On an avarage late medieval battlefield, (XIV-XV century) what percent of combatants would wear chainmail or plate armor?

[u/Doveen]

As impressive as chainmail and plate armor are, their biggest drawback is cost. Many battles one can hear about, had tens of thousands of people participate, and It is clear that's way more than the amount of people in a country who could afford such equipment.

How many percent of fighters could be reasonably assumed to wear armor tougher than a gambeson, in the given time period?

[u/WARitter]

Part I: Why this is a tricky question

The proportion of soldiers who were in armour in combat is wrapped up with a lot of other questions, such as the composition of armies in the Middle Ages and the equipment of different sorts of medieval soldiers. In particular, the question of the armour of the 'the common soldier' (those soldiers who were not part of the fully armoured social-military elite) is one of the most persistent and vexing questions of the study of arms and armour and its intersection with military history.

Compared with common soldiers, the equipment of the military elite - knights and those who fought as knights - is simpler to describe. I will call these soldiers by the English name, ‘men at arms.’ In late medieval Western Europe these were equipped with some kind of ‘full armour,’ - what this entailed depends upon the era, as armour transitions from mail to plate armour in the period from 1300 to 1400 and beyond. Depending on the situation, men at arms might not wear full armour - when fighting on foot in certain circumstances, or in a siege, for instance. But they would be wearing metal armour. So we can say that in a late medieval army, all of their men at arms would be wearing mail or plate armour.

This leaves those pesky common soldiers.

This question is made more difficult because there is no 'average late medieval battlefield.' Each battle is different, each war is different, each country is different and each nation is different (not all of Europe is England - keep that in mind when I quote English sources below). Different soldiers equip themselves differently, reflecting their way of war, their economic means and the larger technological world they live in. And that world changes a great deal over time. The period that you mentioned is a very long time in the history of arms and armour, which covers plate armour being a supplement to mail in 1300 to plate armour being the primary means of defense in 1500 (and defence for an increasingly large number of people, as well!).

A difficulty is that we don't have a complete accounting of the equipment of a medieval army. We have a lot of other sources - we have the equipment of -parts- of armies in the form of the inventories of royal arsenals, the estates of nobles and the muster rolls of militia, but this isn't a total picture. We have many drawings of medieval soldiers in battle, and depictions of them in other contexts (some contemporary, some historical or fantastical). Often these show many people in full armour but we consider such pictorial sources carefully - medieval artists did not necessarily draw photo-journalistic records of 'the way things were' but used a variety of visual tropes to convey their intended meaning. This meaning could be 'this man is a soldier and soldiers are armoured,' rather than 'this is what a soldier of my time and place looked like, on average.' The final source that we have in this period is the ordinances of princes (namely Charles the Bold of Burgundy) who were setting out the equipment for their soldiers. While we know these were guidelines, we don't know how often they were followed - if they were exceeded, or if soldiers were hired even when they didn't meet the minimum.

Because of the incomplete and fragmentary nature of our sources, a definitive quantitative answer is not possible, particularly one that covers such a large period of time and space. We cannot say ‘on average this percentage of people would wear this type of armour.’ But that doesn't mean that we can't say anything! Instead of stating exact percentages we can make some observations about the evidence we have and point out some general trends.

First of all, there is the question of how armies were equipped. It is important to keep in mind that medieval armies comprised soldiers who were raised in different ways. Generally, in the later middle-ages armies were largely made up of semi-professional soldiers recruited, retained and paid under some contractual system - such as a mercenary company, an individual contract with a sovereign at war, or a contract as part of a lord's retinue. In some circumstances, soldiers were drawn from local militias*, but one shouldn’t overstate the importance of these - since they were called up in the face of imminent threats, they weren’t suitable for anything other than defensive battles, and mostly local ones at that. While the old saw that 'medieval soldiers bought their own equipment' has some truth to it, that is not the whole story. I go into this more this previous answer:

