Anno Domini Armoury

[Athos187]

Anno Domini Armoury

This is our showcase thread for all the amazing custom models being made by Succettitim6. If anyone else contributed a custom texture here I will try and add you to the individual model credits.

These models represent all of the pieces we feel accurately represent the real armour worn by warriors during this time period.

All models will be paired with their archaeological or pictorial source to show how we determined whether to include it. Our criteria for accepting some pieces and not others is whether or not they are:

1. Actually based on an archaeological source (this is is the strongest evidence we use)
2. Or if there is strong evidence for them both before and after our time line that we will be using them for.

If you disagree with something or feel we are missing something we are very open to debate BUT you must present strong evidence to back your claim. So please feel free to make posts on here with actual evidence to back up your claims.

[Athos187]

The Thames Helm

11th century Segmented Helmet from the Thames or Northern France, this is the helmet as seen in the Bayeux Tapestry. The seams are located on the front right and left as well as the rear right and left. If you look at the helmet from above the seams will be an X. The segments were either riveted directly to each other or they were attached to a scaffold of clips in a spangen construction, most likely had a hook on the nasal to help hold a maille bib in place.

As Seen in the Bayeux Tapestry:

[Athos187]

Olmutz Helm

11th century Single Piece Helm from Olmütz Moravia. Height is 10.4 inches. Also had hook on the nasal for maille bib.

[Athos187]

​Layered Tunic Armor

These are some examples of the type of linen armor that the common fighting man would wear. One of the concepts we have subscribed to with this modding project is the idea that the common fighting men in early medieval armies weren't just wearing a simple tunic when they went to war. Instead they would wear multiple layers of tunics to create their own affordable version of padded armor. This is actually something we are very focused on right now and our team modeller is hard at work making lots of variations including multiple tunics worn over each other, era specific hoods worn over hats to provide head protection and partially boiled hide armor.

Our goal is to put as much work into recreating the common fighting man as we do with the heavily armoured elites and for once make them a cool looking part of your TW army.

[Athos187]

10th Century Bandhelmet

10th century Bandhelmet type found in the Netherlands.

[Athos187]

Grisons Helm

Helmet from Niederrealta, Grisons, Switzerland. Iron, 11th/12th century. Helmet has hemispherical calotte, cast in one piece. Iron stirnreif attached to upper and lower edge, each with a row of 63 conical rivets, in between a double wave band of small circular hallmarks. The head band and rivets are tinned.

[Athos187]

Olmutz Helm

11th century Single Piece Conical helmet from Moravia.

[Athos187]

Chamosan Helmet

Original dating of this helmet from northern Italy was the 12th and 13th centuries. It should be noted, however, that contemporary European representations of round-bell-shaped helmet forms can also be detected from the 10th century.

[Athos187]

St. Wenceslaus Helmet

The helmet known as “St. Wenceslas helmet” is very well known and curious item, which has been kept in Bohemia from the Early Middle Ages. Along with a chainmail, a mail cloak and other items, it is a part of the crown jewels, playing its symbolic role in the past millennium.

[Athos187]

Hermann Historica Helm

Herman Historica Helm, low iron cone helmet with one-piece bowl and nasal, the latter with traces of a reinforcement or decoration (five traces of rivets, at the rear remnants of a washer), the quite low central ridge tapering off at the forehead and the neck. Very similar to the helmet from Olmutz, but flatter.

[Athos187]

11th Century Maille Hauberk

The word hauberk is derived from the Old Frankish word halsberg (c. 1300), which originally described a small piece of mail that protects ("bergen", literally "to give protection, to save, to rescue") the throat and the neck (the "Hals"). The Bayeux Tapestry illustrates Norman soldiers wearing a knee-length version of the hauberk, with three-quarter length sleeves and a split from hem to crotch. Such armor was quite expensive—both in materials (iron wire) and time/skill required to manufacture it—so common foot soldiers rarely were so equipped.

In addition, one of the first depictions of mail chausses is in the Bayeux tapestry of 1066–1083, with William the Conqueror and several other Normans wearing them. The vast majority of the Norman troops used no leg armour at all in the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

[Athos187]

Byzantine Kavadion

For the front line infantry the Composition on Warfare (I.3-4) describes a set of minimal equipment consisting of a turban over a thick felt cap and a coat (kavadion) made of coarse silk quilted with cotton wadding “as thick as can be stitched”.

