Silver Men and Smithies

There was a time as little boys we dreamed of going into battle as silver men on fiery steeds with lances poised and broadswords drawn.  But...the silver men are gone with childhood dreams!  At the Musee de l'Armee in Paris old men can relive those dreams. It has one of the largest collections of body armor in the world.  Full metal body armor came into being about the 14th century. You see men wanted to protect themselves in battle. Armor had been around in Greek and Roman times but not full body armor. Not silvermen!

The Roman soldiers wore breastplates and helmets. But not full body armor. Full body armor is usually associated with the 14th and 15th centuries. When men learned how to produce better metal and forming it, full body armor become possible. The metal could be shaped to cover individual parts of the body. Arm, leg, hand, foot and so on. A new type of blacksmith emerged...the armorer. A blacksmith that specialized in making armor. His basic tools were the hammer and anvil. He would have used a forge to heat metal to make it more malleable, so that it was easier to shape. But most of the shaping was done by brute force. Intricate curves were all shaped with a hammer.   The most difficult design problem was to design a suit that allowed freedom of movement while providing protection. Once this design problem was solved the only uncovered part of the knight were the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet.  The armor of the kings and wealthier nobles was decorated by way of embossing, etching, and engraving. Gold and other metals could be inlaid in intricate designs.

Nowhere is there more variation in design than there is in helmet design. The face may have been

enclosed or revealed. There may have been a hat brim or not. Heavily ornamented or plain. Plumed or not. There seemed to be endless variety. One of the biggest problems for the wearer was how well he could see!  Particularly peripheral vision! Whatever the design was, the purpose was the same… to protect the head!

Interestingly enough the weight of a suit of armor was less than you might think. A knight’s armor weighed only 60 to 70 pounds. Roughly the same weight as carried by a modern foot soldier. But the knight rode a horse. Incidentally armored horses weren’t very common. The armorers were no longer needed in the 16th century. Armor was no longer in use. The development of firearms had made full body armor useless.

When, as boys, we dreamed of going into battle as silver men our dreams were spawned by history. Nobles frequently took their sons as young as 12 fully clad in suits of armor into battle.

Just as we as boys had dreamed.

• musee de l'Armee Hotel national des Invalides, 129 rue de Grenelle - 75007 Paris
• www.musee-armee.com