These are from the russian version of the book. If anyone has polish or any other version, please share some of these illustrations to see if they have the same dating as in russian version.
On scale armor. Its a hard topic to discuss, becasue of the lack of archaeological evidence. We do have some scale in art, however. Some of that art seems realistic and by looking at the context, scale armor is plausible there. However, if scale is depicted in biblical scenes, which are supposed to show historical roman armor, its not a good evidence. Here is at least some good evidence for scale armor in 14th century.
These are the illustrations from the book with the datings. Here is where things get weird. First, lets talk about the guy from 1330. His armor isn't really bad, but its weird how he is supposed to be Teutonic Order's auxilary, yet he has byzantine kettle helm. But this is not relevant, what is relevant is his use of that scale best. Scale armor probably existed in 14th century, yet shows up rarely in art. Why would he have it, i don't know. Same story with the guy from the 1420. Its written in the book that he is prussian, so he would use western armor at this point. What i don't understand is why he is wearing that scale vest? Really, where does this idea come from that TO auxilaries wore scale armor? The guy from 1250 is even more weird. Is that some kind of joke? There are 0 sources for scale aventail like this for prussians. The only helmets found in Sambian peninsula that are attributed to prussians don't have any trace of scale aventail.
Lets talk about this now. Splinted arm and leg harness this late? Why? It belongs to transitional plate armor times, not when its dated in these illustrations. There are depictions around year 1420 of splinted arm or leg armor that would justify it somewhat, but not like this, where almost every soldier is wearing it. but we will get to that later. What i don't understand is the 1400-1475 dating to that image. Is it supposed to mean that splinted graves were used by Teutonic Oder even in 1475? That is completely out of the question.
Splinted armor belongs to 13th century, these images here are depicting old, historical armor by the time they were painted and show content like biblical scenes. Its the same like in Veit Stoss altar in St. Mary's Basilica, which shows a biblical scene with outdated bascinets. Some of them you can trust a bit more, but some of them are just showing armor that did not exist then and was also non-functional. You can see why in the bottom two images. One has completely out of shape breastplate, which would not be possible to move in and other has fauld made out of vertical splints, which would not let you sit down. On more realistic depictions of splint armor of this era, we can see the disparity of how little it is done. Despite Speculum Humanae Salvationis showing biblical events, its showing only that splinted arm harness one or two times. Here is the rest of arm and leg harness, depicted in Speculum Humanae Salvationis.
Next is the Visby coat of plate styles, shown as 15th century armor. How about no? This is not 1360 Scandinavia, germans had their own style of coat of plates in 1360. They simply could not have used Visby coat of plates in 1420. By that time, breastplates with jupons bellow or under were popular, kastenbrusts were also used, just not Visby coat of plates, not in this universe.
Finally, this choice. Just why? Why would they choose to illustrate TO auxilaries with eastern horse armor? That mail and plate caparison is 15th century at best and it has nothing to do with Teutonic Order. Why the eastern chamfron too? Europeans had their own styles of chamfrom, why did they copy this exact one?