[Athos187]

Byzantine Band Helm

A modest modification of helms in use in the fifth century, this type of helm continued in use into the twelfth century due to its ease of construction. It has the advantage of being naturally head shaped (that is, oval) when assembled.


Middle Byzantine and quasi-Byzantine art often shows such helms as having a panel of neck protection vertically striated and sometimes also divided in various ways horizontally. Many people interpret these as pteruges or scales. While that is possible, the heavy used of padding by the middle Byzantine military suggests such material as an interpretation which in practice is more comfortable and at least as protective.

[Athos187]

Jawshan Lamellar Cuirass - Gambeson - Mighfar

[Seinine]

Well, it would be more quick for me to redirect you to this study from french historian François Buttin, who made a rebuttal of most misconception we have on european armors in middle age. I don't know if an english version exist, but at least you have the french one under hand.

For summary...

Nowadays historians have been seriously mislead by misconceptions in armament vocabulary of the time, because of errors from scholars of the XVIII to the XIX century. First Meyrick, then Viollet le Duc, and after them Kelly, all those historians and scholars have put wrong interpretations of sources.

The major of those errors is about the word "mail", that led Meyrick to assume visually from the Bayeux tapestry, he invented words, sometime relating them with words he found on sources, to imagine different kind of mails, such as "rustred mail", and our current "chainmail" he also called "treslised mail" (this last term as all say is actually accurate). Viollet le Duc also imagine the "broigne" to be the "precedent" of the hauberk, as an armor made of rings sewed together. Then Kelly came, said all this was rubbish, and that only "chainmail" existed, and the name "chainmail" itself would be a pleonasm, as "mail" would always be interlinked rings of metal.
Buttin offer a total rebuttal of this idea: the word mail in fact at the origin designate a piece of metal that was hammered on anvil. The old french verb for this hammering was "mailler", for the tool used for this, the smith hammer, was the "maillet", a word we find in english as "mallet", and come not from latin "macula" as scholars from the XIII century assumed it was (and since we have followed them in that error) but from "malleum", which descendants words we find for example in "malleable".
"Mail" thus were little uniformed metal pieces (and actually in old french, the word meant also the actual object of currency), and they could be assembled in many ways to form a defensive armor. The most common way, since the VI century from roman artesany, was to nail them to a fabric or leather shirt. Thus in sources, we have the word "maille clavaine" (clavain=clovel) of two type, the "maille de haute clouure" ('mail of high nailing') which you find clearly shown in psalterium from carolingian period, we would called them "scale" today, but their name back then was such because the nail were put at the top (the "height") or edge of the mail piece; and the "maille de demi clouure" ('mail of half nailing') called that way because the nail was at the center of the piece. If an armor was made out of mails of "high nailing", then the armor was said "doublière" (doubled) and not "scale armor", a term that was used very rarely as poetical comparison. This qualification of "doubled" was because the imbrication gave a doubled thickness of metal.
Another way, less common, but existing, was the "maille plaquée" ('applied mail'), because the metal pieces were sewn together. A technique imported from middle east during the crusades was the "jazeran" armor, which implied the sewning of metal pieces with interlocked rings (chainmail as we call it now). Also this kind of mail could be put one over the other. The "lamellar armor" as it was first called by pr Thordeman who discovered the grave of Visby where he found such armor, was in fact the kind of armor called then "maille plaquée".
Now the "chainmail" in William the Conqueror time was called "maille treslis" a word we can translate in english as "canvas". This kind of mail fell in use during the age of the barbarians kingdom, in fact was already falling quickly in use at the end of the western empire already. It still existed, but was a rare occurrence, and slowly came back in favour during the IX century, and then it wasn't use as the main armor, but mostly as an additive to cover members and other places that needed greater flexibility, something the plane mails didn't allowed. This name of "maille treslis" would fell in use, and instead around the XII century, word used to speak of it were "maille de haubert" (hausberk mail) because it was the main mail used to this piece of the armor (I'll discute it later), or also the armor made of such mail were called "iron coast" ('cote de fer' in old french) because notably, in middle age techniques didn't allowed workers to bend steel metal to create wires for chainmail, and only iron was suitable for this, unlike the plane mails that were made of steel from the X century onward.