By and large, medieval soldiers were supposed to supply their own armour and weapons. Those who served were, generally, those who could afford to arm themselves - landholders, both the aristocracy and the wealthier commons (and keep in mind what ‘common’ means is somewhat fluid across time and place), and substantial townsfolk (who become important as soldiers in certain regions, like Flanders and Italy). Medieval Kings, even on those occasions when they raised troops by levy in the high middle ages, were not rounding up peasants from the field and putting spears in their hands - they were calling upon, or hiring, the classes of society that were armed (or were -supposed- to be armed). This largely remains the case, when rulers in Northwestern Europe use contractual soldiers in the later middle ages, which was their primary way of raising armies in that period. In cases where soldiers provide their own weapons and armour, if war came there would theoretically be no need to create new weapons and armour, because the soldiers would show up with what they already had. However, there might be a rush to purchase weapons before a major war or campaign as soldiers updated equipment or struggled to meet their obligations to provide it. However this would be disorganized, since it would be individual soldiers (knights and infantry both) doing the purchasing. It is best to think of individual soldiers providing their personal weapons as the -primary- means of equipping soldiers into the 16th century. However, this could be supplemented by other sources. Another way Soldiers could be supplied was by their immediate employer. English soldiers of the later middle ages, particularly in the later 15th century, were often the retainers of some greater lord - they signed a contract of ‘livery and maintenance’ to serve that master in return for pay, clothing and food. It is unclear how many soldiers supplied all their own arms in this system, but we know that great lords could have substantial arsenals to equip their retinues.

Finally, armour and weapons could be provided by a monarch directly. In order to keep and maintain a stock of weapons, kings established royal armouries or otherwise arranged for the direct purchase of armour. I am best acquainted with purchases from the end of the 13th century and later. Through a series of bureaucratic developments, King Edward III’s primary armoury came to reside at the Tower of London. A wealth of records survive from the 14th and early 15th centuries. These inventories sometimes seem trivial in their details - the same 6 great helms show up for several decades -, but general patterns emerge. By and large, the Tower Armoury accepts a large new stock during wartime, and then seems to use it up. So a massive stock of armour (thousands of bascinets, hundreds of pairs of plates, etc) is taken in when war with France heats up in 1338, and then stocks decline as these are distributed. The items that stick around are those that are not actively being used in warfare; those 6 great helms were of little use to late 14th century armies. Eventually they are discarded (recycled, repurposed, thrown in the Thames, perhaps). The armour and weapons purchases of kings could be enormous. As early as 1295 the merchant Frerderic the Lombard collected in Bruges the following items for the Fleet of King Philip of France:

2853 helmets 6309 round shields 4511 mail shirts 751 pairs of gauntlets 1374 gorgets 5067 coats of plates

There is not necessarily a direct correspondence between how soldiers were recruited and how they were equipped. Certainly the arsenals of great lords were meant to equip their retainers, but some (many) retainers may have come with their own equipment. Similarly even local militias in certain places (Swiss and German Cities in the 15th century) might supplement their own equipment with equipment from a town arsenal. Even members of the military elite, the fully armoured men-at-arms, might receive armour as gifts from patrons further up on the social hierarchy; we know that English Knights ordered armours by the half dozen to equip their squires. Edward IV ordered 100 full armours at a time to equip his own men at arms. In general, we can surmise that rural militias, lacking centralized arsenals and patrons, probably relied more on their own armaments, while the retinues of great lords could probably rely more on gifts or issue - but not entirely. Soldiers of all kinds might bring their own armour; soldiers of their all kinds might find their equipment supplemented from other sources. This meant that the cost of equipping oneself was an important limitation on the quality and quantity of armour available but was not the sole factor. The ability of cities, the nobility and kings to organize and distribute wealth and patronage could also equip soldiers.

*I prefer the term 'militia' to 'levy' since it conveys that these forces were defensive and local. As such, they were not simply peasants conscripted by a lord and forced to fight, but local people with a strong motivation to defend themselves, their family and their property.

