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How to kill a knight in full plate armour?


The Red Lion

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They would only pierce the armour at ver close range. Long range they wouldn't pierce, but they would bruise and cause fatigue. There are some really good documentaries you can find on youtube about armour and weapons such as the long bow, lance etc.

Eh? What about Crecy, Agincourt etc? Those French were sure killed dead, otherwise they'd have slaughtered the smaller and poorer armored English forces.

The longbow perhaps wouldnt penetrate the best - proofed - armour, but most of the armoured forces were men at arms, squires and poorer knights, only the nobles could afford the best armour.

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Eh? What about Crecy, Agincourt etc? Those French were sure killed dead, otherwise they'd have slaughtered the smaller and poorer armored English forces.

The longbow perhaps wouldnt penetrate the best - proofed - armour, but most of the armoured forces were men at arms, squires and poorer knights, only the nobles could afford the best armour.

I'm going to save E-Ro the headache and tell you that most of the French Knights were bogged down in muck, they fell off their horses and were taken prisoner, or were drowned in the mud, then the English just had to drag them out.

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I'm going to save E-Ro the headache and tell you that most of the French Knights were bogged down in muck, they fell off their horses and were taken prisoner, or were drowned in the mud, then the English just had to drag them out.

:laugh: This is the truth, the arrows killed the horses and the knights got stuck in the mud.

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Historically there were 3 things that killed mounted knighthood:

1. Longbowmen/arbalesters;

2. Pike formations;

3. First firearms.

With all said and done, If I had to fight an armored knight in an Asoiaf setting, I'd take a page from Aerion Brightflame's book and use a pot of wildfire.

The war hammer from my reading was designed to use on a guy in plate armor - I am repeating myself but note you dont mention it. Hammer-like on one end to ring the bell and spike on the other = I looked it up bc Robert talked of putting that "spike" in Rhaegar and we all know it went via breast plate.

As for mounted knights - the hammer could be on a pole and in fact this would provide the opportunity for more torque and therefore more force delivered.

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This is a link to a very interesting account of the battle of Agincourt, It doesn't have too much about the equipment specifically. But thought it might have been of interest, seeing how often Agincourt is mentioned. But does talk about army make up, and formation deployed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y25q

(Apologies if this is not available outside of Britain.)

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  • 10 months later...

Just chiming in some knowledge:

1. Actually what killed the knight (by "knight" I mean a heavily armored cavalrymen wielding lance from horseback) in the Medieval battlefield was not so much the longbow or the pike or infantry wielding firearms, but another type of heavy cavalryman, the reiter or the cuirassier, heavily-armored horsemen armed with, guess what, pistols. Until the invention of repeating rifles and machine guns, whatever advantage in solidity that infantry had were never able to completely replace the combination of mobility and morale effect that cavalry had. Disorganized and surprised infantry remained very vulnerable to cavalry charges until the Napoleonic War.

2. Despite the effectiveness of the longbow against mounted knights from a prepared position (the prepared position is key here), longbowmen could never succeed against heavy cavalry when they were fighting in the open without cover of terrain or man-made defenses like caltrops and stakes. Several battles in the Hundred Years War, including Verneuil, Patay and Formigny attested to this fact. The successes enjoyed by the English at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt were caused by their ability (and the sheer stupidity of the French command) in coaxing the French to attack them in a prepared position, i.e. fighting in the ground of their choosing.

3. At the same time the longbowmen were by no means helpless in hand-to-hand combat as many people believed: they were a) very physically powerful men after all, being able to drew a 160 lb bow is no mean feat; plus they were B) fairly well protected, longbowmen during the HYW were recorded to have helmets and hauberk, while longbowmen during the War of the Roses were often clad from head to knee in metal armor, just of lesser quality than the knights; c) they always have some kind close combat weapon: sword and buckler being the most common, often also poleaxe, billhook, warhammers and of course lead mauls.

At Agincourt the longbowmen were believed to contribute more to the French defeat through hand-to-hand fighting rather than their archery; given the enormous advantage in the numbers the French knights had over the English (20,000 vs 1,000), the English victory would have been impossible had the archers be not competent in melee.

At Verneuil the English archers were caught in the open by a Lombard cavalry charge and swept away; the victory was won by the English dismounted knights who routed their French and Scottish counterparts.

So it seemed that the best way to kill an armored knight was by other armored knights, with either larger number or better morale. :drunk: The tool of preference for those armored knights were poleaxes, with warhammers, flails, maces and longswords with stiff, acute-tipped blades as secondary backup. And everyone carried a rondel dagger of course.

4) While disciplined pike formations were impossible to destroy with knightly charges, they generally could not take the offensive against heavy cavalry in the open. For pikemen to withstood a charge by heavy cavalry they have to went stationary and ground their pikes, which meant knights often were used to pin down pikemen by mock or real charges, while missile troops went to work 'softening' the pike formations to be eventually destroyed by a final charge. The English successfully used this tactic against Scottish and Welsh pikemen on many occasions, and the French did it to the Swiss at Marignano.

