Oh Lord Sir! A question if you will about Knights. I'm writing a fantasy-esque story where Knights(Men and women in full plate) are seen as the protectors of the peace and such. However I have to ask, is full plate or plate-mail easier to move around in? To add to that, what is the most effective way to kill a Knight in plate armor?
Firstly, “plate mail” and “full plate” are the same thing and also “mail” is a misnomer because it doesn’t mean just any armor, it specifically refers to chain armor. I’m taking my best guess at what you mean and assuming you mean the difference between this
and this
and they both handled about the same. Plate armor is a bit restrictive to your movement, but not so much that it actually hinders you in combat. The protection offered far outweighs the loss of dexterity.
The difference between these two suits of armor is a difference of about 50-75 years, but you could call them both full-plate(although it may be more accurate to call the first one “transitional plate” or something like that). Both of them are made up of many individual plates strapped to the body over chainmaille which is worn over a thick coat called a gambeson. The plates provide most of the protection while the chainmaille covers all the flexible parts that the plates can’t cover. The gambeson provides cushioning(but you can also wear a gambeson as armor by itself; they’re very protective on their own).
The bottom one is obviously a bit heavier because it has more solid plates, but not so heavy that you can’t get up if you fall down, and both give you decent freedom of movement because, if you look, you’ll see that none of the rigid plates actually cover the wearer’s joints. Also, in the second suit of armor, to cut down on weight, that knights in that period often wore something like this
instead of a full shirt of chainmaille underneath. What is most important is that the joints are protected by chainmaille. The breastplate will take care of your organs. Oh also, in most cases, plate armor was custom-made for the man wearing it, so that it fit perfectly. This makes for even less restriction of movement.
In summary, they’re both decently easy to move in, but I would consider the second one more protective.
Another point before I answer your second question is that while pretty much every knight wore plate armor to battle after plate armor was invented, not every man in plate armor was a knight.
Your second question.
Ways to kill a man in plate armor:
1. Don’t.
In most cases you actually wouldn’t want to kill him. It’s a better idea to capture him and sell his armor, then ransome him back to the enemy for an extra box of gold. Plus, it’s the chivalrous thing to do.
2. Longbow or crossbow.
Even though plate armor isn’t something you can just cut with a sword like they do in movies, pretty much nothing can stand up to a longbow or heavy crossbow at close range. If the arrow doesn’t pierce all the way through his armor, which it probably still won’t, it’ll dent it and hit so hard that it might break his ribs through concussive force alone.
Just don’t miss, because men in plate armor aren’t the slow turtles they’re made out to be. If you miss at that range, he’ll be on you before you can load a second arrow.
3. Big blunt weapon.
Just like above, it’s basically impossible to actually get through a piece of plate armor, but with enough concussive force you can still injure the wearer underneath. That’s what maces and warhammers were for.
Obviously these hit pretty hard because they’re heavy-ended, but their shape is actually also very important. Plate armor is smooth and rounded on purpose, and this makes weapons glance/slip off to the side without delivering their full force. This is also why boobplate is a bad idea. It creates a groove which can ‘catch’ weapons and allow them to deliver their full force instead of glancing off harmlessly.
To counteract this, weapons like these above were shaped like they are so that they would ‘grip’ the plate armor as they hit and not slip off. It’s kind of hard to explain unless you see it in action compared to something not designed this way.
With these you’re going to want to target the head mostly, but they’ll hurt just about anywhere you swing them.
4. Half-swording.
Swords are were effective weapons against unarmored opponents, but not as much against armored opponents because even though they’re sharp and fast, they hit much lighter than maces and will just glance off plate armor harmlessly. However, if all you’ve got is a sword, you’re not completely defenseless against a man in full armor.
“Half-swording” is a technique where you grip the blade of your sword in one or both hands. This can be done for two reasons: 1. If you grip the part just above the crossguard, that part is usually not even ever sharpened because that’s not the part you’re supposed to hit with anyway. 2. Even though medieval swords were very sharp, contrary to what weebs will tell you, they weren’t lightsabers. If you grip the sharp part very tightly and don’t let it slide across your hand, it won’t cut you, especially if you’re wearing gloves.
I mentioned earlier that the solid plates of the suit left the joints unprotected, but those are still pretty small targets and they’re probably protected by chainmaille as well. In most cases a sword can’t even thrust through chainmaille, it’ll just flex and wobble if you try, but if you put one hand on the blade to keep it from bending, it’ll usually make it through if you put some force behind it. Additionally, putting one hand on the blade essentially means you have a longer lever with which to control your sword tip, which means it’ll be much easier to aim it into those tiny gaps. Many fully-armored knights also did this with their swords when they were fighting pretty much anyone, because it’s hard to control a sword the normal way when you’re wearing bulky gauntlets. You can see this in the second picture and in the video I’m about to post.
Another way to do it is to hold the sword completely backwards, with both hands on the blade. It’s kinda awkward, but this way you can use the sword like a makeshift warhammer by striking with the hilt. See Option #3.
Also, this video explains Option #4 much better than I did, and provides an excellent demonstration, which also happens to be one of the most realistic and intent-y swordfights I’ve ever seen on video. In this video you can also really see just how wrong those myths are about how plate armor slowed knights down.
I completely forgot something very important!
5. Grappling.
Even though it’s a total myth that armored knights couldn’t get up if they were knocked down, if you do manage to knock a fully armored man down, it’s pretty easy for you to actively prevent him from getting back up. You can then get a dagger into his viewport or in between one of the armor gaps.
(Do not try this unless you’ve got at least some armor on yourself.)
@sirobvious has asked me to address a small bit of misinformation in this post which has been shown recently to be inaccurate. New research done my Mike Loades for his book War Bows
and the series of videos by Tod’s Workshop testing Agincourt period armor against a 160 lb warbow have proven the efficacy of armor to be even greater than previously imagined.
These tests have shown that armor of a quality which would have been considered mid-range at the time can easily withstand the powerful blows of even a bow drawn at 160 lbs. Mike Loades’ book is available online here or here (I do recommend it) but you can also see Tod’s test (for free) here.
If you watch the video, you can see that the bow often doesn’t even dent the armor (there are a few blows which leave shallow dents), and typically barely leaves a scratch.
Equally, given the space between the wearer’s body and the actual breastplate, as well as the padding worn beneath, it is unlikely that the wearer would be wounded at all by a blow like those we see in the video.
It is true that on other parts of the body (like the arms and legs) the steel tends to be quite a bit thinner, however these parts of the body also have tighter curves and thus greater glancing surfaces, so it is likely the effect would be the same. Ultimately, against a fully armored knight, the bow is only properly effective against those areas which are vulnerable to swords as well; areas protected only by maille and padding, or perhaps only by padding.
This information is relatively recent, and the rest of this post is filled with great info should you ever find yourself filled with the pressing need to kill a late medieval knight. I hope this has been informative, cheers!
