Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Pikes, Muskets and Flouncy Shirts => Topic started by: Tordenskjold on 19 April 2017, 03:56:31 PM
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Did chainmail (or maille, or however you like to describe it) armour see any use in the period from around 1550-1600?
It might seem like an odd question. Thing is I'm converting some minis for a roleplaying game set during the french wars of religion (the 1560-1570 pats specifically) and wanted to know it chainmail armour would be totally out of place.
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Pretty sure it would be entirely out of fashion in France by that point. Chainmail was still pretty common out east though, in Poland and Muscovy and the Ottoman Empire and such, so if you can justify having exotic foreign mercenaries in your RPG, then go for it!
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Also common among the Irish of the time, as well as English demi-lancers.
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Common among the irish and on the Scottish/Englishers Borderers (border reivers), not sure about the french, but not too common on spainish troops. As far as im aware in the borders it tended to be older armour that was still being used, as it was better than nothing at all. Most went in jack-o-plate.
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Chain mail bishops mantles were popular during that time period.
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Mail was often worn as a defence against assassins, but under clothing in the same way as Kevlar vests are today.
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A great resource here, as the lads have said more common amongst irregular troops such as reivers and the Irish
https://myarmoury.com/features.html
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I can't recall seeing one western picture of troops in mail at that time. Eastern Europe, India, Japan, Persia, north Africa - 'nutha story.
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There's this French badger (Savoy), found on Pinterest.
https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/376191375108583802/
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This has always been a sore point with me, as I have several boxes of GW's Pirazzo's Lost Legion, which would make great renaissance pikemen & crossbow men, if it weren't that they all wear chainmail in addition to their breast plates. The Alcatani Fellowship is a dead loss, however.
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Chainmail may still have been used during sieges by defenders. Anything you can lay your hands upon was better than nothing.
The same goes for crossbows and shields.
During the siege of Malta of 1565 even 15th century quilted jacks reaching the knees were used by the maltese militiamen.
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Thank you all for some very insightful co,memts on the subject.
I think I'll convert a few chain mailed bodies into having leather jacks with chain mail arms instead. Will give a nice mixture of styles.
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Andrew: I used to have Brian Rigelsford carry out conversion work for me, converting figures into TYW figures. He once mentioned Pirazzo's Lost Legion, and he said that they could be converted but I never got round to exploring exactly what he meant. Sadly, I'm no longer in touch with him. I wonder whether it could have been to fill in the 'holes' in the chain mail by smearing over a very thin layer of green stuff so that the chain mail becomes flat and looks like a leather coat. If all else fails, the Pirazzo figures seem to go for a small fortune on Ebay.
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Thank you, Paul. I had thought of applying putty to the arms, as they are the only area with mail. I may yet do so, if I can find the time and energy. It seems a strange call on the sculptor's part, though, almost as if he - one of the Perrys, I think - were deliberately trying to be annoying to historical gamers (or, more likely, had been instructed to do so by GW). Fortunately I bought my sets in the days when GW had sales, but I hadn't though of selling them on. I might be tempted to part with the Alcatani and other 'what were they thinking of?' figures, however.
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And DO remember that there's no such thing as chainmail.
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I apologise for my own use of a non-existent compound noun. I also must apologise to Games Workshop, and sculptor Alan Perry in particular, having earlier examined one of my boxed sets of Pirazzo's Lost Legion, and noting that, of the twelve figures, only one has chain mail sleeves, the others being clad in tunics and padded jacks,and perfectly usable as sculpted in a historical setting, as far as I am aware, though the tassels on the pikes - as well as the standard - need to go. I have a few packs of figures in addition to the boxes, and it may be that these contained proportionately more of the mailed figure, somewhat distorting my memory. In any event, it's high time I did something with them - a veritable tercio is there to be assembled.