#cuisses

Thigh Defenses with Knee Defenses. (ca. 1425-1450)

There's actually various reasons to not wear or own certain parts of a harness, but the lack of the thigh has a few factors:

First, a cuisse (the plate armour over the thigh) doesn't always need to be fully encapsulating to work. In infantry combat with other members of a regiment, you are unlikely to be attacked from behind (generally), and thus the main priority is armouring the front of the thigh rather than the back. Even for a duel, hitting the back of the thigh is significantly harder than striking the front and side, which the forward facing part of the cuisse will cover on it's own.

Second is cost. Armour is expensive, as I can verify, wanting to put together my own harness. While better armour oriented historians than I can verify the historicity of a full harness of plate, we know from documents on the lives of say, Jacques de Lelaing, that it was not unheard of to omit parts of armour to get better mobility at times. Unsuprisingly, all armour is a matter of trading degrees of mobility for defence, and that can be different depending on an individual. While the medieval world did require some uniformity to function (certain kit standards were required, though hardly to modern standards of uniformity), it is not surprising that parts of armour that were seen as expensive and cumbersome would be omitted. When cost is also factored, it's cheaper to simply get the forward facing segment of the cuisse than a fully encapsulating type.

Third is preference. Continental armour tended toward fully encapsulated thigh armour, yet British (most usually English) cuisses tended to be open at the back. Some argue this is due to the English focus on heavy infantry knights over cavalry. I cannot be absolutely sure of that myself, but I can see some basis for this in my own HEMA experience, where my upper thigh armour consists of two large plates integrated into my overlay, to the outside of the thigh. In the time I've been fencing with this set up (since 2016), I've been hit on the front of the thigh a handful of times, and the back of the thigh twice. While this is not the best measure (most of those fights were done with longswords, not polearms for example), it does clue us that generally against cutting weapons, when the upper leg is targeted, the outer thigh is generally what will be struck. As such, covering the forward facing part of the thigh and the outer sides will generally be sufficient from an infantry perspective. How this would change for cavalry is debated: some HEMA and re-enactment figures I've chatted with about leg armour have said that the use of sabatons (the plate covering for the foot) and the cuisse at the back has not really been noticable enough for them to think them extremely necessary. However, one should consider that these anecdotes are usually in reference to cavalry on cavalry, and make no consideration for projectiles, which a men-at-arms might want extra protection from due to not being able to always see and face said projectiles, which can make one exposed to fire in small locations (such as the foot or back of the thigh).

In short then, there's many reasons to omit parts of armour, but it often comes down to cost and preference, and it is not exactly right or wrong to omit the back of a cuisse for the purpose of duels or combat, though one would be unlikely to omit extra protection in late period tournaments where full protection of the body was a consideration, for example.

A stunning pair of beautifully fluted and delicately lamed Cuisses,

Weight: 2.5 lbs/1.15 lbs each

Acquisition Numbers: A290/A289