Steel Greenhouse effect

[CalebChow]

Just by doing drills and sparring in a gym I work up a huge sweat and get quite fatigued after a few hours, especially during summer.

It blows my mind to think that knights would fight in 70lbs of armor in the sun for hours at a time. The weight isn't unbelievable, but the heat in that gear, and swinging weapons in it!

Watching Aaron and Casper's armored fight and seeing them winded after only a minute of sparring makes me think there's something I'm forgetting when it comes to how knights in the old days managed to avoid heat stroke and dehydration in traveling and especially fighting.

Isn't it true that some battles would last for days at a time too, where super knights would be engaged in combat the entire time?

[s_taillebois]

Usually there were certain conventions involved, it wasn't unknown for medieval armies to break midday, eat and drink, and then restart the fighting. Compared to modern warfare medieval fighting tended to be fairly ritualized.

Sieges might last for days, weeks and months, but pitch battles usually ended after a day or two when the losers surrendered the field.

Probably the incident which best covers the problems with fatigue and heat would have been Hattin. The crusader army was in very poor condition due to the march in the heat, and Saladin blocking them from water. But Hattin was during a religious war, between two very different opponents, and so the conventions tended to be more ambiguous.

[Shane Smith]

When I worked in armour all the time, I'd be in it for 4-6 hours at a stretch in 90+ degree weather. It's not a problem when you're used to it.

[Benjamin Parker]

Indeed

In fact the Gen 'd Arme Bayard recorded in his Loyal Servuiter at the battle of Marignano that it was ten o'clock PM when he struck his stroke and the fight started around noon IIRC

[LafayetteCCurtis]

It's worth remembering that a battle lasting several hours wasn't one long sustained encounter, but rather a series of many smaller encounters, each of which would have lasted only for several minutes or so. A fully-armored man-at-arms would have found the time to rest during the lull between encounters on his particular part of the line, or he could have gone to the rear altogether and let fresher comrades take over the fight from him until he had recovered somewhat. A good commander should have been able to coordinate the rotation of men in and out of the battle line so that the first rank wouldn't have been worn down to exhaustion while the rear ranks hadn't had the chance to strike a single stroke.

Another important thing to note is what Shane has mentioned--medieval fighting men of the knightly social class would have been trained from childhood to bear the weight, heat, and exhaustion of fighting in armor, so they would have (almost certainly) been able to last longer in armor than modern people who have no life-and-death urgency for practicing their fighting skills in full armor.

Of course, the evolution in weight of armor also played a significant part. One of the most famous statements in Francois de la Noue's writings is his reminiscence that a knight in the days of his childhood could have lasted all day (twenty-four hours, that is) in armor while a heavy cavalryman of his day could barely last more than a couple hours in armor due to the increased weight and additional plates needed to protect the horseman against contemporary firearms.

[Benjamin Parker]

Good point about Marignano I had forgotten that

IIRC La Noue says that even older veterans could wear their full suits of plate for 24 hours straight. . . Pretty impressive.

[Sal Bertucci]

Is that wearing it or fighting in it, do you remember?

[Benjamin Parker]

Wearing IIRC

[Sal Bertucci]

hmm.

[Benjamin Parker]

Oh, I see your point. There would be a bit of difference between wearing it for 24 hours straight and fighting in it.

[Aaron Pynenberg]

hey Guys, good stuff...

I don't remember Casper and I winded from that fight, although I have been winded before in training in it, certainally. (more on that at the end).

When I first began training in it, the weight was not a problem at all, but the heat! Man it was overwhelming. It kept building and building and the harder i worked in it the more it roasted me from the inside.

I did get used to it, but I don't find myself enjoying that part of it at all. I train even when unarmored now in a sweatshirt, at least to keep my core temp a bit warmer all the time while I am fencing. nothing though seems to help me get used to how much the armor traps in your heat..there's just no where for it to go.

Another more stifling bit can be the helm. With the visor down, all of your hot breath gets thrown right back in your face and it does not allow for venting very well. Actually I think there is an almost "altitude effect" by getting used to training in the armor and with the visor clipped down, when I train without the stuff on, I notice that I am so light and comfortable that my unarmored training takes huge strides...that is it is so much more restricting wearing the armor that when it comes off, I am like lightning! seemingly never overheating, and having all sorts of stamina.!?.which in a simple way makes sense, no additional weight and no breathing recycled breath.

As far as fighting in it...as soon as the fight starts, the weight disappears and all that is left is the opponent, and that's just in training not real fighting..imagine what that was like for real-!- AP

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Is that wearing it or fighting in it, do you remember?

Wearing, obviously. And it's still worth remembering that "fighting" in de La Noue's day, as it has always been for most of human history, were largely made up of very brief clashes separated by long periods of tense watchfulness, especially if we consider the fact that most military combat of that time took the form of skirmishes and sieges rather than pitched battles. So both the "twenty-four hours" in earlier armor and "a couple of hours (I think he specifically mentioned two?)" in his contemporary armor would have included maybe only five or ten minutes of actual fighting on average.

[carlo arellano]

US armed forces personnel wear more than that in the middle east.

[Sal Bertucci]

Though it is better ventilated.

[s_taillebois]

"Though it is better ventilated."

Which could be a element evident in some medieval manuscripts-predominately of the 100 years war era. Many of the men fighting are shown wearing war hats, rather than close helmets. Is that a case of that gear being more common along with the more common lower status men at arms, yeomanry and the like? Or a case that a sizable amount of men preferred the greater access to air, at the expense of better protection?