Armor is the protection for the body worn in battle. Some of the pieces of armor that would be used are mail, plate armor, leather, shields, and helmets.
Mail needed all the skill of a master craftsman. The iron wire could not be made in large amounts, because there were no machines to make it like there are today. Each piece had to be made slowly and painfully, by hand. A piece of iron was hammered into a flat plate. This was cut into thin strips and each strip was hammered until it was round and thin enough to work with. The metal was hammered cold because this made the links much stronger. The strip was wound around an iron bar. When it was slipped off the bar, it looked like a spring. Each loop of it was snipped off. The ends of the loop were hammered flat and a hole was poked at the end of each side of the loop. The loop was then passed through another loop of mail, and fastened with a rivet which went through the holes at the end of the loops.
It took patience, hard work, and skill to make mail. Without being damaged, mail could turn swords and spears sideways. While wearing mail knights could still move about freely and be just as menacing.
Mail was one of the most popular pieces of armor. There were man
At the end of the fifteenth-century the age of armor was finished. The knight was not needed or wanted on the battlefield. He fought for fame and glory; the new armies fought to win. Armor was useless on the battlefield because of advancements in power to long distance weaponry. Longbows and guns could be used by the individual fighter himself, canons could be used to distory whole areas. Even though most types of armor became usless it stayed around until the middle of the sixteenth-century.
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