Welcome to the armoury

Medieval and Early Modern weapons and armour. This is my sideblog, I follow back from @sulkykarris

[captain-price-returns]

[quasi-normalcy]

I don't understand how this is even a defence in the age of drone warfare.

[graham-folger]

Or even like... Cannon warfare.

[quasi-normalcy]

Yeah, the Ottomans could have taken this in the fourteenth century.

[sceptixfakemon]

this heatwave fucking sucks how am I going to serve my liege like this

[sceptixfakemon]

im never leaving this hellsite

[sceptixfakemon]

i swear if this is the second stupid sword picture post i make that gets to 10k i'll just go kill someone

[sceptixfakemon]

FUCK OFF!!!!!!!!!!!

[armthearmour]

The Color of Armor

The ever present image of the knight in popular imagination is the mounted warrior in shining armor. If you've followed this blog  for any length of time, you may know that I'm fond of taking popular misconceptions of the middle ages and dashing them to the ground, however you can rest assured that this particular trope isn't inaccurate. Not entirely.

But what color was armor? We certainly have innumerable artifacts

(Milan, ca. 1400, KHM)

and period depictions of fighting men wearing brilliant polished steel,

(France, 1350-1355, Works of Guillaume de Machaut)

more than enough to say for certain that people in the middle ages did wear polished steel on the field of battle, however this wasn't the only color represented.

Delving into the manuscripts and looking at extant pieces, we see a wealth of colors available, from bluing

(Augsburg, before 1560, KHM)

to russeting

(Milan, 1495, KHM)

to blackening.

(Dutch, 1490-1495, KHM)

In manuscripts, russeting

(France, 1350, Roman de la Rose)

and blackening

(Vienna, 1448, Bibelparaphrase)

seem to be particularly prevalent.

However, one must be cautious when dealing with manuscripts. In particular, there was a convention in illuminated manuscripts of using silver leaf to make metallic weapons pop and shine brightly. Given time however, this silver will tarnish, and turn black, giving the appearance of black armor to what was originally meant to be bright and shiny, as illustrated below.

(France, 1350-1360, Roman de la Rose)

It is often easy to distinguish if this is the case if the weapons in the scene also appear black, or if the black armor appears smudged and blurry, both as in the above image.

Gilding is another particularly popular style of armor decoration, most often used as a form of accent to white or black armor in the middle ages.

(Hagenau, 1443-1446, Parzival)

Part 1/2

[armthearmour]

Dr. Tobias Capwell gives us an excellent example of this in the form of a reproduction with his black harness,

and we see gilding to the extreme in the Renaissance.

(Arbois, 1508, KHM)

The final common option was painting. Less expensive than the others above, this was likely an option for poorer soldiers who wanted to look fancy, and give their armor a measure of protection from the weather. There are numerous extant pieces of painted armor in various musea, such as these Sallets,

(German or Austrian, 1505-1510, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

(Germany, 1490-1510, Royal Armouries)

this breastplate,

(German or Austrian, 1470-1490, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

and this breastplate and helmet for the Gioco del Ponte.

(Italy, 17th century, The Met)

The final point to consider is how much extant armor there is that may have been blued or gilt when it was made, but is no longer. Bluing and gilding will fade with time,

(Germany, early 16th century, Swedish Royal Armouries)

and many pieces were polished clean in the name of "conservation" by their housing institutions.

I hope this has been entertaining and informative. Cheers!

[thecybersmith]

This is an excellent post, and I love Tobias Capwell’s Reproduction (his book was expensive, but I don’t regret having bought it years ago), but I think you might be wrong about something.

the image from the manuscript: (France, 1350, Roman de la Rose)

This looks less like russeting, and more like a red cloth surcoat (or tabard, I sometimes get those mixed up) worn over maille, both to protect it from the elements, and to signal the allegiance of the wearer.

[armthearmour]

Oh yes, that's absolutely a surcote! However, I was referring to the helmets worn by both figures, the brown color of which may be interpreted as russeting if it isn't a similar fluke to the tarnished silver I mentioned previously.

[resrequiem]

daring to add more pictures of bluing, gilding and russeting largely from the 15th to 17th century:

[iamthemaestro]

none of you are prepared for this 1830 artillery officer's coat I found in the fort ti archives

I was like oh that's pretty, I like the lacing on the sleeves— OHHHH

THE CUNT!!! THE CUNT!!!!!

god DAMN I cannot imagine the price tag on this thing. all that gold lace on the front combined with the elaborate pattern on the back PLUS the giant ass fucking epaulettes. it's a rich man's coat if I've ever seen one but damn me if it doesn't go hard as hell.

[iamthemaestro]

also I know something is deeply wrong with me because I saw the buttons half-covered by the three-point pockets and went "oh that's slutty" before realizing my definition of "slutty" has lost essentially all meaning or at least has none recognizable to the average person

[chocolatepot]

Just wanted to note that I spoke to the curator at Fort Ti about patterning and managed not to say "people said this coat had slutty buttons and I totally agreed".

