Arming and equipping medieval foot soldiers
The body armor
Only a part of the infantry had a proper mail shirt made of chain mesh. For reasons of cost, the majority of the brushwood had to be content with a quilted doublet ( gambeson , hauqueton), which was sometimes reinforced in the torso area by a so-called platen (leather or cloth skirt on which iron plates were riveted). Towards the end of the 13th to the beginning of the 14th century, the plate became increasingly popular with the infantry due to its cheap production and its high armor effect. Another variant of the body armor used by the infantry was the scale armor . It consisted of a long shirt of strong linen or leather trimmed with iron, horn, or hardened leather scales. In the case of better equipped foot servants, upholstered urchins, chain leg warmers (without foot part) and arm and greaves made of thick leather with metal trimmings were often added. As far as the wallet allowed, the hands were put in leather gloves, which were either covered with chain mesh or, as early as the end of the 13th century, with iron, horn or leather plates. The head and neck area was often protected by a padded hood or even a chain hood with a ventail.
The helmet
During this time, three types of helmets could be found among the foot troops: the iron hat , the dome helmet (simple round helmet), the brain hood and an early form of the pelvic hood .
The shield
The infantry of this time had three forms of shield: the traditional high triangular shield, the small round fist shield and, from the end of the 13th century, the rectangular Pavese ( set shield ).
The armament
For foot soldiers, the two main weapons were the polearm and the long-range weapon . Other weapons such as ax , club , sword , dagger etc. were rarely represented. An exception is the single-edged sword of the Malchus - Falchion - Storta type, which was very popular with infantry during the 13th and 14th centuries . This sword with a symmetrical handle, a single-edged blade and a total length of 70 - 90 cm came in two variants. Type I had a sharpened back at the point (like a Bowie knife ) and an otherwise straight blade. Type II had a straight back and a convex edge.
The polearm
Two types of polearms appeared among the foot servants in the period under review. The traditional foot skewer had a shorter shaft (approx. 2 - 2.20 m) and a longer iron (approx. 30 cm, partly with side toggles) than the rider's skewer. From the second half of the 13th century, a number of combined cutting and stabbing weapons appeared, the forerunners of the later halberds , the kusen (from French couteau ) and vougen, as well as long-handled axes (French guisarmes ), in which the lower end of the Bartes was also connected to the shaft, similar to the Eastern European berdiches . The Fauchard , a polearm that appears in sources from the 12th to 14th centuries and which, in addition to a Fauchon-like blade, often also had a hook on the back, was the forerunner of the glaive .
The long-range weapon
When it comes to firearms, the crossbow clearly dominated Western and Central Europe during the period under review .
The most common model of the crossbow at this time was the "single-leg crossbow", which was stretched while standing. The archer either hooked the string into the tensioning hook or crossbow tensioner attached to the tensioning belt and tensioned the bow by lifting his foot, sticking it into the iron stirrup and setting the crossbow on the ground, or he put his crossbow and foot on the ground and walked on his knees to hook the string into the stretcher and stretched the bow by straightening. The high Gothic crossbow was longer and narrower than later models. She carried a relatively strong composite reflex bow. The horn composite bow dominated in Central, Northern and Eastern Europe until the 16th century, in Southern and Western Europe it was more and more displaced by the steel bow since the beginning of the 14th century. The arch was attached to the shaft, the so-called "column", with the help of hemp ropes, whereby the iron stirrup was also integrated. Another important element was the "nut", which had a tendon notch for inserting the string and a ratchet for the trigger bar. With a direct shot at a short distance (core shot at max. 90 m with the single-leg crossbow) the end of the column rested on the right shoulder, with long-range shooting (max. Approx. 330 m ballistic) it was clamped under the upper arm. The typical war bolt with a total length of 390 mm consisted of a 60 - 80 mm long, mostly rhombic , iron point and an approx. 15 mm thick shaft, the so-called "zaim", which sometimes has guide "feathers" at the rear end Wood or parchment to stabilize the flight path.
swell
- Maciejowski Bible , around 1250
- Sachsenspiegel , around 1230
literature
- Ulrich Lehnart: Clothing and weapons of the early and high Gothic, 1150–1320. Karfunkel Verlag, Wald-Michelbach 2001, ISBN 3-935616-00-7 .
- Egon Harmuth: The crossbow. A manual. Academic printing and Publishing house, Graz 1986, ISBN 3-201-01298-X .
- Wilhelm Volkert: Small encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. From the nobility to the guild. CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-42081-8 .
- Maurice Keen: Chivalry. Albatros, Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-491-96065-7 .
- Christopher Gravett: German Medieval Armies 1000-1300. Volume 310 of Osprey's Men-at-Arms Series, Osprey Publishing, Oxford 1997, ISBN 1-85532-657-4 .
- David Nicolle: French Medieval Armies 1000-1300. Volume 231 of Osprey's Men-at-Arms Series, Osprey Publishing, Oxford 1991, ISBN 1-85532-127-0 .