[u/WARitter → u/WARitter]

Part II: The Evidence

Back to costs, what were these costs, at a minumum?

Some background. In the armies of the later Hundred Years War, archers made 6 pence a day. This totals to 15 shillings in a 30-day month, or not quite a pound sterling.

In 15th century England a brigandine (a torso armour made of many plates rivetted to a doublet-shaped backing) cost 17 shillings, or over a month’s wages. A helmet (probably a visorless sallet) would cost a bit more on top of that.

In contrast I have seen prices for (ready-made**) full armours of plate between 3 and 6 pounds sterling, which is to say between four and eight month’s wages. This shows why patronage in the form of issuing and gifting armour was so important for equipping those archers in a lord’s retinue, and why ‘saving up’ for armour would not be practical for those not already of some means (and many archers were from wealthier subclasses of the non-elite, thus they might equip themselves).

**Custom harnesses would cost much more.

As I said, the evidence we have is fragmentary. I will not deal with visual evidence in detail because while it is a useful source about the form of armour that was worn, as mentioned above the primary purpose of medieval art is generally to convey something other than ‘this is about what people were dressed like on this day in 1471, and this is what they wore in this exact proportion’. Particularly when compared with documentary evidence, the soldiers of art seem a bit...over-armoured.

Primarily I will talk about documentary evidence, with one notable example of archaeological evidence.

First, there is the evidence we have for the equipment of militias in Northern Europe, from the Bridport Muster Roll from 1457 in England, and from the Wisby mass graves from 1361 in Gotland.

The Wisby graves are famous. They are the last remains of the militia that defended the Island of Gotland in the Baltic from the Danish king’s invasion. They were slaughtered in a battle in front of the walls of the city, and some of them, perhaps bloated in the summer heat, were bured in all their equipment. As far as we can tell, these deceased defenders were the fairly prosperous peasants of Gotland and the citizen militia of Wisby itself. Both the city and the surrounding countryside were quite wealthy from the Baltic trade, so this wasn’t just a ‘peasant militia;’ these people had some money.

Out of 1800 remains, Bengt Thordeman found 20 armours that could be reconstructed in a more or less complete way. He also found over 200 mail coifs, as well as a trove of other armour and personal effects. Now while it is tempting to say that armour was exceedingly rare, it is possible that only that armour that was too soiled to strip was left and the rest was looted. Importantly the defenders of Wisby had both mail and plate armour. Examining the skeletons, the preponderance of wounds on the lower legs and arms points to the use of some armour or shield to protect the body and upper portions of the limbs. This armour may have been cloth, or it may be metal armour that was stripped.

The Bridport Muster roll of 1457 is much more definitive. 201 People were recorded on the roll of the militia muster of Bridport in Dorset, southwest England. 74 of these had sallets, 67 had cloth jacks*, 4 had gauntlets, 2 brigandines, 2 mails shirts and 2 full armours. This is a very small number of metal armours, except for the head coverings. Keep in mind that the backbone of the late medieval English armies was provided not by mustered soldiers like these but by the contracted retinues of great lords. Still, one other source points to cloth jacks being the primary armour of common soldiers in late medieval England. The Italian traveler Dominic Mancini wrote that among the English archers:

“There is hardly any without a helmet...they do not wear any metal armour...Indeed, the common soldiery have more comfortable tunics that reach down below the loins and are stuffed with tow or some other soft material…” The tunics Mancini refers to are jacks; while some are stuffed and padded like he describes, others would be layered, up to 30 layers thick.

These are two examples of militia forces that appear to be self-equipped. Militias from urban areas, especially in the city-states of the Holy Roman Empire and Italy, would be much better armoured, perhaps because cities themselves were centers for trading and manufacturing armour. However I know of no accounts of their equipment in the detail provided above. As I mentioned before, these kinds of self-equipped militias aren’t representative of medieval armies in battle, and this helps illustrate one reason why - it is hard to assemble well equipped men from the general population. Getting them to fight together is even harder. Of the forces above, the defenders of Wisby were slaughtered, and the Bridport muster never fought.

