Eragon VS Murtagh - A question of armour
Hi everyone! Haven't posted here in a while and I hope you will find this interesting. It's some a illustrated essay with regards to arms and armour and its evolution in Alagesia and the effect it should have had on Eragon's duel with Murtagh in the Burning Plains.
So her we go. Eragon's armour. I quote from Eragon :
"Over Eragon's head went a stiff shirt of leather-backed mail that fell to his knees like a skirt. It rested heavily on his shoulders and clinked when he moved. He belted Zar'roc over it, which helped keep the mail from swinging. On his head went a leather cap, then a mail coif, and finally a gold-and-silver helm. Bracers were strapped to his forearms and greaves to his lower legs. For his hands there were mail-backed gloves. Lastly, Orik handed him a broad shield emblazoned with an oak tree."
Ok so this is a pretty standard early-to-high Middle Ages armour when the mail hauberk was the main protective element and the smiths couldn't produce large pieces of steel and tempering hadn't been discovered yet. My first question is what is he wearing under the hauberk? The knights of the time wore a thick quilted garment called the gambeson which prevented the mail from chafing the skin but also absorbed shocks from blunt force.
My second question is with regards to his helm. Since we never get the slightest mention of it hindering his breath or his visibility, and knowing Paolini, I have no choice but to assume that it's a barbute-type helm like the Gondorians and the elves wear in the Lord of the Rings
This is an Italian barbute of the later Middle Ages but I won't bring up the contrasting time periods... yet!
Now we come to Murtagh. The most description we get of his attire is when Thorn shows up on the Burning Plains :
"On his back was fixed a saddle, and in that saddle sat a man garbed in polished steel armour and armed with a hand-and-a-half sword."
Ok so this is clearly a full suit of plate. I'll assume it's something like the Gondorians wear :
The main question I have concerning this armour is with regards to the helmet. I quote :
"He threw himself at the Rider, trapping both swords between their bodies, hooked his fingers underneath the helm, and ripped it off."
Since he had to pull the helm off, I can safely assume it wasn't a visored helm, in which case he could have lifted the visor. And it's not an armet with a three-piece visor that can't be easily opened, or any kind of close helm because then Eragon could never have "ripped it off" (taking my helmet off is a nightmare), so I guess it's something along the greathelm style, like the knights have in Ivanhoe or crusade movies. In which case the helmet is several generations of armour behind the rest of the suit, because a visored helm is infinitely more practical.
Now firstly, let's discuss armour evolution. Eragon's suit is one from the Early-to-High Middle Ages, a safe estimate is the late 12th early 13th century, around the time of the Third Crusade but his helmet sounds from the mid-to-late 15th century. Murtagh on the other hand is wearing a suit of full plate, which only became possible near the end of the 14th century. But his helmet is from the same time period as Eragon's armour (early-to-high Middle Ages) if he doesnt have a visor.
Now, normally I don't bring this up in fantasy. Hell, in the Lord of the Rings armour technology stays frozen for thousands of years and the Rohirrim have a very early Middle Ages style whereas the Gondorians have a very late Middle Ages style. The problems only started the moment Paolini decided to try and be smart and put this :
"Armor has improved a great deal in the past century, so the tip needs to be narrower than I used to make them, the better to pierce plate and mail and to slip into the gaps between the various pieces."
This quote is delivered by Rhunon, the elf smith, as she's trying to design Eragon's new sword, and it is both clever and accurate. As long as mail was the main protective piece, it could be beaten through by the hacking of swords. But with the coming of plate armour, trasitioning through splint armour and coats of plates, strikes from a sword became all but useless so the swords needed to have finer points to better slip between the pieces of plate. And this was reflected in the blade shapes.
Behold :
These beauties are from Albion swords. I use one-handed swords in this example but the same pattern follows with hand-and-a-half swords and longswords. The one on the left is the Templar sword, used in the early crusades. The one on the right is the Poitiers, named after the battle of Poitiers in 1356 when plate armour limbs and coats of plates over the torso had become very popular among the aristocracy and the knights in France and England. You can clearly see one is broader and made for hacking where the other has a much more steadily tapering blade that draws progressively to a very fine point.
