Let us turn back to the armor of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and consider some of the questions which naturally arise in our minds as we contemplate these relics of the past. In the first place, was it practical? How could men possibly wear such a mass of metal upon their bodies and engage in long military campaigns, interspersed with violent battles? Isn’t it true that an armored man, once fallen, could not get up again until he was hoisted with a derrick? No, that isn’t true. The comical scenes in the moving pictures of frustrated knights floundering about in search of hoisting engines were put in strictly for laughs. Armor was practical; it was worn by about all the most important men of more than three centuries; if they had not worn it they would not have lived long enough to become important! As a matter of fact armor is not as heavy as one might think. A good military suit weighs no more than the pack carried by a modern soldier, sixty pounds or less, and is a great deal more comfortable to carry. The pack hangs from the shoulders, but a good suit of armor, carefully made (as all good armor had to be made) to fit the individual body of the wearer, has its weight distributed over the entire body. The helmet rests partly on the head and partly on the shoulders. The breast and backplates rest partly on the shoulders and partly on the hips. The arm and leg guards are laced to the special undergarment which had always to be worn with armor, and each limb supports its own protection. The joints come at exactly the right places to correspond with the natural motions of the body, and every one of these motions is provided for. A man wearing a properly fitting suit of armor over the correct undergarment could do anything that a modern man can do wearing a winter overcoat, and probably, due to his special training, a number of things that the modern man could not. He could certainly walk, run, climb a wall, lie down and get up quickly, and mount his horse without help. To test the truth of these statements and the implications of the romantic novels of the past, the writer donned a suit of armor which fitted him only approximately, yet found himself able to perform all the actions above mentioned and, in addition, to descend two stories on a rope, hand under hand.

Two particular devices aided in making such flexibility possible. Where the body needed protection combined with motility it could be covered with a series of narrow, overlapping steel strips, each of which was riveted in turn to one or more leather straps, the ends of which were fastened to the solid main defense. Then as the body was flexed the steel strips or lames would slide over one another without exposing the body beneath them (Fig. 21). It was also possible to join a series of lames by not more than two rivets for each pair; these would act as pivots, allowing one lame to rotate slightly relative to the other (Fig. 22). However, if rivets were used with rather large heads with a washer under the burred end of each, and if the holes for the rivet in one lame were round while that in the other had the form of a slot, in addition to the pivoting motion, a certain amount of sideways motion between the lames would be possible (Fig. 23).

Who wore armor? Every man who could afford it. Armor was always very much of a luxury. Its making required the services of consummate craftsmen, men who were not only expert metal workers, but also skilled draughtsmen, expert tailors, and keen students of human anatomy. Armorers were the aristocrats of all mediaeval craftsmen, the most highly respected and by far the best paid. It required a great deal of their time; the completion of a full suit of armor might take a year or more. Armor was, therefore, in the class of the modern automobile. A wealthy monarch might have a large wardrobe of beautifully decorated armor, as a millionaire to-day owns a fleet of expensive imported motor cars. A simple knight would be proud to possess a single suit, plain, but nevertheless made exactly to fit him and no other person. A minor soldier was lucky if he could secure a simple ready-made breastplate and helmet.

What was the physical character of the men who wore armor? Why do the suits seem so small? Were people smaller in those days? Yes and no. It is true that the nature of their life tended to develop men of the cowboy type, wiry rather than massive. Men who spend their lives on horseback are likely to have a broad shoulder and narrow waist, strong thigh and slender calf. It is true too that with primitive medicine and sanitation man died young; the average age of adult males was less than it is now.

However the principal reason for the small average size of preserved suits of armor lies in its inextensibility. A suit of armor cannot be “let out”. As has been pointed out, it had to be made exactly to fit the wearer. Men had to learn their military duties very young, they had to have and to wear armor while they were still growing. Consequently they usually outgrew their first suit of armor, and it was this suit, unmarked by the scars of serious fighting, which was most likely to be preserved. By the time a man reached his full growth his armor showed wear and tear; when he died he was buried in it, or it was discarded after his death as too battered to be worth keeping. The suits of armor in the world’s collections are largely the outgrown suits of young men.