Thread 17952906

Who would win a 15th century Man-at-arms or a 11th century Norman Crusader?

>>17952906 (OP)
What the hell is this dumb question
The man at arms would win by tech level alone

>>17953471
Are you sure about that?

>>17952906 (OP)
Both are based. Man at arms would win though.

The man-at-arms has better armor, and has far superior weapons.

>>17954123
Normans get more based by the microsecond every time I read anything about them.

If they're equipped like your pic? ABSOLUTELY the man at arms 999/1000 times. Because of retarded modern movies and video games people don't realize how absurdly durable advanced plate armour was, you see people jamming swords through breastplates all the time on tv but that just would not happen, EVER.
>just use a mace or other blunt weapon bro
This is also a myth, or at the very least a tremendous exaggeration. Blunt weapons were often considered preferable but it was never remotely as simple as "just give them a good bonk on the head". They're wearing thick ass steel with thick padding underneath it, both specifically designed to protect against blunt trauma. You'd have to clobber the absolute shit out of them, and thats while they're moving around and fighting you while you try to line up your strikes. Plate armour fucking worked, it worked extremely well, the man at arms could absolutely go to town on the crusader without worry while the crusader would need extremely lucky and precise hits to do anything to him.

These guys do a pretty good job at showing what armoured combat was like, they beat the absolute shit out of each other and thats with modern reproduction armour thats significantly thinner and less padded than real advanced plate was.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/821qP3HHT7s
>>17954123
What does this have to do with crusader vs man at arms?

>>17954686
Exactly, underrated how shit blunt was against plate too. Blunt weapons were not really meant to physically damage the body through armour so much as they were to tire the knight out, you can see in modern sports that these blows are completely absorbed by the gambeson and of course don't even dent the steel plates themselves.

The only way to kill a plate armour knight was to get him to ground and stab him repeatedly in the plate gaps to eventually damage the chainmail and gambeson and/or strip armour parts away.

Alternatively it was probably possible to seriously injure the knight by a very hard angled hit on his joints. Literally in modern medieval combat that's the only illegal hit, hits to the head, hits while the warrior is on the ground etc. are all legal (because they do fucking nothing), but hitting joints on outstretched limbs is illegal as this has caused injuries before.

>>17954686
>>17954720
It didn't do shit for them against the Saracens at Varna. Those very same Saracens were crushed by a few valiant Norman knights. You are clearly ignoring that Chivalry and grace of God are the ultimate factors in medieval warfare.

>>17952906 (OP)
Janissaries mog both hard

>>17954479
Wait until you find out that Norman Sicily was a tolerant multiracial paradise whose norman kings were muzzieboos who employed muslim and greeks on their courts and continued minting coins with Arabic text

>>17954479
every time you read a wikipedia article about them, you mean

>>17954775
>those very same saracens were crushed by a few valiant norma nights
You're either 10 years old or literally retarded. There weren't any saracens at varna those were ottomans, a completely different group separated by hundreds of miles and hundreds of years. Even if it was the saracens it still wouldnt mean shit because its a 400 year difference, theyd be completely different by then.
>You are clearly ignoring that Chivalry and grace of God are the ultimate factors in medieval warfare
Thats why the crusades succeeding and the holy land is still christian, right?

>>17954775
>You are clearly ignoring that Chivalry and grace of God are the ultimate factors in medieval warfare.
This is objectively true.

>>17954123
While yes this was a magnificent victory the Norman weapons literally couldnt even kill 15000 people. Or are we proposing a few hundred died, and the rest got hurt sore feet retreating. Like a sword or spear literally wouldnt stay functioning for that many attacks.

>>17954686
Is all the profanity really necessary?

>>17954781
Vlad III’s man at arm say hello there

>>17954720
Why didnt they just squirt water in their nose so they couldn't breathe?

>>17954775
Normans are very based but also they were not so chivalrous at all, in fact often the opposite.

>>17952906 (OP)
the man-at-arms is better armored (plate > maille) but the Norman Crusader is mounted and has God on his side

>>17955311
>but the Norman Crusader is mounted
Men-at-arms were expected to have a horse.

>>17955226
I'm drunk and southern

>>17954686
>hats significantly thinner and less padded than real advanced plate was.