All medieval weaponry lessons aside, the problem with that quote is that it implies that armour EVOLVES in this world, there actually is an Arms Race (which is a much older notion than most people believe). And that completely throws Eragon's and Murtagh's armour suits out of the whack. Because Eragon's suit was supplied by the dwarves, and dwarves are, allegedly, the pinnacle of smithing and weapon making. Hell, they made a whole suit of plate for Saphira! That implies some pretty incredible forges. Yet the most they armour Eragon with is mail, whereas with plate he'd hardly need his protective wards at all ! Because, unlike what Hollywood leads to believe, armour is normally effective.
The second problem is how this affects Eragon's fight with Murtagh. Let's say ok, Eragon just decided on lighter armour and better visibility. Fine. I'll go with that. He is, after all, on a dragon, or ought to be, most of the time.
But then Eragon and Murtagh get off their dragons and duel on foot with swords. Eragon wearing his stuff, Murtagh in full plate and carrying a hand-and-a-half sword.
You know who else wears full plate and carries a hand-and-a-half sword? Me!!!!!
This is me and a my guys from our medieval reenactment troop. I'm the knight in full plate with the black lion on the shield. The guy on the left with the war hammer is my younger brother as a common infantryman, and the guy on the right with a shortened voulge is our troop sergeant. As for the front row, the guy on the left is our crossbowman and the one on the right in red and gold, with good armour, and the outrageously large plume is my best friend and our troop captain. I'm his lieutenant. We are a particularly historically accurate crew and here we're commemorating the 600th anniversary of Azincourt.
Here we have a better view of my armour and we see Precious, my gorgeous hand-and-a-half sword who I don't carry into battle because she is a real sharp weapon; I use a blunted one-hander in the fighting. What I'm wearing (except I'm missing my rondels for my armpits that you can see in the top picture) is in fact one of the very first full suits of polished plate, from when smiths only just began making pieces large enough to cover the whole torso and back. And even that weighs approximately 60 pounds. The weight is well spread out but only so long as every piece fits perfectly. I have some trouble with my leg armour as it tends to slip down and that pulls on the padded belt under my armour that holds it up. At the ceremony it pulled so hard that it chafed my hips so bad the right side was literally blistered and bleeding.
Plate armour is effective and quite comfortable but there is a lot that can go wrong.
Now, first of all, let's assume Murtagh has plate armour that fits him to a fault, that he's been trained to fight in it so it doesn't discomfit him, and he was perfectly squired so there's no risk of anything slipping or pinching (which can happen if the many many laces and straps aren't done just right). There are three things that should still cause him problems.
1- The weight! My full panoply weighs up to sixty pounds. The weight is well spread out but it cuts your overall stamina short. Plate armour is extremely effective, quite comfortable if the pieces fit right, and not nearly as debilitating as some fictions would have believe. But I assure you, fighting in it is NO JOKE ! Having been dismissed from the military for a hearing problem, I am no longer in the military-level shape I used to be in, true. But no man, no matter his conditionning, can fight for more than a few hundred heartbeats wearing a panoply like that. In fact, full plate isn't exactly made for fighting in duels or on foot. It was designed for massed cavalry charges and tight melees where blows are inevitable. Trust me, I was in the middle of 800 bastards battering eachother to bits. That said, normally the protection offered outweighs the cons because you can simply rush your opponent without fear of taking much damage, and once you're on top of him, plate armour is a cruel weapon. A gauntlet does ten times the damage of a fist and the flanges and edges of the plate flay an unarmoured opponent nicely. BUT, Eragon has the strength and speed of an ELF ! Yes, he's exhausted after battle, but he absorbed energy from dying folks before going into that fight so should have been largely able to outmatch Murtagh who would have been maybe a hair slower and whose stamina would have been depleted after two minutes max! Yet the most Eragon can manage is a scratch across the breastplate before Murtagh starts dominating him in the fight.
