Mail Hauberk

Origins

Mail — armor made of interlinked metal rings — was probably invented by Celtic smiths in the last centuries BC and was adopted by Rome as the lorica hamata, worn by legionaries and auxiliaries for centuries alongside and after the Roman Lorica Segmentata. After the fall of the Western Empire it remained the armor of the wealthy warrior: Anglo-Saxon and Frankish lords wore mail shirts called byrnies, and so did the Vikings who could afford them. By the eleventh century the mail shirt had lengthened into the hauberk, reaching to the knees and split at the front and back so that its wearer could ride.

Design & Construction

A hauberk is made from many thousands of small iron rings, each linked through four others. In medieval European mail each ring was closed by a tiny rivet, and rows of riveted rings often alternated with rows of solid, punched rings. A full hauberk with sleeves might weigh twenty to thirty pounds, hanging mostly from the shoulders, with a belt to take part of the weight at the waist. By the twelfth century the hauberk usually had long sleeves ending in mail mittens and an integral hood, or coif, drawn up over the head beneath the helmet; mail leggings, called chausses, protected the legs. Beneath it the wearer wore a padded garment (the gambeson or aketon), because mail stopped edges and points but transmitted the force of a blow. From the late twelfth century a cloth surcoat was worn over it.

Combat Use

The Bayeux Tapestry shows the Norman and English warriors at the Battle of Hastings in knee-length hauberks, many of them with the Norman Kite Shield. Through the Crusades the mailed knight, with a lance couched under his arm, was the most formidable soldier in the Mediterranean world; Muslim chroniclers describe crusaders walking on with arrows stuck in their mail like porcupines. Mail resisted cuts very well and was reasonably good against arrows at range, but it could be broken by heavy thrusts, maces and the more powerful crossbows. Orders such as the Knights Templar fought in mail throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, often under the enclosing Great Helm.

Legacy

From the late thirteenth century knights began adding plates of iron over the mail at the knees, elbows and chest, and by the fifteenth century the full harness of plate, such as Gothic Plate Armor, had replaced the hauberk as the main defense of the wealthy. Mail survived as a secondary defense — in the gaps of plate armor, as a standard or collar, and in shirts worn by lighter troops — into the seventeenth century, and much longer in parts of Asia and Africa. Today the hauberk is the defining image of the early medieval knight, and riveted mail is made by hand for museums and reenactors.