Knight armor in cold weather?

[Tradewind]

From what I understand they would wear quilted shirts against their skin and the chain or whatever over that.

I figured the tunic and shit under the chainmail was more to do with it not ripping out every single hair on their bodies or tearing their nipples and skin off when the mail would pinch and bind on their body. But I guess the cold is a reason too lol.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

I just answered it. 1 - 4. Mainly how well does it protect the wearer from the cold?

Yeah, you must have posted while i was typing that response.

The metal armour itself wouldn't do much to protect the wearer from the cold itself...but there's more to armour than just the outer layer of plate.

This gentleman here is wearing the kind of armour Scandinavian Knights might be seen in:



As you can see, under the plate there is mail and under the mail there is a cloth shirt and pants.

[Deleted]

It depends in a lot of things actually like said above.

The most straight answer you can get without speaking about other stuff is that armour (Plate) doesn´t protect against cold weather, it won´t protect the user against its enviroment unless it wore some leather or thick cloth under it. The properties of many metals undergo changes at extreme low temperatures, particularly in strength, toughness, brittleness, and durability. It would deteriorate fastter, it would require more maintenance and it can be even hurtfull to the user becouse in it´s manipulation (taking it off for example) it may stick your hands to the metal.

[Aeula]

You mean full plate? It'd be fucking freezing. Just leave a piece of metal out in the cold overnight and then touch your hand to it. Now imagine it being wrapped around your entire body.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

You mean full plate? It'd be fucking freezing. Just leave a piece of metal out in the cold overnight and then touch your hand to it. Now imagine it being wrapped around your entire body.

If a person were dumb enough to wrap the metal around their naked flesh, sure. If you were to put it on over quilted leather though...that's a different story.

[shadowmouse]

During my days in medieval reenactment I did outdoor heavy weapon combat in sub zero weather. It was fairly comfortable as those things go, I seldom bothered with a cloak. I've sparred in rain, mud, up to my waist in a creek and other silliness. None of it was particularly bad (clean up was another matter though). Sand storms and high temps were much less fun. Heat injuries were a very real danger.

Look up the closest SCA group. They'll probably have loaner armor and be willing to teach you basics. There are other groups, with differing focuses, but the SCA at least used to be fairly wide spread.

[Friendlyimmolation]

Probably have other things to worry about in the dead of winter, if you fall into a snowdrift wearing plate you are dead. Besides not much fighting happened in the winter iirc.

[ParanoiD84]

Quite comfortable i imagine, they did have padding underneath the chainmail so i reckon it felt very good, same with the headgear you had padded gear underneath. They rather avoided winter battles though.

[Revi]

Sounds horrible. I imagine if it was insulated enough to not make the metal suck the heat out of you, the incredibly heavy armor would make you get clammy and sweaty if you had to do anything physically taxing like fighting or marching, which in turn would make you very cold once you stopped moving.

And if you had to move through snow with that.. You'd get super tired and there's a high risk of falling over with great difficulty getting back up.

I think the plate would be more trouble than it's worth in a cold winter war. Except maybe if you're just sat on top of a horse and don't do much combat, like a leader.

[Friendlyimmolation]

Sounds horrible. I imagine if it was insulated enough to not make the metal suck the heat out of you, the incredibly heavy armor would make you get clammy and sweaty if you had to do anything physically taxing like fighting or marching, which in turn would make you very cold once you stopped moving.

And if you had to move through snow with that.. You'd get super tired and there's a high risk of falling over with great difficulty getting back up.

I think the plate would be more trouble than it's worth in a cold winter war. Except maybe if you're just sat on top of a horse and don't do much combat, like a leader.

Not to mention sieges in this scenario, why wear armor if you are going to sit and freeze either way?

[Deleted]

Not to mention sieges in this scenario, why wear armor if you are going to sit and freeze either way?

Or with the ropes and bow strings completely wet because of the cold and moisture.

Hollywood ancient and medieval war images are fake as hell.

[Independent voter]

Typically medieval combat stopped in the winter. Particularly in the more rigidly feudal societies where men at arms only owed their liege 60-90 days service as feudal obligation to their Lord. Most campaigns happened in the warmer months because winter tended to kill the armies they could muster. Knights being landed warriors were also able to leave the field once their duty and obligation was fulfilled.

A Medieval knight wore a thick cloth armor suite called a gambeson under their suite of armor. This insulated them pretty well, so I doubt the cold metal plates caused problems. What was more a problem is weather reducing mobility. Lack of food, sickness and other problems associated with Winter campaigns in that period.

About the Gambeson:


But in terms of Winter combat, few lords, or Kings could really afford to fight in the Winter and usually would hold up somewhere for the Winter. Winter campaigns were risky, though if you could mount them they had a big pay off. But they were rare. The real threat was logistics in a winter campaign.

Thanks for that, pretty informative.

[Deleted]

All I asked is how well it handles in the cold. Not the extra stuff from the responses I've been receiving.

Under the armor, you have thick padding, a gambeson, to absorb the impact, a gambeson is very warm.