2- Visibility! Murtagh went into that fight with all the same stupid mistakes as Ser Vardis against Bronn in Game of Thrones. He is wearing armour not adapted for that kind of fighting and the helmet is the piece upon which most depends. A helmet is the most essential piece of armour and the first piece anyone gets because a blow to the head can do severe damage or be lethal. But it is also the heaviest and most uncomfortable piece! And it restrains your vision immensely, even when the eyeslits are exactly level with the eyes it limits your field of vision quite severely. This is why knights and men at arms only kept their visors down during the charge, especially against arrows. Once in the melee, they lifed the visors and just made efforts to protect their faces. The extra visibility and breathability is largely worth this small opening. BUT MURTAGH'S HELMET DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A VISOR!!!! Which means that Eragon could just have leapt to the side and he'd have been past the dead angle of the eyeslits. Unless Murtagh had Thorn acting like a radar for him or something.
3 - Breathability! Once again, his helmet is the problem! The damn thing doesn't even have a visor and, no matter how much you're at a physical peak, you cannot keep up a constant fight when your breath is constricted! The small breathing holes don't allow enough passage of air to keep properly full on oxygen while keeping up an effort that is basically worth a sprint. In the reenactment of the battle of Azincourt, with 800 bastards beating the crap out of each other, those that had them had to fight with their visors closed to avoid injury. A friend of mine on the English side took a bad hit to the eye because he fights in an open-faced helm (even though thrusts above shoulder level were strictly forbidden). But every minute or so we had to pull back and allow the fighters behind us to take our places in the melee while we opened our visors and took 10 to 20 seconds to breathe before going back in.
Basically, Murtagh could have maybe driven Eragon back at first, heedless of Zar'roc glancing off his plate armour (I'll assume Eragon just slashes and hacks since he thinks a falchion is used the same way as a sword) at the beginning of the fight. But past two or three minutes, he would have been fatigued enough for him to need to catch a quick breather, and during that time he would have been vulnerable as hell, an easy picking for Eragon who has the strength, speed, and stamina of an elf.
So there we go. I've made my points about armour and I hope it's been an education :) . I swear, historical reenactment provides hoards of new lessons of the kind you only learn through practical experience, and it has been a tremendous help for my writing. Anyone with further interest in the matter can follow this link :
http://projet-gallois-de-fougieres.blogspot.fr/
It's a French project we do but since people from all over the world do reenactment the common tongue is English so every article has an English counterpart.
Cheers!
So her we go. Eragon's armour. I quote from Eragon :
"Over Eragon's head went a stiff shirt of leather-backed mail that fell to his knees like a skirt. It rested heavily on his shoulders and clinked when he moved. He belted Zar'roc over it, which helped keep the mail from swinging. On his head went a leather cap, then a mail coif, and finally a gold-and-silver helm. Bracers were strapped to his forearms and greaves to his lower legs. For his hands there were mail-backed gloves. Lastly, Orik handed him a broad shield emblazoned with an oak tree."
Ok so this is a pretty standard early-to-high Middle Ages armour when the mail hauberk was the main protective element and the smiths couldn't produce large pieces of steel and tempering hadn't been discovered yet. My first question is what is he wearing under the hauberk? The knights of the time wore a thick quilted garment called the gambeson which prevented the mail from chafing the skin but also absorbed shocks from blunt force.
My second question is with regards to his helm. Since we never get the slightest mention of it hindering his breath or his visibility, and knowing Paolini, I have no choice but to assume that it's a barbute-type helm like the Gondorians and the elves wear in the Lord of the Rings
This is an Italian barbute of the later Middle Ages but I won't bring up the contrasting time periods... yet!
Now we come to Murtagh. The most description we get of his attire is when Thorn shows up on the Burning Plains :
"On his back was fixed a saddle, and in that saddle sat a man garbed in polished steel armour and armed with a hand-and-a-half sword."
Ok so this is clearly a full suit of plate. I'll assume it's something like the Gondorians wear :
The main question I have concerning this armour is with regards to the helmet. I quote :
"He threw himself at the Rider, trapping both swords between their bodies, hooked his fingers underneath the helm, and ripped it off."
Since he had to pull the helm off, I can safely assume it wasn't a visored helm, in which case he could have lifted the visor. And it's not an armet with a three-piece visor that can't be easily opened, or any kind of close helm because then Eragon could never have "ripped it off" (taking my helmet off is a nightmare), so I guess it's something along the greathelm style, like the knights have in Ivanhoe or crusade movies. In which case the helmet is several generations of armour behind the rest of the suit, because a visored helm is infinitely more practical.
