Armor of proof

[Benjamin Parker]

Does anyone know of any battle where knights wearing armor of proof charged through largely unscathed and won?

[Sal Bertucci]

"Armor of proof"? Maybe it's cause I'm new, but I have no idea what you're talking about. Please explain.

[Benjamin Parker]

Its called that because of a process called proofing the armor and what they did was they used a variety of tests on the armor including shooting it at short range and if the armor stopped the rounds the spots were marked and it was deemed proofed from weapons

[John Farthing]

It is the origin of the term 'bulletproof', as stated armourers would fire upon the curiass in order to determine it had been properly crafted and thereby impenetrable by small arms fire. This did however leave a small dent in the armour made by the impact of the round ballistic 'ball' early munitions fired. According to the 'History Channel' (not always the most reliable source), potential customers would look for this 'dent' as sign that they were buying the highest quality 'bulletproof' armour!

[Will Adamson]

There are some excellent examples of this at the Met in New York.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/09/eus ... 130a-p.htm#

[Sal Bertucci]

That's good to know, thanks.

[Benjamin Parker]

So does anyone know of any battles where knights charged through musket fire and won largley unscathed?

[Brandon Paul Heslop]

So does anyone know of any battles where knights charged through musket fire and won largley unscathed?

Not any first hand stuff that I know of, but there are lots of pictures of late-period knights with couched lances going at full pelt towards handgunners. If it was scuicide for sure, I doubt there'd be so much pictorial evidence for it.

-B.

[LafayetteCCurtis]

So does anyone know of any battles where knights charged through musket fire and won largley unscathed?

I'm still not sure what the parameters are here. How do you define "knight?" A multirole soldier in the medieval style, a lance-armed heavy horseman in the 1450-1600 style, or just a general term for "heavy cavalry?" By "charged through musket fire," do you mean slamming frontally into a firearm volley or just generally attacking into any part of an entirely or partially firearm-equipped formation? And how much casualties would be acceptable in "largely unscathed?"

One battle that you'd probably like to check out in particular is the Battle of Ceresole, where a large number of cavalry charges were performed against both horse and foot, front and flank; the Wikipedia article has an excellent overview of the battle.

[Benjamin Parker]

Well by knight I mean a man with full AOP and chain mail, crossbow, gun, barded horse, lance, side arm, probably has a sir on the front of his name since nobles were usually the only ones who could afford all that and I mean a charge form the front into the arqubuse's although a flank or rear charge works too as for casualties somehting like one thousand five hundred out of a htousand knights is acceptable

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Well by knight I mean a man with full AOP and chain mail, crossbow, gun, barded horse, lance, side arm,

That seems to be more equipment than any historical man-at-arms would have been carrying... (especially the armor and the crossbow--I've heard of gendarmes and lancers carrying one pistol on the saddle but not of any medieval/Renaissance man-at-arms carrying both lance and crossbow, especially when he already had a firearm!

and I mean a charge form the front into the arqubuse's although a flank or rear charge works too

By the time the "arquebus" (I take it that you mean the 16th-century matchlock firearm, not the earlier "hook guns") became a major presence on the battlefield, the dominant tactical paradigm was quite Neoclassical--ideally the horsemen would engage the opposing horsemen in front of them, rout those enemies, and then reform for a charge into the flank or rear of the enemy's infantry. So the ideal was a flanking charge and I doubt any Renaissance commander would have willingly thrown his horsemen into a frontal slugfest into infantry if he had a choice.


Now, the real difficulty with your question is that it seems to be focused on the earlier half of the 16th century, and during this period we don't really see massed firearm formations operating on the battlefield except as a component of a combined pike-and-shot formation. It's going to be quite hard (maybe even impossible) to separate the effect of the fire from that of the pike in countering the cavalry attack; for example, the Battle of ceresole included numerous direct and bloody clashes between cavalry and pike-and-shot infantry formations, and I don't think I've seen a study that has successfully established how many cavalry casualties were due to firearms and how many were due to cold steel at this battle.

[Benjamin Parker]

I thought hook guns were arquebuses

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Yes, in a way, arquebuses did come out of the hook guns, and their name was a French adaptation of the hook-guns' German name (Hakenbuchse). But when people talk of "arquebus" without qualifications the normal assumption is that the person is talking of the fully developed 16th-century matchlock weapon. So please be precise with your terminology--explain what you mean in detail right from the beginning rather than assuming that people would "get it" right away.

Now that brings up one question: you said " knights charged through musket fire," and as far as I know there's no controversy about the definition of musket--it's a big, 16th-century, post-medieval matchlock weapon. Did you really mean musket fire there, or were you referring to medieval handguns again? Once more, this confusion underscores the point about the need for terminological clarity.

[Benjamin Parker]

I meant an arquebus or an early hook gun or a pistol but what I'm trying to say is did knights or any large group of people in armor of proof charge directly into a line of firearms 15th-16th century and come out largely unscathed

[LafayetteCCurtis]

No better luck with that definition, then. One reason is the problem I've mentioned before about massed firearm formations existing only in combination with pikes or some other kind of close-combat formation. The other is...well, I could imagine men-at-arms or 16th-century cavalry charging dispersed skirmishers, but those people would probably not have done so by choice because the skirmishers wouldn't have been worth their time and energy.

It's also worth noting that standards for "proof" armor were not universal. In the late 15th century the ability to resist most crossbow bolts seems to have been generally enough; in the 16th century this gradually rose until, by the end of the century, the heaviest armors were supposed to have breastplates and helmet visors that could resist short-range pistol shots and even musket balls fired from outside the optimum range. However, much of this resistance was achieved through the use of add-on plates (especially the steel placard worn over the ordinary breastplate), so it was certainly unfeasible to make the entire armor "proof" in this way; in fact, I recall several military writers saying that all the armor outside the visor and the breatsplate ought to be as light as possible while still providing reasonable protection against the impacts of less penetrative weapons (particularly pikes and swords). So an armor with "proof" breastplate and visor/buffe would still have been very much penetrable on its less vital parts.

Sorry for not providing direct answers, because (honestly) there's no such thing. There were too many variables that influenced cavalry vs. firearm encounters in late-Medieval and Renaissance battlefields and it seems pretty much impossible to reduce them in order to find examples of "pure" cavalry vs. firearm encounters.