On those occasions when pikemen were able to decisively defeat knights, they usually had some other advantage on their side, such as : A) bad terrain hindering the knights from gaining charge momentum (Bannockburn, Golden Spurs, Pavia), or B) surprise (Morat, Nancy, Novara). On other occasions it was usually a case of pikemen holding cavalry at bay, although from another perspective it was the cavalry who was keeping the men-with-pointy sticks busy!

5) Infantry with early single shot, muzzle-loading firearms were useless against heavy cavalry in open ground where the latter can charge, just like longbowmen. What happened in Pavia was that the French cavalry pursued fleeing Imperialist horsemen into the edge of a forest, and found their retreat blocked by Spanish and Landsknecht pikemen. Hence there was plenty of cover for the Imperialist arquebusiers to hide and pick off the French men at arms, from a distance. At Sesia River the French gendarmes and Swiss pikemen were ambushed and picked off from behind rocks and trees by the same plucky Imperialist arquebusiers.

6) In conclusion, there was a reason why lance-armed heavy cavalry formed the core of most fighting forces during the Middle Ages until the 17th century: in open ground they simply dominated any other fighting arm. Knights were also versatile; longbowmen could not fight in the open and pikemen plodded around like snails and were toast if their formation was breached, but knights could fight anywhere and anything relatively well, if not cost-effectively.

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I was on wikipedia reading about halberds, and then 2 hours later I realized I was reading about medieval armours and I found out that Full Plate Armour was super OP and that nearly nothing could penetrate a well made one. From what I have read Poleaxes were able to dent the steel, so were halberds, but they were heavy weapons that few could wield well enough for that. Same thing with Warhammers, but they were used

aimed at the helmet ( not to crush them, to cause concussions ), and even then, it wasn't a one hit KO blow. So, what is capable to stop a knight in plate on Westeros? I never read about anyone using Poleaxes or Halberds, and only about robert using an UBER war hammer, that crushed even the most well made armor. So, how can they kill these OP motherfuck*rs?

I think your best bet is to get in close on them where their limited mobility becomes a liability then find an unprotected joint like the armpit and stick em with the pointy end. Sorta what Bronn does in the Vale.

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Before Gunpowder...

Morningstars

Warhammers

Flail Mace

A good crossbow,at short range(Won't be a KO might knock him off his feet).

Longbows have been historically good at killing the horses and in turn crushing the knights beneath them.

After Gunpowder

Well,Basically anything with enough power can do it.

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Seems to me that daggers are often used as well, once you have your knightly opponent down on the ground. Stick the dagger through the eye slot in the helmet. Gregor killed Beric in this way and Bronn killed Ser Balman Byrch. Most everyone has a dagger on them, no matter whether you are a highborn lord or a peasant.

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Seems to me that daggers are often used as well, once you have your knightly opponent down on the ground. Stick the dagger through the eye slot in the helmet. Gregor killed Beric in this way and Bronn killed Ser Balman Byrch. Most everyone has a dagger on them, no matter whether you are a highborn lord or a peasant.

Once you knock the Knight's to the ground it would have been pretty easy to take them out,The Knocking down would be the hard part.

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Just chiming in some knowledge:

1. Actually what killed the knight (by "knight" I mean a heavily armored cavalrymen wielding lance from horseback) in the Medieval battlefield was not so much the longbow or the pike or infantry wielding firearms, but another type of heavy cavalryman, the reiter or the cuirassier, heavily-armored horsemen armed with, guess what, pistols. Until the invention of repeating rifles and machine guns, whatever advantage in solidity that infantry had were never able to completely replace the combination of mobility and morale effect that cavalry had. Disorganized and surprised infantry remained very vulnerable to cavalry charges until the Napoleonic War.

First of all, thank you for a very nice post. Saved myself a lot of trouble there.

That being said, I have to disagree that cuirassiers were what killed medieval knights. They don't really appear at all until the late 15th century, so you're talking very late medieval here. This is of course due to the fact blackpowder guns weren't reliable enough to be deployed in that fashion until then. What you're talking about is actually more the transition of heavy cavalry from the traditional knight in plate to that which we all know from the Napoleonic wars etc.

If we are talking about the High-to late Medieval period (the glory days of plate, if you like, before that most knights wore mainly chainmail), then what killed them was indeed either getting knocked to the ground and subsequently finished with some form of highly concentrated force (dagger, sword half-handed, warhammer) at some weak point (eyes, neck, groin, armpit). Some highly specialized weapons such as the warhammer (and we're talking a small, one handed thing made completely from steel here, not a mallet) or the flanged mace were constructed specifically to penetrate armor. The late medieval fencing manuals show numerous techniques designed for use on armored opponents.

The other alternative is some form of pike or lance with sufficient power behind it to outright penetrate the armor. But, as you point out, this could only happen given very specific conditions, and the efficiency of the pike against armored cavalry has been quite overrated by later historians and laypeople.

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