Now firstly, let's discuss armour evolution. Eragon's suit is one from the Early-to-High Middle Ages, a safe estimate is the late 12th early 13th century, around the time of the Third Crusade but his helmet sounds from the mid-to-late 15th century. Murtagh on the other hand is wearing a suit of full plate, which only became possible near the end of the 14th century. But his helmet is from the same time period as Eragon's armour (early-to-high Middle Ages) if he doesnt have a visor.
Now, normally I don't bring this up in fantasy. Hell, in the Lord of the Rings armour technology stays frozen for thousands of years and the Rohirrim have a very early Middle Ages style whereas the Gondorians have a very late Middle Ages style. The problems only started the moment Paolini decided to try and be smart and put this :
"Armor has improved a great deal in the past century, so the tip needs to be narrower than I used to make them, the better to pierce plate and mail and to slip into the gaps between the various pieces."
This quote is delivered by Rhunon, the elf smith, as she's trying to design Eragon's new sword, and it is both clever and accurate. As long as mail was the main protective piece, it could be beaten through by the hacking of swords. But with the coming of plate armour, trasitioning through splint armour and coats of plates, strikes from a sword became all but useless so the swords needed to have finer points to better slip between the pieces of plate. And this was reflected in the blade shapes.
Behold :
These beauties are from Albion swords. I use one-handed swords in this example but the same pattern follows with hand-and-a-half swords and longswords. The one on the left is the Templar sword, used in the early crusades. The one on the right is the Poitiers, named after the battle of Poitiers in 1356 when plate armour limbs and coats of plates over the torso had become very popular among the aristocracy and the knights in France and England. You can clearly see one is broader and made for hacking where the other has a much more steadily tapering blade that draws progressively to a very fine point.
All medieval weaponry lessons aside, the problem with that quote is that it implies that armour EVOLVES in this world, there actually is an Arms Race (which is a much older notion than most people believe). And that completely throws Eragon's and Murtagh's armour suits out of the whack. Because Eragon's suit was supplied by the dwarves, and dwarves are, allegedly, the pinnacle of smithing and weapon making. Hell, they made a whole suit of plate for Saphira! That implies some pretty incredible forges. Yet the most they armour Eragon with is mail, whereas with plate he'd hardly need his protective wards at all ! Because, unlike what Hollywood leads to believe, armour is normally effective.
The second problem is how this affects Eragon's fight with Murtagh. Let's say ok, Eragon just decided on lighter armour and better visibility. Fine. I'll go with that. He is, after all, on a dragon, or ought to be, most of the time.
But then Eragon and Murtagh get off their dragons and duel on foot with swords. Eragon wearing his stuff, Murtagh in full plate and carrying a hand-and-a-half sword.
You know who else wears full plate and carries a hand-and-a-half sword? Me!!!!!
This is me and a my guys from our medieval reenactment troop. I'm the knight in full plate with the black lion on the shield. The guy on the left with the war hammer is my younger brother as a common infantryman, and the guy on the right with a shortened voulge is our troop sergeant. As for the front row, the guy on the left is our crossbowman and the one on the right in red and gold, with good armour, and the outrageously large plume is my best friend and our troop captain. I'm his lieutenant. We are a particularly historically accurate crew and here we're commemorating the 600th anniversary of Azincourt.
Here we have a better view of my armour and we see Precious, my gorgeous hand-and-a-half sword who I don't carry into battle because she is a real sharp weapon; I use a blunted one-hander in the fighting. What I'm wearing (except I'm missing my rondels for my armpits that you can see in the top picture) is in fact one of the very first full suits of polished plate, from when smiths only just began making pieces large enough to cover the whole torso and back. And even that weighs approximately 60 pounds. The weight is well spread out but only so long as every piece fits perfectly. I have some trouble with my leg armour as it tends to slip down and that pulls on the padded belt under my armour that holds it up. At the ceremony it pulled so hard that it chafed my hips so bad the right side was literally blistered and bleeding.
