Armour arrangment

[David]

I was looking through my copy of the Muyobotongji and in the back it has a page about armour, which in this case looks virtually identical to Chinese Qing armour.
To my understanding this armour came in two styles one which had metal plates underneath which the rivets held in place, and a court style which looked the same but without the metal plates. The illustration has the helmet, what appears to be a square neck protector, armpit guards, an over coat and skirting. I will try to scan a copy of the illustration later on tonight. Are there any diagrams out there which depict how the metal plates where arranged? Also would the neck and armpit guards be worn underneath or over the top of the overcoat?

[Peter Dekker]

Hi,

Apologies for the late reply, I usually lurk in the historical section of this forum and leave the rest to more experienced swordsmen.

I am familiar with the illustration you refer to. From the picture it indeed looks very similar to Chinese armor. The differences are most notably in the details, which becomes obvious when you compare actual examples.

There are some good pictures of Chinese armor in George Cameron Stone's "Glossary" It is availalable in reprint from Dover publications, or several older copies can still be found on Amazon.com.

Of particular interest is figure 74 on page 57 of the reprint, which shows one side folded open to show the alignment of the plates. In this case they appear to be aligned side-by-side and overlapping top to bottom.

Be aware that armor for cavalrymen and infantrymen usually differed, the former often overlapping bottom-to-top because most strikes to mounted soldiers would go upward.

There is also some difference between earlier Qing and later Qing armor, where the earlier types frequently show sleeves with a lot of very narrow horizontal plates that is also seen on Ming dynasty armor.

I don't think that court armor wouldn't have plates and regular armor would, for the simple reason that some court paintings clearly show functional court armors with steel plates. Also some antique examples of fully functional court armors exist. It is true that armor started to lose its functionality when firearms became more widespread, and at some point was reduced to mainly ceremonial use, and these were all without the plates.

There are references to steel armor in the field until as late as the second decade of the 19th century. When exactly they seized to use it, is still unclear to me.

Oh, and the armpit guards were worn over the armor. See picture of a ceremonial Qing armor below. The loose parts are the shoulder parts.



-Peter

[David]

Thanks for the reply Peter,

Recently I came across some pictures of the interior of Korean version of this armour and the plates are indeed arranged as you described. I think the armour in the Muyedobotonji is at least inspired by the Chinese version as the other Korean versions I have seen all appear to be like one large coat that ends just under the knee instead of separate parts like the Chinese armour. I’m going to look into getting my self a copy of George Cameron Stone's "Glossary".