in arcs out to 260m or so I expect then the lamellar and large shields we see infantry of that era depicted in would have rather less to fear. I wouldnt want to be in their shoes regardless!
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/in...?showtopic=4470

Longbowmen would be disrupting troops out to great range, causing havoc on the unarmoured or lightly armoured targets (or horses) but I dont doubt it is only inside shorter ranges that chain and then only point blank that plate would have cause for concern. How quickly can cavalry cross 200m?
Quickly is the answer.
More modern analysis of Agincourt suggests the battlefield itself may have resulted in the French defeat rather than 'longbows versus armour'. Bogged down. Trample trample.
How the longbows/crossbows etc. are applied on the battlefield is going to be very important and also how many of the enemy are really armoured enough to be able to shrug it off at the ranges of 200 yards.
I am sure armour is effective, or else people wouldnt have used it...but I dont doubt that it has its limitations once the infantry truly advance inside close range.
The archers better have a back up plan anyway becuase those infantry will be angry!
How missile fire is applied and how armoured the enemy are will decide who suffers the most. At 200m there will still need to be something beyond missile fire to prevent a rapid closing of distance by mobile infantry or a cavalry charge into hand to hand.
I cant see archers alone defeating a foe unless they simply outnumber enemy infantry to start with.
Combination of arms is required and archers are not assured of victory against heavy armour in an open battle. Breaking formations and disrupting the enemy is a more achievable goal as part of a broader tactic.

Edit; on the limitations of armour and one example where it cant have saved infantry we have Carrae.
I had heard this period account before, and could only find it in Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tortoise_formation
Forgive me.
Now this is nasty. You would think the Roman archers would try and keep the horse archers from moving in too close, but you have to wonder whether the horsemen could dart in an out, like close up to the 60m range (or inside 200m) and firing a rearwards shot while withdrawing (the Parthian shot/rear firing cavalry is depicted as a tactic used by Chinese often in Han art also). It seems the Eastern compound bows were more powerful than Roman expected but it shows how a race between penetration and armour can result in vulnerabilities if a powerful weapon appears.
I just wonder if this is the effect of 200m range or a 60m arrow shot. Having an arrow come through your shield and arm would not be good for infantry morale anyway.
Once the Romans are initally pinned the horsemen could well sweep inside closer ranges where armour gives less protection.

''... being driven into a narrow compass, and falling one on another, they were wounded and died no easy nor yet a speedy death, for tortured with violent convulsions and pain, and writhing with the arrows in them, they broke them in the wounds, and, by trying to pull out by force the barbed points, which had pierced through their veins and nerves, they increased the evil by breaking the arrows, and thus injured themselves. Many thus fell, and the survivors also were unable to fight; for, when Publius encouraged them to attack the mailed horsemen, they showed him that their hands were nailed to their shields, and their feet fastened right through to the ground, so that they were unable either to fly or to defend themselves.'' (Plutarch, Life of Crassus, XXV.)

Dio Cassius gives a similar account to Plutarch, and says:

''Finally they were shut up in so narrow a place, with the enemy continually assaulting them from all sides at once, and compelled to protect their exposed parts by the shields of those who stood beside them, that they could no longer move.'' (Dio Cassius, Roman History, book 40.)

Well, Carrhae was a complicated situation (no surprise!). Crassus was doing fine at first, keeping his infantry in a moving square, and his cavalry were able to chase off the horse archers. Roman cavalry typically used javelins, which of course don't have the range of bows, but they were also typically wearing mail and helmets, and carrying shields and swords. The Parthian archers had only their bows, no armor or shield at all, apparently not even a sword for a backup weapon. So the Romans were able to get close enough to at least threaten the Parthians, who retreated. Unfortunately, the Parthians used this to their advantage, drawing the Roman horse far enough away to cut them off and wipe them out. Probably the Parthian cataphracts had a hand in this counterattack, I suspect. Then the horse archers could go after the legionaries at their leisure, and from very close range. Didn't it take a couple days for the Romans to be defeated?

Note that the descriptions do not seem to imply arrows going through mail. They do imply that arrows were going far enough through shields to pin the owners' hands, not all that surprising if the bosses were mainly wood. Other shots are falling below the bottom of the shield to hit the feet, no real surprise there. Some arrows would be striking men from behind or the sides, so they wouldn't be able to cover up with their shields.

Also note that there is no proof that all legionaries were armored in the first place. A century or less before Crassus, only the wealthiest legionaries wore mail, while the rest wore only a small bronze pectoral plate. It is often assumed that the changes under Gaius Marius led to a fully armored legion, but I have never seen any solid reason to believe that. There are depictions from this general era of unarmored soldiers. There is also a passage from Caesar that his troops at Dyrrhachium made coats of hides and such to protect themselves from Pompey's archers--a clear implication to me that they did not all have mail.

There is already a lamellar versus plate East/West thread on this forum.


I also would expect the working of wire into chain is a whole lot more complex and expensive than lamellar to construct. Just why chain is better than lamellar is not clear to me.
How many Celts actually wore it too? Not a whole lot by accounts I have heard about Celtic battles. Lammelar might be worn by 40% in Han and 70% (or more by Tang records) whereas chain is for the priveledged in tribal europe.
It apears whatever armour the romans had below also had its shortcoming...either Roman chain or Lorica Segmenta (or less) . Many commentators here had called the armour 'chain' or 'lorica segmenta'. It may not have been so grand though. {see Carrae below}
The ability for powerful missile weapons with the right point to pierce pre-plate armour in several applications seems clear.
Whoosh! {thud!} "Arrgggghhhh!!"

