Knights Are Useless In War

noone wore 50 kg of armor to a battle, unless it was the king but he didn't fight....

 

Knight is useless. Even heavy infantry is useless. Firearms rules!!!

 

firearms are useless, when you have nuclear submarines

 

Which is also why almost no such armors would weigh 50 kilos if made for war...

 

I think he/she was saying that the knights in novels are useless, because they are portrayed almost always on foot, in heavy armor, and they are always portrayed as powerful. But it's not true.

 

The armor used in battle was way more mobile than those shown in exhibitions or collecting dust in a castle museeum, it was necessary to have free room to swing ones weapon. Considering the effort, ressources and money involved in creating a full set of plate armor in a time where mass production was unheard of, armor wouldn't even have been invented if it wasn't useful.

 

Yes, I know they didn't fight alone. The smallest unit of independent knights usually consists of a small 'lance' of armed units after all. I'm just stating that Metatron claimed a trained knight with helmet on would've been able to deal with backstabs on his own. I'm saying that's bullshit, I'm not denying that someone else would've protected that back.

EDIT: Also, if they release their helmets for better field of view, that defeats the purpose of having helmets in the first place. That makes their heads completely vulnerable to even rocks or the butt of a spear.

 

50 kilos or 30 kilos, imagine yourselves fighting in that suit of armor of a hour, when it could last potentially for more then 5 hours. If its 30 kilos, then i'll concede that they may be used as a heavy infantry however nevertheless you can't breathe in that.

 

i feel this video is relevant...

 

30 kilos is about the same as what a modern soldier would carry, difference is a knight would have the weight distributed evenly across the body rather than concentrated on the back.

 

Even 30kg is pretty much the upper limit of what full plate worn in a real fight would weigh. More realistically, it would be around 20kg. Like others have said, modern soldiers regularly fight while wearing gear significantly heavier than plate armour.

Hell, even in JROTC in American high schools, teenagers do obstacle courses in heavier gear than that, let alone trained soldiers.

 

Alright... I concede, i've been thinking that the plated armor weighs around 35kilos-50kilos. But it seems that the weight of the armor is much lighter then what i expected it to be. But that video, that soldier result was catastrophic, i can't even describe how shitty he performed.

 

depends. Different time peiriods had different forms of knight armor. Plus they'd know the disadvantages of wearing very heavy armor so thats why horses were used. All knights had to really do was ride their horse, carry a sword or bow, and hack or snipe the enemies. The armor around their shoulders would, i imagine, be lighter to allow better movement. And with the height advantage from the horse? Of course im not talking cavalry, they usually didn't wear heary armor at all.

Also what do you mean by full gear, what did you wear it as? Because a lot of warriors carried full body armor, it was a training thing. It wasn't usually something done in times or battle from my understanding?

 

on a related note to your first post and ignoring the glaring faults at saying heavy armor is stupid i can say you are sort of on to something with the rest though.

as someone who grew up around horses i can tell you a horse comming running at you will send serious shivers down your spine but from what i gather heavy cavalry is more of a win more sorta thing than an actual winning strategy as they are great for shock and flanking but are huge targets for archers (as if you horse goes down you will likely hurt yourself badly) and if you get stuck you are at a bad position to fight from as its hard to do manuvers from horseback.

to me it seems like heavy cavalry(knights) were pretty much great for short term bursts of damage as lances were devastating but if the horses couldn't keep moving they were pretty fucked, like the armor helps but if 4 guys are holding you down you're gonna get a knife in your throat

 

Not really. Helmet with visors were quite handy against lances - main danger from lance collision.

Of course, directly taking off helmets (mostly rather heavy and unwieldy great helms) became redundant after the skullcaps or cervelliers (small tight-fitting helmets worn under great helms) evolved into bacinets.

 

Pretty much why they started armouring the horses as well.

 

You guys forget, back then ppl are more fit and robust while ppl these days are fat and skinny as fuck. Those people were trained to wear those armor, while our current soldiers are trained differently. U shouldnt compare the 2 because the time is different so our needs are different.

 

Uhn... Aside from the whole talk about horses that people already said... You should keep in mind that large scale battles wouldn't have that much movement involves usually.

You'd basically get a shield wall clash against another shield wall, you are basically stuck in position stabbing your enemy's joints with a sword while you hold your shield up... And when you're too tired to hold it, you fall back and let an ally take your place until you recover.

Like, it's a pretty hellish position, but certainly doesn't require much running and jumping. And since the people on the back of the wall can't do much, you can exchange places when necessary.

 

Have you ever had one of those knights smash into you at 20-30mph? No, you haven't. You're still alive.

Forget about all the 'elite' and 'expensive' talk. They were medieval wrecking balls. Their job was to flatten infantry shield walls. It's also actually where they got the idea for modern day wrestling, except, you know... not fake.

 

Um, not really. Modern, moderately gym-going person is statistically significantly stronger than most knights. Of course, we dont count freak anecdotes about people doing pull-ups with horses clamped between legs. Balanced diet, good health etc does wonders.
On the other hand, average endurance was better back then - rather scarce and limited diet made human body to adapt. Modern couch potato would feel weak from hunger by just lying on sofa if forced to be limited to medieval peasant's daily calories which would actually be sufficient for his 14-hour physical labour day.

Historical battles were different from modern reenactions. There were not that many people and they were quite spread out too. "Shield walls" died out pretty much after Rome fell and nobody cared about spending years to train professionals to maintain formations. Most of the time when knights were around, footmen were busy poking each other with spears, hurling stones at each other and inventing new ways of cursing someone's momma. Knights were nearby "fighting" duels mostly, and taking ransoms, without actually getting that much involved with "dirty commoners" (doesn't mean there were no all-out melees, but those were exceptional enough to be mentioned in chronicles with comments like "oh shit, imagine that!"). Not that many impressive shield walls of Antiquity, sorry Hollywood.