Plate armour

Plate armour is a historical type of personal body armour made from bronze, iron, or steel plates, culminating in suits of armour which entirely or mostly encased the wearer. Full plate steel armour developed in Europe during the Late Middle Ages, especially in the context of the Hundred Years' War, from the coat of plates (popular in late 13th and early 14th century) worn over mail suits during the 14th century, a century famous for transitional armour.

In Europe, full plate armour reached its peak in the 15th and 16th centuries. The full suit of armour, also referred to as a panoply, is thus a feature of the very end of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period. Its popular association with the "medieval knight" is due to the specialised jousting armour which developed in the 16th century.

Full suits of Gothic and Milanese plate armour were worn on the battlefields of the Burgundian Wars, the Wars of the Roses, the Polish–Teutonic Wars, the Eighty Years' War, the French Wars of Religion, the Italian Wars, the Hungarian–Ottoman Wars, the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, the Polish–Ottoman Wars, a significant part of the Hundred Years' War, and even the Thirty Years' War. The most heavily armoured troops of the period were heavy cavalry, such as gendarmes and early cuirassiers, but the infantry troops of the Swiss mercenaries and the Landsknechts also took to wearing lighter suits of "three quarters" munition armour, leaving the lower legs unprotected.

The use of plate armour began to decline in the early 17th century, but it remained common both among the nobility (e.g., the Emperor Ferdinand II, Louis XIII, Philip IV of Spain, Maurice of Orange and Gustavus Adolphus) and cuirassiers throughout the European wars of religion. After the mid-17th century, plate armour was mostly reduced to the simple breastplate or cuirass worn by cuirassiers, with the exception of the Polish Hussars that still used considerable amounts of plate. This was due to the development of the musket, which was able to reliably penetrate plate armour. For infantry, the breastplate gained renewed importance with the development of shrapnel in the late Napoleonic Wars. The use of steel plates sewn into flak jackets dates to World War II, and was replaced by more modern materials such as fibre-reinforced plastic, since the mid-20th century.

Mail armour is a layer of protective clothing worn most commonly from the 9th to the 14th centuries, though it would continue to be worn under plate armour until the 15th century. Mail was made from hundreds of small interlinking iron or steel rings sometimes held together by rivets. It was made this way so that it would be able to follow the contour of the wearer's body, maximizing comfort and minimizing unnecessary weight. Mail armour was designed mainly to defend against thrusting and cutting weapons, rather than bludgeons. Typical clothing articles made of mail at the time would be coifs, gloves, and chausses. From the 10th to the 13th century, mail armour was so popular in Europe that it was known as the age of mail.