Properly a mail coat had 10s of thousands of rings all hand forged and formed into overlapping rings which then were rivetted together.It was only in the 14th century that the invention of wire drawing made it fairly cheap to make and it starts being used by town guards in England.It was certainly more expensive than scale or lamellar using the original method of manufacture.

does anyone have pictures of an actual Ming era brigandine armor

is it similiar to Qing brigandine?

Warhead double mail is not a double coat;it's six rings in each ring vs the normal four rings.You can see the difference here http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/3505/page2.html/

Lamellar is essentially "double scale".The real advantages of mail and plate armor were their better coverage and lightness on the limbs and lower torso.The weight of brigandine/lamellar is just too unevenly distributed and european plate armor is much more varied than you think,having huge variation individually and by style.The real reason the Hans did not adopt plate armour is the same as the reason europeans did not adopt the superior chinese bow-isolation and cultural centricness.

does anyone have pictures of an actual Ming era brigandine armor

"In conclusion the mail, the good mail, was a excellent protection against archers. The mail and the gambeson dissipate, decrease the potency of the arrows like a net, a protective curtain. When the arrow hit, hundreds of the rings closed and the arrow potency decrease."

Some tests support the idea chain does stop arrows quite well. Here is a better one.
http://es.geocities.com/cotasmalla/test2.htm

Check out the photos there.
I did point out that we need 100 shots and with a full strength bow to prove it conclusively and J. Junco looks like he will recreate the test with this in mind.
An answer may be forthcoming!
http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.ph...t=&pagenumber=2

whoosh! Thud.

Am I correct when I say that plate mail was European cavalry armor, that the armor was too heavy to be the optimal equipment for infantry? Then, if that's so, isn't lamellar armor designed as infantry armor?

So, why did East Asian cultures fail to develop full plate? Perhaps it's because Westerners had a hereditary military class that put great emphasis on their survivability. The Chinese and Koreans, though you should note my ignorance, were civilian societies. The Japanese Samurai, though my view is probably clouded by 1920s Japanese militarists, had a philosophy that embraced their inevitable deaths.

Or another uninformed guess, masses of moderately trained spearmen or halberdiers with light armor would be a cost effective counter to elite and heavily-armored cavalrymen.

Then, we had a discussion of Jurchen cavalrymen, the Iron Pagodas. They were supposedly encased in a double lamellar that would repel all arrows. What happened to them, ultimately?

Am I correct when I say that plate mail was European cavalry armor, that the armor was too heavy to be the optimal equipment for infantry? Then, if that's so, isn't lamellar armor designed as infantry armor?

Ta-ts'in Centurion- So infantry armor was lighter because they didn't have the horse to take the weight, right? I recall somewhere on CHF, someone mentioned that the cost of the medieval knight's horse, armor, and armaments tallied up to that equivalent to that of a modern MBT, after adjustment for inflation. So, would it be true that every soldier in European armies would be equipped with full or half plate? Or would it be possible that certain troops would be equipped with inferior but cost effective gear, making them vulnerable to archers?

So the comparison between Lamellar and Plate is faulty, am I right? Plate was an elite armor, whereas Lamellar is standard issue.

Then, the comparison should be between Plate and specialist Lamellar armors.

In our threads about Koxinga, I believe someone discussed how Rattan shields managed to deflect or stop arquebus shots, or possibly even musket ball. And then there's paper armor...

The difference between having a military elite and not having a military elite is thus:

With a military elite, the soldiers would put emphasis on maximizing their individual combat effectiveness, even when this is not cost effective. For example, in European armies, the assumption is not everyone was issued a set of plate armor, that plate armor was provided by the soldier himself. It's possible that the manufacturing time that would have gone into producing a plate armor is like the Jian Versus the Dao, a good Jian is 100 times more time/resource intensive to make than a Dao for a slight improvement in dueling combat. Cheaper and less effective armor types would end up being more cost-effective.

Also, with less steps in the self-interest chain (Knight: I want to live. I will get a blacksmith to produce for me a top of the line equipment, and he wants my money, and myself to survive to buy more crap from him, so he will do it. Military Procurer: I want someone else to be combat effective. I will issue an order to the manufacturing bureaucracies to produce passable equipment to the soldiers, since I'm on a budget. They may or may not produce good equipment for me, since they only get my money, and even if my troops die, it's likely I'll be able to run off, get more troops, and buy more crap from them), things would be more efficient.

I wouldn't count on rattan consistently resisting shots from arquebuses.

does anyone have pictures of an actual Ming era brigandine armor

Hmm, what inspired him to do that, I wonder?

Seems a little interesting for a reenactor.

Anthrophobia: What I mean by a civilian society is that Chinese and Korean armies did not have a military elite, that their troops were conscripts or professionals, that the military was not necessarily a life for them. The difference between having a military elite and not having a military elite is thus:

With a military elite, the soldiers would put emphasis on maximizing their individual combat effectiveness, even when this is not cost effective. For example, in European armies, the assumption is not everyone was issued a set of plate armor, that plate armor was provided by the soldier himself.

It goes beyond asking soldiers to provide their own equipment, as Chinese, Roman etc armies did so as well. It is the feudal society with small numbers of 'elite'. These elite did not have to deal with nomad horseman raiding out of a void but mostly stand up fights with each other, hence, light armor and troop are selected against

No,it boils down to technology,the romans,indians and iranians never developed plate armor despite having very advanced civilizations and metalurgy either and why the byzantines did not invent and use gunpowder,despite it being superior to silk bowstrings as a missile propeller.European technology just developed in the right way to make the invention of plate armor possible.

Thank you I did not know that chinese weapons and armor were individually bought and owned like those of the medieval man at arms and roman soldiers.PS the ancient romans often used 'seric steel'(seric=chinese) for their weapons;but it was really indo-iranian crucibal steel.