[steellegacy]

⚜️ Unfinished field armor of Charles V

Austrian (Innsbruck), ca. 1511–1512

Steel and leather

This example was commissioned from the Innsbruck master Hans Rabeiler when Charles was eleven (the future Emperor Charles V). The work, however, began too late. As Charles continued to grow, it soon became clear that the armour would no longer fit him. The costly decoration intended to be executed in Augsburg had not even been started, and the harness remained unfinished.

This incompleteness is precisely what makes the piece extraordinary. On its unpolished surface, every hammer blow and every trace of the armourer’s painstaking labour is still visible — a rare insight into the making of a 16th‑century costume armour. It is the earliest surviving example of this type, imitating contemporary clothing with its chased horizontal slashed “puffs” and vertical “pipes” on the fauld.

The armour lacks a visor — likely never completed — as well as the lance rest originally intended for the right side of the breastplate.

🏛 KHM, Vienna

- -

⚜️ Незавершенные полевые доспехи для юного Карла V

Австрия (Инсбрук), ок. 1511-1512 гг.

Сталь, кожа

Этот образец был заказан у инсбрукского мастера Ганса Рабейлера, когда Карлу было 11 лет (будущий император Карл V). Однако работу мастер начал слишком поздно: мальчик быстро рос, а дорогостоящая декоративная отделка даже не была начата. Доспех был доставлен ​​Карлу в Антверпен лишь в 1514 году, но к сроку, понятно, он уже опоздал.

В итоге доспех остался незавершенным. Именно поэтому он так ценен для историков. На неполированной поверхности виден каждый удар молотка, каждый след кропотливой работы.

Некоторые детали доспеха отсутствуют: забрало шлема и фокр (крюк для упора копья) на кирасе.

Это самый ранний из сохранившихся «костюмных доспехов», он имитирует модную одежду того времени.

На шлеме отсутствует забрало, которое, вероятно, так и не было изготовлено. Также отсутствует фокр (упор для копья), предусмотренный на правой стороне нагрудника.

🏛 KHM, Вена

[aedislumen]

Some military uniforms from 1792 to 1795

What follows is a collections of engravings depicting the uniforms worn by soldiers with a specific military ranks during the French Revolutionary Wars.

Source: Gallica. High resolution picture: x

First row, from left to right:

Adjoutant général

Chef de brigade

Général de brigade

Général de division

Général en chef

Second row, from left to right:

Aide de camp

Commissaire ordonnateur des guerres

Porte enseigne

Capitaine des grenadiers

Soldat des troupes de ligne

Single pictures under the cut:

[armthearmour]

A phenomenally chiseled Sword,

OaL: 38.5 in/97.7 cm

possibly Germany, 17th century, housed at the Musée du Louvre.

[armthearmour]

A beautifully gilt Sabre decorated with precious gems and enamel,

OaL: 38.2 in/97 cm

Weight: 2 lbs/900 g

Turkey, late 17th century, housed at the Kunsthistorischesmuseum, Vienna.

[peashooter85]

Sword produced by Jacob Brach of Solingen, Germany. Owned by Gustav II Adolf of Sweden, early 17th century.

from The Livrustkammaren, Sweden

[ubercharge]

look. look at this beautiful sword meme. i’m going to cry

[literallybyronic]

@petermorwood

[petermorwood]

I saw and reblogged this one a while back, but it’s always worth repeating, and this time I’m adding a bit of background info comparing common fantasy sword features to the Real Thing (with pictures, of course.)

Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.

Here are Celtic bronze swords…

…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…

… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…

Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.

Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…

…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.

This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…

…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.

A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.

I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).

A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.

The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.

Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.

Again, the clue is the centre-line.

Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.

Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.

There’s no doubt about this one either.

The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.

However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.

Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…

…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…

There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.

These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.

NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.

The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.

So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.

Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…

Just a very flexible one…

If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…

[ubercharge]

i could not ask for a better addition to my meme post than blade education thank you so much

[dduane]

Always gonna reblog. :)

[blanchebees]

Since Tumblr rejected my appeal, flag these as well, idiot

[fashionsfromhistory]

Riding Habit

c.1770-1780

England

Royal Ontario Museum (Object number: 2013.17.3.1)

[femceltonysoprano]

Real

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[erendur]

@peasant-player. I'm insanely happy about this one because I got trébuchet, which is my fav ! What do you get ?

Also, @balrogballs I have to tag you too because if you, Elrond or Lindir do not get the battering ram I feel like this entire infographic should be remade.

[fakehistoryhunter]

The Middle Ages according to Historians VS the Middle Ages according to Hollywood.

[brunhiddensmusings]

[totallynotagentphilcoulson]

More info on Middelaldercentret in case you want to read up on it, they’re generally considered one of the most accurate living history museums

[toskarin]

one of the more upsetting things you notice if you look back at older european weapons is that nobody fucking named any of the types of flail so you've gotta describe them by appearance every single time

[toskarin]

me: this is so clearly a distinctive and recurring type of flail that would have to be used in an entirely different way than a normal flail. people fought with and against this hundreds of times. people died to this. they had to have a name for this. it CANNOT just be called a flail again

over 700 years of european history:

[thursdaysrain]

meanwhile in polearm land

[petermorwood]

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, We will remember them.