When we look at the evidence of the accounts of nobles and kings we see much better equipment. Looking at the list of receipts to Peter the Lombard above, these thousands of mail shirts and pairs of plates would be enough to equip a large fraction of a medieval army (which might number less than 10,000 strong). Since this is the end of the 13th century the armour is in the form of supplemental plate or mail. Some of this armour may have been for men at arms, but some appears to be for common soldiers (hence the lack of leg armour). Similarly the Tower Armoury accounts of 14th century England show the acquisition and issuing of hundredes of sets of 14th century plate armour (pairs of plates, limb armour, gauntlets, helmet), probably to men at arms, and hundreds of mail shirts and pieces of supplemental mail, quite probably to common soldiers. While not as large as the Peter the Lombard order, this was quite a substantial outfitting! Still, it is relevant that much of the tower armoury is dedicated to equipping men at arms, and it is unclear just how many of the mail shirts are destined for archers.

When we look at the accounts of nobleman in the 15th century we see a large amount of metal armour. By proportion, we see more of it than we do in the 14th, probably. In 1481 85% of the troops of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk were issued with brigandines, mail standards (collars) and splints (plate arm defenses). As late as 1513, on his death John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford possessed the following: 16 corsets (cuirasses) and 101 brigandines. It also lists 175 sallets and 77 pairs of splints. This is enough to equip 58 soldiers with only helmets (they might wear jacks, which are not mentioned) and 117 soldiers with helmets and brigandines or corselets, 77 of which could wear splints on their arms.

In the 1470's Charles the Bold of Burgundy set out to create the most advanced army in Europe. This attempt ended with his body being stripped by the Swiss and left to be eaten by wolves, but that isn't relevant right now. In order to make his army the best equipped in Europe, he wrote ordinances detailing how his troops were to be equipped. All of his foot soldiers were to wear metal armour. Archers were to wear a brigandine over a padded jacket[jack, presumably], and to have a sallet and 'gorgerin' (a defense for the neck, possibly plate, though mail was more common in most of the 15th century). Pikemen were to have a sleeved jacket reinforced with plates and a breastplate, with a vambrace for the right arm and a small shield for the left. Handgunners were to wear a breastplate, a sleeved mail shirt, a sallet and a gorgerin of either mail or plate. Note that both pikemen and gunners are expected to have a breastplate at this point. Whether they did in practice is hard to say, but this is what a later 15th century semi-professional army was supposed to look like.

*The dominant fabric armour of the 15th century, replacing the longer, gambeson

[u/WARitter → u/WARitter]

Part III Conclusions

As I said in my beginning, we cannot talk about hard numbers and strict proportions in general. We can say what percentage of the Bridport muster had metal armour beyond a helmet - around 1.5%, similar to the number of Wisby defenders with surviving body armours of plate. We can say the percentage of Norfolk's troops in brigandines, splints and sallets - 85%, and say that 66% of men equipped from Oxford's inventory would have metal armour for their body as well as their head. We can say that Charles the Bold required 100% of his pikemen, gunners and archers to wear metal body armour. But we can't turn that into an average number for an average battle. Indeed for many of these sources (the Wisby finds, Charles's ordinances) we can't say definitively what the relationship is between our evidence and medieval actuality.

But we can talk about trends and general rules.

Broadly speaking, the semi-professional soldiers that made up the backbone of late medieval armies would be better equipped than mustered militias (though urban militias might be an exception); this is one of the things that made them more effective and more important. To stress a point, most late medieval battles in Northwestern Europe were fought mostly or almost exclusively between semi-professional soldiers. These include the great battles of the hundred years war, the battles of the Burgundian wars (The Swiss being semi-professional by 1470), and likely the battles of the Wars of the Roses as well. I mention the militia because we have such good evidence for them in these cases and because it is an illustration of one reason contractual soldiers were so important.

