[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

At the Battle of Agincourt (1415) the Duke of York seems to have died of a 'heart attack' brought on by the heat of battle". While this assumption is made without proper medical protocol of course, it well illustrates that the concerns on these matters were at hand.

Hi Jim and all,

This is quite an interesting topic!

Still on Agincourt and this time viewing it from the side of the French, we read this eyewitness account from one Jehan de Wavrin, son of a Flemish knight (his father and older brother fought on the side of the French, and both died at Agincourt that day) --

"The place was narrow, and very advantageous for the English, and, on the contrary, very ruinous for the French, for the said French had been all night on horseback, and it rained [the whole night and for several days before], and the pages, grooms, and others, in leading about the horses, had broken up the ground, which was so soft that the horses could with difficulty step out of the soil. And also the said French were so loaded with armour that they could not support themselves or move forward. In the first place they were armed with long coats of steel, reaching to the knees or lower, and very heavy, over the leg harness, and besides plate armour also most them had hooded helmets; wherefore this weight of armor, with the softness of the wet ground, as has been said, kept them as if immovable, so that they could raise their clubs with great difficulty, and with all these mischiefs there was this, that most of them were troubled with hunger and want of sleep."

From Wikipedia, we read of more details. And as noted from many sources, it was not really the heavy armour per se that was the problem. Rather simplistically, it was allegedly the mud:

"Such heavy armour allowed them to close the 300 yards or so to the English lines while being under what the French monk of Saint Denis described as 'a terrifying hail of arrow shot'.[26] However they had to lower their visors and bend their heads to avoid being shot in the face (the eye and airholes in their helmets were some of the weakest points in the armour), which restricted both their breathing and their vision, and then they had to walk a few hundred yards through thick mud, wearing armour which weighed 50–60 pounds.[27]

"The French men-at-arms reached the English line and actually pushed it back, with the longbowmen continuing to fire until they ran out of arrows and then dropping their bows and joining the melee (which lasted about three hours), implying that the French were able to walk through the fire of tens of thousands of arrows while taking comparatively few casualties. The physical pounding even from non-penetrating arrows, combined with the slog in heavy armour through the mud, the heat and lack of oxygen in plate armour with the visor down, and the crush of their numbers, meant they could 'scarcely lift their weapons' when they finally engaged the English line however.

"When the English archers, using hatchets, swords and other weapons, attacked the now disordered and fatigued French, the French could not cope with their unarmoured assailants (who were much less hindered by the mud). The exhausted French men-at-arms are described as being knocked to the ground and then unable to get back up.

"As the battle was fought on a recently ploughed field, and there had recently been heavy rain leaving it very muddy, it proved very tiring to walk through in full plate armour. The French monk of St. Denis describes the French troops as 'marching through the middle of the mud where they sank up to their knees. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against the enemy'.[21] The deep, soft mud particularly favoured the English force because, once knocked to the ground, the heavily armoured French knights struggled to get back up to fight in the melee. Barker (2005) states that several knights, encumbered by their armour, actually drowned in it [some sources say that the Duke of York was one of them]. Their limited mobility made them easy targets for the volleys from the English archers. The mud also increased the ability of the much more lightly armoured English archers to join in hand-to-hand fighting against the heavily armed French men-at-arms."

As to what happens to those tons of armour in the aftermath of the battle, we refer back to this firsthand account of Jehan de Wavrin:

"And the English archers busied themselves in turning over the dead ... and they carried the armour of the dead by horseloads to their quarters ....

"When evening came the King of England [Henry V], being informed that there was so much baggage accumulated at the lodging places, caused it to be proclaimed everywhere with sound of trumpet that no one should load himself with more armour than was necessary for his own body, because they were not yet wholly out of danger from the King of France [the French were reported to be regrouping, and Henry V was fearing another attack; and it must recalled that the English were vastly outnumbered, anywhere between 1-6 to 1-10] ... the King further ordered that all the armour that was over and above what his people were wearing, with all the dead bodies on their side, should be carried into a barn or house, and there burned altogether ....

"Next day, which was Saturday, the King of England and his whole army ... passed through the scene of the slaughter [the killing of the French prisoners]... and King Henry stood there, looking at the pitiable condition of those dead bodies, which were quite naked, for during the night they had been stripped as well as by the English as by the peasantry."

Agincourt is not exactly about the the effects of wearing armour and heat. But I thought that the effect of wearing armour in a muddy battlefield is as interesting academically as well.

This has become quite a long post. Thanks for reading this far!

PS - Some say that the the Duke of York actually died from drowning while stuck in mud in his heavy armour. Overall in the battlefield, the mud was reportedly anywhere from ankle-deep to waist-deep. And then the Duke of York who was no longer a spring chicken at the time, was reportedly fat, too. Would there be authoritative sources that support this? Thanks.