His OT4 titanium is significantly harder to compare then a traditional high carbon steel harness. OT4 can reach approximately 220-259 in the VPH scale by simple working but Medieval steel needs to be perfectly quenched to reach that desired hardness. A problem with that is that during the 15th century, a lot of suits didn't even try quenching due to material concerns. When they did, low carbon and medium carbon was only slack quenched which for the former would only carburise it. Also 1.2 mm is indeed on the thin side for a breast plate but it's also approximately 43% lighter. Rest of his armor is made with 1mm OT4 which is more then thick enough (and most likely harder) for the limb portions. I think his suit may have a greater edge over most infantry harnesses.

>>17954720
They are modern suits, with modern alloys and heat treatment, with different fixtures for the head. Even the dimensions look beefier for the same helmet type. Sometimes they just make designs up loosely based on manuscripts.

>>17955314
not as good as the Norman mounts, or the Norman horsemen for that matter

>>17955442
>They are modern suits, with modern alloys and heat treatment
Yeah Anon, when do you think we learned how to make those "modern alloys". They are centuries old. Medieval metal workers knew how to make good steel and even had names for overcarbonised brittle alloyws (cursed iron/cursed steel).

Heat treatment is literally tempering, we learned how to do that from medieval blacksmiths too.

100% of modern suits are made using medieval blacksmith techniques, they aren't being producing in steel mills.

>>17955449
>not as good as the Norman mounts
They would have used almost exactly the same horse breeds. In fact they were likely even stronger than 11th century horses as they had over 300 years of even more selective breeding.
>or the Norman horsemen for that matter
They learnt the same exact things?

>>17953471
fpbp

>>17954865
During the first 1st crusade they repeatedly won despite being vastly outnumbered.

They lost most of their horses by the time they reached Acre, but still continued on to Jerusalem out of pure conviction. Then, facing overwhelming odds at Ascalon, starved, thousands of kilometres from the nearest supply lines with broken equipment, operating on blind faith alone, they won a great final victory against all odds.

Later crusades lacked the same zealotry and conviction. It became a virtue single for nobles more than anything.

>>17955626
The majority of soldiers on the First Crusade were not Normans.

>>17955628
I didn't say they were.

>>17955564
>100% of modern suits are made using medieval blacksmith techniques, they aren't being producing in steel mills.

We are talking about material qualities not the actual shaping of the armour. Titanium was discovered in 1791 but only started being used commercially in 1940. Mangalloy which is what is most commonly used now days for carbon iron was created in 1882. How are medieval smiths going to acquire these?

>Heat treatment is literally tempering
Yet they didn't do it. They only slack quenched for the significant portion of armor during the 15th. Low carbon can only be carburised which means it's only case hardened.

>>17955639
No one is building fricken Titanium suits, do you have any idea how retardedly expensive that is?

100% of the plate armour suits that you see at modern medieval combat tournaments are steel. They are steel because it's literally banned to use non-steel materials. The armours don't have to be 100% historically accurate, but they have to based off of real historical armour with only minor modifications.

The armours are produced by hobbyist blacksmiths using medieval techniques.

Btw, the Titanium alloy you mentioned actually has a similar to lower hardness and tensile strength compared to most steels, it's purely a density advantage and not that useful for its price considering the armour thickness needed for steel plate is very thin to begin with.

>>17955639
>Yet they didn't do it.
What? Of course they did...tempering is older than the iron age itself. And they understood how it worked too, even to a microstructure level to some extent.

>>17955649
>No one is building fricken Titanium suits, do you have any idea how retardedly expensive that is

I've mentioned Titanium this entire time because that's literally what dequitem is wearing and he himself has mentioned it multiple times. I have a feeling you just ignored the entire premise of my initial post.

>The armours are produced by hobbyist blacksmiths using medieval techniques.

You can literally contact the smiths that worked for arrows vs armour and any of the commercial forges for smithing to know Hardening is very different now to what we have back then.

>Titanium alloy you mentioned actually has a similar to lower hardness and tensile strength compared to most steels

Again, read the first post very carefully. I've addressed this.

>>17955652
Refer to the pic. Most armor isn't being hardened. Ones that are again, only being slack quenched. Very rarely you will find both quenching then tempering. Just because we do this with swords doesn't mean it was the same for armor.

>>17955676
First of all I'm >>17954720, not >>17954686, so the titanium discussion is not as relevant to me as the heat treatment though I did comment on tit since you replied to >>17955564 talking about tit again. No too important, but you are confusing two different discussions.

W.r.t to the first discussion I understand that you want to argue higher hardness at lower density of tit alloys (or TS at lower density is what you meant), but you missed the part where I said this is irrelevant because the steel plate thickness that you need for sufficient armour is very thin too. This is proven by the countless combat tournaments using steel. You also mention "hardness" a lot, but ideal armour as not necessarily hard, it's tempered precisely to _lower_ hardness while increasing tensile strength. Brittle, hard materials are not actually good for combat, or people would be fighting in cast iron pots. W.r.t. tensile strength then the tit alloys are actually similar to steel, so it is not relevant except that you can make a thinner armour (also dubious because you don't want to do that for energy absorption potential loss).


1/2

>>17955676
W.r.t to the second discussion ITT which is about heat treatment of medieval plate armour in general, not one youtuber in particular (again I'm not the OP who posted that) and also not one smith in particular like your picrel. My point was that forged steel with gambeson underneath is enough to stop blunt weapons from doing much damage and you can see this in every major medieval combat tournament with rigorous standards surrounding the plate armour.

As for your more central claims that they didn't do heat treatment, picrel is from "Experiments with 'medieval steel' plates" by Alan Williams. I know you don't have a materials science background so I will just add to this that you cannot get pearlite without near-perfect heat treatment. This completely disproves your entire line of argument, we have hard evidence of heat treatments that resulted in pearlite structures in medieval artifacts.

The Italian armour in this paper has a tensile strength of 426 and the German armour has 513 MPa, both are more than sufficient for the kind of combat I talk about in the first paragraph.

>You can literally contact the smiths that worked for arrows vs armour and any of the commercial forges for smithing to know Hardening is very different now to what we have back then.
It isn't, some particularly skilled medieval German smiths even managed to get martensite. You don't know what you're talking about at all. These medieval smiths knew a lot more about metallurgy than both you and the hobbiests you are talking about.

2/2

>>17954686
>If they're equipped like your pic? ABSOLUTELY the man at arms 999/1000 times
Actually not. While Crusader from 11th century is less protected, it still protected good enough so simple strikes can't hurt him. You need special weapons and full strength blow to do damage and that is much easier to avoid and parry. Crusader can parry that shot and get into clinch and wrestling, outcome of which is primarily defined by strength and skill of participants not thier armor.
So in duel man at arms from 15th century doesn't have that overwhelming advantage.

His massive advantage is primarily in group battles, he is massively better armored against arrows, massively better protected in group fights, when you face wall of polearms points and you can't avoid and parry them all, you parry one and his buddy stabs you in the side when you do that.

>>17955449
in what world would a Norman knight from the 11th century have a better horse than a norman knight from the 15th century? Because thats what you are proposing.

>>17952906 (OP)
It depends on the experience, equipment and size of the fighters. 11th century and 15th century had different schools of fighting, and with experience it becomes easy to exploit a chink in armor, it also reduce the chance of a fighter from fucking up. The most important thing in the battle is equipment, chain vs plate with swords I'd say that plate wins, but a warhammer, mace or just a big ass club with a spike can destroy plate armor. If they use swords they would either use the pummels to bash each other, since slashing is pretty much useless against both chainmail and plate. The last thing is size, while equipment is good at equalizing theirs killing power, but reach is still important when engaging in melee.

>>17954838
>Contemporary accounts describe Frederick's court as having a large number of women, including his wives and concubines, and he reportedly kept African eunuchs who served as caretakers.
>He also had a menagerie of exotic animals and employed an Arab chef, reflecting his fascination with diverse cultures.
>The allegations are widely considered by modern scholars to be part of a political smear campaign, though they may reflect the Emperor's actual practice of surrounding himself with a large household of women and eunuchs, which was unusual for a European monarch of his time.
Based Antichrist, putting muzzies in their place and taking their women in a harem.

>>17955626
The First Crusade had up to one hundred thousand participants, a huge number for the period which even shocked the Byzantines. When the Crusaders arrived in the Holy Land, their presence was completely overwhelming. At the time, the region was ruled by the Seljuk Turks, who were used to a very different style of warfare. Real counter resistance was not organized until Saladin. During the Battle of Hattin, the opposing forces were evenly matched.

>>17952906 (OP)
Depends on their individual skill

>>17955998
You're talking about the peasant's crusade, they were mostly unarmed pilgrims.

We're talking about the Chivalric nobles with far stronger souls who made it all happen.