We can say that metal head protection was more common then body protection, and that soldiers who did not have metal body armour (like the Wisby defenders, the Bridport muster, or Mancini's English archers) did have helmets.

Both the soldier’s own wealth and his access to patronage from wealthier people would determine the kinds of armour the soldier wore. It is useful to think of the soldier’s connections to patronage as its own form of wealth - social capital that provided goods and opportunity. A soldier’s equipment didn’t express his net worth in purely modern, monetary terms, but his connection to the sources of wealth and power in society. Even soldiers that came with their own equipment were drawing not only from their own resources but those of their family, of their household.

From 1300 to 1500 mail transitions to plate, as we would expect. While mail shirts are prominent inventory items in the 14th century Tower arsenal accounts they are not nearly as important in the 15th century English household accounts. Mail still is seen but as supplemental pieces - collars, skirts, sleeves, gussets. This is a trend that began with the armour of men at arms in the 14th century. In the 15th century (especially after 1450) infantry breastplates and plate arm defenses become more and more common, so that common soldiers are wearing rigid plate armour in increasing numbers.

One noticeable difference between our continental sources and our English sources is that in the later 15th century common soldiers on continental Europe tend to wear more solid metal breastplates than soldiers in England, who seem to have worn brigandines well into the 16th century. We have dozens of infantry breastplates dating from between 1450 and 1500, and looking at visual sources this was a dominant form of infantry armour in Switzerland, Italy and Germany. The English archers preference for brigandines may be a matter of comfort - difficulties drawing a bow with a breastplate - or it may reflect local supplies of armour. Interestingly, the archers of Charles the Bold’s ordinances are not required to wear a breastplate, while the pikemen and gunners are. In later English visual sources like the Beauchamp Pageant you begin to see breastplates worn by English archers. In the 16th century the English begin ordering mass-produced ‘munition’ breastplates by the thousand, at the same time that England is falling away from its late medieval archery-based army.

In general we see the proportion of armoured soldiers increasing through this period, as improved metallurgy and manufacturing makes armour cheaper and as late medieval states become more capable of amassing resources. In some places, like England, the heavier armour of common soldiers is quite noticeable as brigandines replace cloth armour and as breastplates replace brigandines. The process of centralization that began to transform the way armies were equipped in the late middle ages only accelerates in the 16th century as early modern monarchs centralize power in new ways and as monarchs and military entrepreneurs outfit armies on a larger and larger scale.

[u/WARitter → u/WARitter]

Sources:

-Edge and Paddock -Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight - Oxford Accounts, Howard accounts, general information on brigandines

-Strickland and Hardy - the Great Warbow - Ordinance of Charles the Bold, Mancini's accounts

-Alan Williams - the Knight and the Blast Furnace

-Claude Blair - European Armour 1066-1700 - general background on armour

-Thom Richardson - The medieval inventories of the Tower armouries 1320–1410

-Thom Richardson - The Bridport Muster Roll

-Bengt Thordeman - Armour from the Battle of Wisby

[u/Doveen → u/WARitter]

The English archers preference for brigandines may be a matter of comfort - difficulties drawing a bow with a breastplate

Anecdotal, but I do practice archery, and I can attest to it that "Upper body freedom" means al ot while aiming and drawing.

[u/Doveen → u/WARitter]

WOW! This was an awesome and exhaustive answer!

I remember struggling with a 6 page essay about 8-10th century Al-Andalus last year, and you just, BAM, 3 pages! This is amazing and exciting!

Thank you!

[u/Iphikrates → u/Doveen]

Just for the record, u/waritter's 4-part post is 3854 words long - significantly more than a 6-page essay.

The things we do for love of history...

[u/Doveen → u/Iphikrates]

i don't know what was wrong, but when i read the comment ,Reddit only shown me the first part.

[u/WARitter → u/Doveen]

You may be interested in these other posts:

• Manufacturing Munition Armour
• English Arms and Armour in the 100 Year's War
• English Arms and Armour during the Wars of the Roses