Plate armour is effective and quite comfortable but there is a lot that can go wrong.
Now, first of all, let's assume Murtagh has plate armour that fits him to a fault, that he's been trained to fight in it so it doesn't discomfit him, and he was perfectly squired so there's no risk of anything slipping or pinching (which can happen if the many many laces and straps aren't done just right). There are three things that should still cause him problems.
1- The weight! My full panoply weighs up to sixty pounds. The weight is well spread out but it cuts your overall stamina short. Plate armour is extremely effective, quite comfortable if the pieces fit right, and not nearly as debilitating as some fictions would have believe. But I assure you, fighting in it is NO JOKE ! Having been dismissed from the military for a hearing problem, I am no longer in the military-level shape I used to be in, true. But no man, no matter his conditionning, can fight for more than a few hundred heartbeats wearing a panoply like that. In fact, full plate isn't exactly made for fighting in duels or on foot. It was designed for massed cavalry charges and tight melees where blows are inevitable. Trust me, I was in the middle of 800 bastards battering eachother to bits. That said, normally the protection offered outweighs the cons because you can simply rush your opponent without fear of taking much damage, and once you're on top of him, plate armour is a cruel weapon. A gauntlet does ten times the damage of a fist and the flanges and edges of the plate flay an unarmoured opponent nicely. BUT, Eragon has the strength and speed of an ELF ! Yes, he's exhausted after battle, but he absorbed energy from dying folks before going into that fight so should have been largely able to outmatch Murtagh who would have been maybe a hair slower and whose stamina would have been depleted after two minutes max! Yet the most Eragon can manage is a scratch across the breastplate before Murtagh starts dominating him in the fight.
2- Visibility! Murtagh went into that fight with all the same stupid mistakes as Ser Vardis against Bronn in Game of Thrones. He is wearing armour not adapted for that kind of fighting and the helmet is the piece upon which most depends. A helmet is the most essential piece of armour and the first piece anyone gets because a blow to the head can do severe damage or be lethal. But it is also the heaviest and most uncomfortable piece! And it restrains your vision immensely, even when the eyeslits are exactly level with the eyes it limits your field of vision quite severely. This is why knights and men at arms only kept their visors down during the charge, especially against arrows. Once in the melee, they lifed the visors and just made efforts to protect their faces. The extra visibility and breathability is largely worth this small opening. BUT MURTAGH'S HELMET DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A VISOR!!!! Which means that Eragon could just have leapt to the side and he'd have been past the dead angle of the eyeslits. Unless Murtagh had Thorn acting like a radar for him or something.
3 - Breathability! Once again, his helmet is the problem! The damn thing doesn't even have a visor and, no matter how much you're at a physical peak, you cannot keep up a constant fight when your breath is constricted! The small breathing holes don't allow enough passage of air to keep properly full on oxygen while keeping up an effort that is basically worth a sprint. In the reenactment of the battle of Azincourt, with 800 bastards beating the crap out of each other, those that had them had to fight with their visors closed to avoid injury. A friend of mine on the English side took a bad hit to the eye because he fights in an open-faced helm (even though thrusts above shoulder level were strictly forbidden). But every minute or so we had to pull back and allow the fighters behind us to take our places in the melee while we opened our visors and took 10 to 20 seconds to breathe before going back in.
Basically, Murtagh could have maybe driven Eragon back at first, heedless of Zar'roc glancing off his plate armour (I'll assume Eragon just slashes and hacks since he thinks a falchion is used the same way as a sword) at the beginning of the fight. But past two or three minutes, he would have been fatigued enough for him to need to catch a quick breather, and during that time he would have been vulnerable as hell, an easy picking for Eragon who has the strength, speed, and stamina of an elf.
So there we go. I've made my points about armour and I hope it's been an education :) . I swear, historical reenactment provides hoards of new lessons of the kind you only learn through practical experience, and it has been a tremendous help for my writing. Anyone with further interest in the matter can follow this link :
http://projet-gallois-de-fougieres.blogspot.fr/
It's a French project we do but since people from all over the world do reenactment the common tongue is English so every article has an English counterpart.
Cheers!