Now another error is on the name of pieces of the armor. The word "hauberk" itself in fact never designed the torso armor unlike what you presented. This common error steam from XVII century scholars, in a time when the hauberk wasn't in use for centuries already, and scholar couldn't tell what it was, and wrongly applied this name to an armor (and since by that time only chainmail were still in use in the mail category, they wrongly assumed all armors of that time were made of it, because indeed, hauberk were). The hauberk in fact was NOT the body armor covering the torso, but instead a vital part of the armor of the knight, as it was the distinctive feature of a knight, prohibed from use from non-knights. The hauberk was what we call wrongly today the "camail" (which in turn was another thing). It was some kind of hood that covered the face (with an opening), the neck, the upper breast and the shoulders, as its etymology implied in fact. The body armor covering the torso was in fact the "brunie" (now in french "broigne" and in english "byrnie"). In Bayeux tapestry, knights are armed with both "brunies" and "hausberc", as the hausberc cover what the byrnie didn't, the most vulnerable part of a knight behind a shield: the head and the upper breast, the place where usually fatal wounds are dealt in gesture songs. Hauberk could be made of many kind of mails, but usually from the IX century onward, the chainmail was prefered because it weighted less.

The "byrnie" is a word that is parent to the english word "brown". It came from old german "brunaz", which in germanic languages designed the brightness of polished metal. This word replaced in the frankish realm the latin word "lorica", and reflected the evolution of armors as metal pieces polished and assembled together, giving the white lustre gesture song speak about and pr. Kelly students (our currents historians) assume wrongly they were poetical licenses. Those were not, as indeed, chainmail does not give such "white brilliance", plane polished steel pieces does, and the adoption of a word that signify that brilliance to speak of the main piece of armor is telling of the kind of armor it was, not that chainmail armor disappeared, but became an uncomon thing. In Bayeux tapestry, the whiteness of armors is clearly depicting steeled polished pieces, of distinctive kind (squared, round, triangular), those are nailed mails likely half nailed for the most part.
The byrnie thus was the torso armor, and from the carolingian period onward, it will be completed with sleeves, sometime removable, that went increasingly longer. In the tapestry, we see also extensions to the neck, in such case, the byrnie would not recquire the use of an hauberk, and its neck part was attached to the helm. However, in that period, this presented a risk, an the reason why an hauberk, which surely couldn't be detached from the helm by a strike, was preferable.

By the late XII century, another torso piece came to make competition to both the hauberk and the byrnie: it was the haubergeon. When you see miniatures of soldiers wearing a single piece of armor that also hood them, it is not an hauberk, it is an haubergeon, and this armor came to be use also by non knights. Technically, the hauberk as a single crafted piece was more protective and flexible when made out of chainmail, but it had one problem of dislodging itself from its position, troubling the face of the knight. The haubergeon because of being a single piece, could hold its own all together. In miniatures, unlike what Kelly and most historians after him assumed, those "S" shaped lines in rank on armors aren't a "symbolic" way of representing mail armor: those are the famous "armure doublière" of songs. The mail is in fact "high nailed" mail, made of very small pieces juxtaposated in reversed ranks either vertically, but usually horizontally, and since the nail part is always covered by the precedent rounded edge, it took this appearance of ondulation. This was made so because it was harder to "unmail" the armor as songs says. Spears could raise the mail and unnail it in an all out vertical manner with mail edge all pointing the same direction. And by being smaller than great scales from carolingian psalterium, it gave more flexibility to the knight. Haubergeon were usually made of this kind of mail, through sometime it could be made of many distinct mails in some part (with for example members being covered by chainmail). One technique used was to enable a fold of fabric to go between the ranks of mail, thus we have in many illustrations two parallel lines separating the ranks of ondulatory lines. This gave greater resistance to impact, and the color of the fabric being usually blue, this kind of arrangement gave the qualification in gesture songs of "maille safrée" ("sapphired mail").

I'll give some illustrations that François Buttin came out, but you'll find more in his references on footnotes on his study.

[Athos187]

I would love to see you propose this theory on this discord: https://discord.gg/gAeuCxx2XF