![]() ![]() But what about arrows? Could arrows piece medieval armor? Ok, so lances, maces, and war hammers could be used to break through medieval armor. Here you can find out more about when & how often maces and war hammers were used. It is actually quite interesting that it seems like knights usually did not try to kill hostile knights but would rather try to take them out of the fight without killing them.īecause of that, maces and war hammers were generally more effective against plate armor and were not really used against chainmail. In that case, the knight would no longer be able to fight and would have to leave the battlefield taking him out of the fight. So let`s say that the blow of a mace hit a knight in full plate armor at the elbow, bent the plates at the elbow, but did not break the bone. If one of the plates was bent, then the plates could no longer slide over each other and the plate armor turned from a highly effective protection into a handicap. The individual plates that made up a suit of plate armor had to be able to glide over each other to give the wearer maximum mobility. Here you can find out more about the sophisticated process of making a medieval shield robust enough to withstand such brute force.Īnother way both maces and war hammers could become dangerous to a knight in plate armor was when the hit of the mace did not injure the knight, but bend the plates (for example at the elbow) of his plate armor. Highly robust shields were used to add an additional layer of defense against the impact of an underarm-couched lance. Maces and war hammers could also be used to break through the armor or at least inflict concussions even when they didn`t pierce the armor. Under-arm couched lances that had the weight of the charging horse and the armored knight behind them could penetrate both chainmail and plate armor. Yet we will revisit swords later when we talk about attacking less armored parts of a knight’s armor.įor now, I would like to look at the weapons that were ideal for breaking through a knight’s armor by brute force. ![]() Ok, so swords were not really useful for breaking through armor by brute force. Here you can find out more about the types of weapons that were much more common than swords. While the sword is the weapon that most of us associate with the Middle Ages, swords were actually not that common and also not really that decisive in battle. Here you can find out more about the effectiveness of medieval swords & a special technique called half-handing that was developed to make swords more effective against plate armor.īy the way. And while the sword was a highly effective weapon, especially against unarmored or only lightly armored warriors, it was not really useful for killing a highly armored knight in a suit of chainmail (a so-called Hauberk) or a suit of plate armor. When it came to using brute force to kill a knight in his armor by simply breaking through the knight’s defenses, then the first weapon that comes to mind is the sword. Lances, Maces & Warhammers – breaking through the armor by brute force Let`s take a closer look and start with the way that is most commonly depicted in movies. Ideally, the knight was immobilized before the weak points in his armor were targeted. Another way to kill a knight in full armor was to attack the weak points of his armor (like the groin, the inside of the legs, the eyeslits of the helmet, and in the case of plate armor the armpits). The impact of an underarm-couched lance could pierce both chainmail and plate armor, maces and war hammers could also be used to break through plate armor. Both chainmail and plate armor had advantages and disadvantages, more on that here. However, the ways how knights in armor were killed depended on the type of armor (chainmail or plate) they wore. There were a few ways to kill a knight in full armor despite him wearing armor. But despite its effectiveness, medieval armor did not make knights invulnerable. ![]()
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