I’ve seen this one before; here’s a longer version.
@landysbear’s comment that “the weight (of the armour) makes fatigue an issue” is missing the point of the exercise. All three men are running the course with similar amounts of additional weight across their bodies, but it’s not distributed in the same way.
The purpose of this comparison was to bust the myth that Approximate-Weight-X of plate armour buckled, laced or hooked all over the wearer’s body and limbs was for some reason heavier*, more awkward or more cumbersome than Approximate-Weight-X of modern kit secured to the wearer’s torso by shoulder straps, waist-belt and MOLLE webbing.
*Heavier how? Approximate-Weight-X = Approximate-Weight-X, whether it’s ancient or modern and composed of lead or feathers.
The equation is simple: armour is meant to give protection in combat and increase survival, but if the weight or awkwardness of armour always reduced survival more than the given protection increased it, armour wouldn’t have been worn - yet it HAS been worn in one form or another for about 4,500 years, from the helmets and shields of Sumer, 2500 BC…
…and the TALOS project AKA the “Iron Man Suit”. With that name, I hope there are no access points near the heels… (”Jason and the Argonauts” was on TV a few days ago; then I read about this stuff and was amused. One version is a powered exoskeleton, apparently, but as Talos in the movie showed, power can run out. Sometimes literally.)
I also don’t think the armour in the comparison is as well-fitted to its wearer as it could have been, because the result would have been even more impressive. Plate armour is like a suit, and fits best when it’s made entirely from scratch for the man who’s going to wear it. At the other end of the scale are off-the-peg parts in SM, M, L and XL, though some armourers can tailor them to a better fit.
Made-to-measure gives the least restriction of movement, but it also costs the most - though no armour is cheap: this Financial Times article from 2016 quotes a couple of modern prices: “A beginner’s off-the-peg harness can cost about £8,000, whereas a made-to-measure model can cost up to £70,000.”
I’ve mentioned before that a winner’s prize at some tournaments was often the loser’s “horse and harness”, harness meaning his armour. The REAL prize was the money which the loser had to promise to pay to get his trained horse and personal-fit armour back so he could joust again to earn the money to actually pay to get his…
Dr Tobias Capwell (former Curator of Arms and Armour at the Glasgow Museum, currently Curator of Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection in London) has been wearing and jousting in armour since his late teens, and this is his bespoke Black Harness, built by Robert Macpherson.
Here’s a brief clip of him running in it which shows how well a man in properly fitted armour can move (compare it to the running in the comparison video.)
The Black Harness has since been sold; I wonder if the new owner intended to wear it and, if they weren’t Dr Capwell’s exact build, what needed done to correct the fit.
Of course armour of such quality wasn’t exactly cheap back in the Middle Ages and Renaissance either. It was mostly the perquisite of nobles and royals, and if such gentry couldn’t get to the armourer’s shop for a personal fitting, they used other methods which suggested a list of tape-measurements wasn’t good enough. A 1500s entry from the Royal Accounts of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V mentions buying “…wax for making a model of His Majesty’s legs, to be sent to Desiderius Kolman Helmschmied for the armour he is engaged on…”
Shakespeare mentions, in Henry IV pt. 2 “a rich armour worn in heat of day / That scalds with safety.” Even in cold weather overheating and dehydration rather than weight were the main problems with full plate (unlike the full mail of a century earlier, plate didn’t “breathe”).
The Battle of Towton in 1461 was memorably fought in a driving snowstorm, but there were casualties on both sides from heat exhaustion since the savagery of the battle, the bloodiest ever fought on British soil, meant that opening - never mind removing - a helmet for extra air and ventilation might be the last thing its wearer ever did. Evidence from the Towton graves shows what happened to unprotected heads as defeated Lancastrian soldiers were cut down…
(Writer / Artist Note: a group of knights after a hard fight in cold weather would be swathed by steam like horses after racing in winter, with plumes of it rising up round their heads once their helmets were off..)
Battlefield armour weighed, on average, about 60 lbs rather than 100.
100 lb armour did exist, but it was very late in the development of plate and wasn’t intended for battlefield use: it was specialised sports kit for jousting and the wearer didn’t move about in it, he sat on a horse which did the moving for him.
This jousting armour from the Metropolitan Museum in New York is for a German style called the Gestech or joust of peace, using blunt lances tipped with coronals - crown-shaped three- or four-pronged heads - rather than sharp points.
There’s an almost-identical Gestech armour in the Wallace Collection in London which weighs 90 lbs / 41 kg, so it’s reasonable to assume the Met’s armour weighs something similar.
Both are complete, without armour for the legs; they were protected by a collision buffer (Stechsack) round the front of the horse. Here’s the Met’s armour when it was last on display…
All the armour’s weight was from the hips up and, because of the style of jousting, there was either limited mobility (the arms) or none at all (the helm). IMO it’s sports armour like this which is behind all the stories about a knight’s inability to get up after falling.
500 years from now an equivalent interpretation would be to assume, based on Formula One racing-cars, that automobiles of the 20th-21st century went very fast but could carry only one person and no luggage…
