Doug McCrae
Legend
Alan Williams offers an explanation for this in The Knight and the Blast Furnace (2003) -- As armies increased in size in the early modern period, less fit and able troops had to be employed, and they didn't have the stamina to wear the cheap-but-heavy armour necessary to provide protection from firearms.And standing armies should increase not reduce the prevalence of armour if armour is being mass produced - if anything the reverse. The key cost for a standing army is in the upkeep while the cost for plate armour is a one-shot cost per person in your force with comparatively minimal upkeep. If you're willing to pay for your army in peacetime it's much more cost effective to pay for fewer troops but to armour them than the greater numbers with higher upkeep and less combat power.
Firearms offer a greater order of magnitude of energy, and very soon offer a real possibility of defeating armour. There are two courses then open to the armourer: make the armour of better metal, or thicker.
The difficulties of heat-treating steel meant that this first solution, although desirable, was expensive.
While a few individual centres of metallurgical excellence continued to make princely armour of great elegance as well as metallurgical ingenuity, the great bulk of production had to be made down to a price, and be effective simply through its thickness.
The second solution, although crude, was effective. As armies got larger and firepower increased, the demand for armour (even for the infantry) increased; the likelihood of princes paying for large quantities of armour—unless the cheapest solution had been adopted— was very small.
Increasing the thickness from 2 to 3.1mm will double the resistance, and have a similar effect to the use of hardened steel, at a fraction of the cost.
The problem then was the stamina of the wearers, and indeed as handgunners replaced archers, less skilful troops were needed and wages fell. But if recruits were drawn from the poorer and less well-nourished strata of society then they were even less capable of marching and fighting in bulletproof armour.
So the situation arose of leaders with wearable protective armour, while their armies of thousands could no longer wear what might protect them, and armour dropped out of use, despite the well thought-out arguments of military commentators like Maurice de Saxe. The craftsmen turned to other industries like gunmaking or clockmaking, and the centres of armour production became the centres of the Industrial Revolution.
The difficulties of heat-treating steel meant that this first solution, although desirable, was expensive.
While a few individual centres of metallurgical excellence continued to make princely armour of great elegance as well as metallurgical ingenuity, the great bulk of production had to be made down to a price, and be effective simply through its thickness.
The second solution, although crude, was effective. As armies got larger and firepower increased, the demand for armour (even for the infantry) increased; the likelihood of princes paying for large quantities of armour—unless the cheapest solution had been adopted— was very small.
Increasing the thickness from 2 to 3.1mm will double the resistance, and have a similar effect to the use of hardened steel, at a fraction of the cost.
The problem then was the stamina of the wearers, and indeed as handgunners replaced archers, less skilful troops were needed and wages fell. But if recruits were drawn from the poorer and less well-nourished strata of society then they were even less capable of marching and fighting in bulletproof armour.
So the situation arose of leaders with wearable protective armour, while their armies of thousands could no longer wear what might protect them, and armour dropped out of use, despite the well thought-out arguments of military commentators like Maurice de Saxe. The craftsmen turned to other industries like gunmaking or clockmaking, and the centres of armour production became the centres of the Industrial Revolution.
Last edited: