khans silky shirts?

[VAE VICTUS]

is it true that the mongols wore a type of silken shirt that protected against arrows?i seem to remember reading something about that.:bounce:

[Spartakus]

Yes, it's because when an arrow pierces the flesh, it begins rotating, making it painful and dangerous to remove it afterwards, as you risk doing more damage than the arrow did initially. Piercing silk is very hard however, and while the arrow still enters your body, the slik will wrap around it as it rotates. This way, you can just stretch out the silken shirt afterwards and the arrow will follow along in the exact path it entered, without causing additional damage.

At least this is what I've been told, I haven't read any literature on this subject.

[Watchman]

I've heard (and read) about it too, but not once from sources I'd actually consider credible. Anyone know about Chinese military practices ? Given that those guys were major silk producers whose soldiers constantly came under arrow-fire both from other Chinese and assorted pesky steppe nomads, you'd think they'd use the same trick a-plenty.

Or for that matter the Europeans once they managed to nick some silkworms and get cultivating. Italy, AFAIK a major center, was absolutely lousy with crossbows...

Personally, until I see it corroborated in a source I can consider to be serious military history, I'm going to assume it's just another piece of the fanboy over-hype the Mongols tend to get a lot of (as do the English longbows and a couple of other things; I have beefs with them all).

[Kraxis]

Maybe this could be a good subject for some experiments, just like the bodkin arrows vs plate armour (though those experience seems to tell different stories pretty much in each case).

I have already got a few other experiments I want solved sometime in the future when/if I get the time and money.

[Watchman]

Until someone does I'm going to work from the "sustained logic" angle - which starts with "if X was so good, then why Y?" In this case, if thick silk shirts kept soldiers alive through archery matches better, then why would the Mongols - who weren't exactly the greatest silk-manufacturers around to begin with - be the first and/or only people to use them for the purpose ? All the more so given how the warrior elites of the Far East quite often wore silk garments under their actual armour, yet you never hear this stuff about them - you'd think they'd have figured it out if it worked as extra protection too, no ?

It just doesn't add up. Same as with the "archery vs. heavy armour" issue - if the latter wasn't a workable counter against the former, then why the heck did warrior elites pile on expensive armour to defend against arrows ? And often quite specialized pieces, such as throat-guards or those big Japanese shoulder-guards, too...

Paper armour I know to be a certified, and functional, fact where sufficiently strong paper now was available in quantity. This silk armour thing I've yet to see any comparable data about.

[Watchman]

Mind you, I know the Byzantines considered strong, rough silk clotch to be a good base material for quilted armour (the fillings, as usual, being pretty ad hoc), which was also worn under metal armour such as lamellar. And they certainly knew archery warfare inside out.

But the Byzantine quilted body armour (http://www.levantia.com.au/military/infantry.html) cannot exactly be described as "silk shirts" by any measure...

[matteus the inbred]

it's frequently mentioned in the Sharpe novels (fiction, but based on fact) that officers preferred to wear silk shirts into battle cos it made wounds easier to clean, as silk material doesn't shred into the wound like cotton or linen.
i don't know about silk armour...it sounds more like a case of - you wear armour, but if that doesn't work and you get injured, you want to be wearing silk cos you're less likely to get complications from the wound.

European officers involved in the battles during the boxer rebellion and opium wars often stated that their multiple layers of silk shirts/padded tunics would stop low velocity Chinese rifled match- and flint-lock bullets because the spin of the bullet wrapped it in the cloth and stopped it before it could penetrate.

Against edged weapons, heavy damp cloth can stop most cuts, apparently. No consolation, you just end up getting bludgeoned to death instead...!

The Japanese shoulder pads were presumably intended to stop downward cuts with edged weapons onto the vulnerable shoulder/neck joints. Don't know about arrows, as i don't know much about Japanese bows and how powerful they were. Japanese armour certainly unerwent changes in design in response to the shift from primarily bow combat in the 11th-13th centuries to primarily sword and naginata combat in the Sengoku Period.

[Kagemusha]

I think Matteus is on the right track here.One little correction.The main hand to hand weapons used on Sengoku Jidai period were the Yari spear and Katana as a secondary weapon.The Naginata was more like a relic of the past times when the foot units used it as their main weapon ,altough it was still used on Sengoku Jidai period.The evolution of Japanese armour on Sengoku Jidai period was first to construct armor that allowed its user for more movement and that Abolished the older Yoroi type of armor,altough some Daymios used it personally for prestige reasons. After the appearance of the fire arms in the Japanese warfare the armor evolution turned more in to trying to stop musket balls and in the late period in many armors had even "bullet proof" armour that was tested by the makers by actually shooting in the preastplate with a musket. One of the more famous types of that kind of armour was the Okegawa Do.:bow:

[matteus the inbred]

Kagemusha, I bow to your knowledge. Fancy forgetting yari, eh? gah. Mind, I've even read accounts where champions got down to scrapping with knives and wrestling moves!

Naginata were indeed mostly a traditionalist or monk's weapon I think (and also traditionally a female weapon), I've read some good descriptions of experts making them spin 'like a water wheel', which sounds frightening!

By the end of the period they were even using European armour.

[Kagemusha]

Kagemusha, I bow to your knowledge. Fancy forgetting yari, eh? gah. Mind, I've even read accounts where champions got down to scrapping with knives and wrestling moves!

Naginata were indeed mostly a traditionalist or monk's weapon I think (and also traditionally a female weapon), I've read some good descriptions of experts making them spin 'like a water wheel', which sounds frightening!

By the end of the period they were even using European armour.

Thank you.:bow: I agree with you on Naginata and the Use of European armor parts.That kind of style of armor was called the Namban do,it was a mixture of European and Japanese armor parts and in some case almost a pure European armor,with little Japanese decorations.

[matteus the inbred]

have you read a book called The Samurai Sourcebook, by Prof. Turnbull? It's got loads of detail about armour and weapons, tactics and strategy of the samurai, and all sorts of other details as well.
I'll have to bring it in to work tomorrow and see if there's anything about material types and armour vs projectiles...

[Kagemusha]

have you read a book called The Samurai Sourcebook, by Prof. Turnbull? It's got loads of detail about armour and weapons, tactics and strategy of the samurai, and all sorts of other details as well.
I'll have to bring it in to work tomorrow and see if there's anything about material types and armour vs projectiles...

Yes.I have most of the Osprey books about Samurais.Japanese history and specially the Sengoku Jidai period have been a long time intrest of mine.Thats why i still love STW and are working on our Ran no Jidai mod project to create a Sengoku period mod for RTW.~;)

[matteus the inbred]

Cool, I like the sound of that.
I got into Sengoku Jidai after reading Shogun, a book in which projectile weapons are very effective...!

Anyway :focus: , perhaps the Mongols in fact wore similar stuff to the padded jackets worn by some western European troops during the Crusades and suchlike. The ones recorded by a Muslim observer during Richard I's march to Arsuf, who commented that he could see soldiers marching on with half a dozen arrows stuck in their jackets...same as the ones Watchman mentioned?

[Kagemusha]

Cool, I like the sound of that.
I got into Sengoku Jidai after reading Shogun, a book in which projectile weapons are very effective...!

Anyway :focus: , perhaps the Mongols in fact wore similar stuff to the padded jackets worn by some western European troops during the Crusades and suchlike. The ones recorded by a Muslim observer during Richard I's march to Arsuf, who commented that he could see soldiers marching on with half a dozen arrows stuck in their jackets...same as the ones Watchman mentioned?

I think the basic effect could be something like the Creek and Macedonian linen armor also.Altough the bottom layer in this case would be silk.Im sure soon one of the experts of Steppe people will stop by and clarify us in this matter.

[Orda Khan]

The Mongols and other steppe nomads used various forms of armour or little or none. The question referred not to silk armour but to silk undershirts, supposedly worn for the reasons described by Spartakus. Since the composite bow was the principal weapon of these people we could ask why they did not at least try to adopt plate type armour. Felt was used along with leather as a form of padding and we can only assume that mobility was a higher priority than protection. Considering their achievements, whatever they wore seemed more than adequate

.......Orda

[matteus the inbred]

Felt was used along with leather as a form of padding and we can only assume that mobility was a higher priority than protection. Considering their achievements, whatever they wore seemed more than adequate.......Orda

The use of felt as protection has always struck me as quite odd...but then I read this (ok, it's Wikipedia, but still...!)
'Felt is the oldest form of fabric known to man. It predates weaving and knitting, although there is archaelogical evidence from the British museum that the first known thread was made by winding vegetable fibres on the thigh. Felt dates back to at least 6,500 BC where remains were found in Turkey.'

More a question of availability and ease of construction, I suppose. Orda, do you know how much felt was used as protection, or how thickly it was usually deployed?

[Watchman]

I've always been under the strong impression the steppe nomads could count themselves lucky if they could outfit even all their heavy-cavalry elite troops in metal armour. Many of even those guys had to make do with the rather cheaper and more readily available leather lamellar instead. The vast masses of horse-archers apparently pretty much wore what they wanted and could get, this also being considerably limited by the little detail that whatever the many good points of those little steppe ponies were and are, the necessary horsepower to haul around heavy armour wasn't among them (the heavy-armed elites AFAIK wore special, large breeds developed for the express purpose long ago)...

I know the Mongols, and no doubt many, many other steppe folk of similar means and resources, made semi-rigid textile armour by gluing multiple layers of felt or similar together. The Mongol name for this sort of armour apparently translates roughly as "coat as hard as steel", which is obviously a bit of an overstatement - the manufacturing method, and presumably the end result, sound a rather lot like the ancient Hellenic linothorax which while certainly a light and effective piece of protective wear AFAIK couldn't really compete with metal armour.

And, of course, there was always leather too. The old standby. They certainly would've had no great shortage of the stuff, what with all those herd beasts.


Anyway, perhaps the Mongols in fact wore similar stuff to the padded jackets worn by some western European troops during the Crusades and suchlike. The ones recorded by a Muslim observer during Richard I's march to Arsuf, who commented that he could see soldiers marching on with half a dozen arrows stuck in their jackets...same as the ones Watchman mentioned?Those were most likely people clad in mail, or maybe early forms of "brigandine" -type coat-of-plates. Being subjected to long-range archery apparently had a tendency to turn them into walking pincusions without causing any meaningful injuries - but then, the armoured Frankish troops were never the ones who archery was a serious threat to. It was the poor unprotected horses that tended to die in droves if subjected to extended bowfire...

Ditto, naturally, for the locals. They didn't wear lots of lamellar and mail for fun, especially in that climate.

Notice incidentally that the thick padded cuirasses of Native American warriors the Conquistadors also adopted had similar effects against the stone- and copper-tipped local arrows (although, granted, the bows used there couldn't hold a candle to longbows nevemrind recurve composites...); people would walk around spouting scores of arrows and only superficial injuries.

[matteus the inbred]

wow, thanks Watchman, that's great!

how sophisticated was Chinese armour then? did the Mongols have to change their missile technology at all?

[Watchman]

To my knowledge the Chinese knew and made use of mail, lamellar, what is essentially the same as the later European "brigandine" (ie. coat-of-plates), and naturally different nonmetallic armours such as leather lamellar, leather armour and, at least at times but probably not this early, paper. How widely it was issued to troops then is a whole another question - heavy cavalry and other élite troops would be almost certain to be well armed, but the "poor bloody infantry" seems to often have been woefully lightly equipped. Probably a question of simple economics - there was simply so damn many of the footmen issuing them anything more than weapons and uniforms and so on would've been hideously expensive.

Although under some dynasties even infantry seem to have been pretyt decently armoured. I've no idea of how the bunch that had the country divided between themselves at the time of the Mongol ascendancy did things.

Nonetheless, any of it would hardly have been particularly new to the steppe nomads. Various pastoral horse peoples had been squabbling with the Chinese since God knows when, and both parties were no doubt in general terms fairly familiar with each others' equipement and tactics.

[Orda Khan]

The felt in itself is pretty tough material and about 1/2 inch or more thick. I would imagine 2 or 3 layers, the outer layer coated with lacquer or pitch would provide reasonably good protection. Not being a horse expert I have no idea of average sizes of modern beasts but some archaeological evidence suggests some Mongol horses were larger than those seen there today, around 16 hands. There was a considerable amount of heavy cavalry in Mongol armies (albeit nowhere near the amount of light) whatever armour was used the horses coped with it easily, the mobility and speed of Mongol armies is testament to this

........Orda

[orangat]

Yes, it's because when an arrow pierces the flesh, it begins rotating, making it painful and dangerous to remove it afterwards, as you risk doing more damage than the arrow did initially. Piercing silk is very hard however, and while the arrow still enters your body, the slik will wrap around it as it rotates. This way, you can just stretch out the silken shirt afterwards and the arrow will follow along in the exact path it entered, without causing additional damage.

At least this is what I've been told, I haven't read any literature on this subject.

I don't think its the rotation of the arrow which makes it dangerous to remove. Its the barb of the arrowhead.

Silk does have high tensile strength and was used as bulletproof vest material as recently as a few years ago. I remembered the Mongols demanded silk shirts along with the usual gold as ransom from the Chinese.

[Gealai]

Arrows generally shouldn't rotate as long as they have one tip - halfmoon like arrows with two points can tend to it. However they might hit bones, tumble and break in consequence making it difficult to extract it. orangat might be right that they could be helpful against barbed ones, as they might entangle the arrowpoint to some extant, making it easier to extreact them with simple instruments like a splitted stick

If you are interested of the wounds caused by arrows, you should search the web for a german paper by a forensic doctor medicinae which is also an archer. He ran some interesting tests with scientific rigor. I forgot the link, however I still have it on my comp.

Personally I would just wear a silk shirt as the last line of defense, after a light shirt covering the mail and a good padding. This protection proved and proves to be excellent against arrows of all kind.

[Watchman]

Not being a horse expert I have no idea of average sizes of modern beasts but some archaeological evidence suggests some Mongol horses were larger than those seen there today, around 16 hands. There was a considerable amount of heavy cavalry in Mongol armies (albeit nowhere near the amount of light) whatever armour was used the horses coped with it easily, the mobility and speed of Mongol armies is testament to thisThose would be the big warhorse breeds then. AFAIK the average steppe horse was a fairly small animal, little more than ponies by modern standards, the result of subsisting essentially entirely on the fairly energy-poor grass. In comparision the settled peoples tended to have bigger horses as grain was mixed into their feed. One-on-one the small grass-fed breeds simply couldn't match the grain-fed ones in raw performance - but they were obviously way easier to feed, and there was a lot of them. This distinction is also apparent in the differences in tactics between the horse-archers of settled and nomadic peoples.

On the other hand those little ponies could subsist entirely on grass, and naturally knew how to survive through the harsh continental winters (they knew how to dig the grass from under snow and so on). So they were obviously logistically far cheaper - indeed practically free, as much of the pastoral ecology revolved around them. The little ponies might not have out-performed the warhorses of the settled folks, but they sure as heck outnumbered them which lent nomad armies immense overland mobility (at least as far as supply and geography allowed; I suspect they started running into trouble once away from the steppe), as every man had multiple remounts and the mounts took very little looking after.

I don't know too much of the special large steppe breeds ridden to war by the elite, save that they're apparently a very ancient lineage and presumably expensive to raise and maintain (that they were restricted to service as the war-mounts of the already very expensive armoured heavy cavalry suggests as much), and hence very few in number compared to the virtually maintenance-free ponies. I wouldn't be surprised if they too subsisted on grain-containing feed; the considerable hassle involved in wringing out enough reliable tribute from the settlements of the plains, or buying it, alone would have been quite enough economical reason to keep their numbers fairly low. Alas, the book on cavalry history that mentioned the topic is no longer in stores and I didn't have the presence of mind to buy it back in the day...

[matteus the inbred]

There's nothing about this sort of thing in the 'Secret History' then (I'm hopefully correct in calling it this...a primary source on Mongols possibly from the time of Chinggis)?
I recall that it said that only the wealthiest tenth of the Mongols had heavier armour and horse armour and used lances, so perhaps that's the proportion of bigger horses to standard steppe horses. I'll have to check the book that refers to it again.

[orangat]

The mongols probably had a separate division of heavy cavalry more heavily armed and armored with bigger horses like the mailed lancers of the Parthian general Surena.

[The Wizard]

The silk wasn't really intended as armor as far as my knowledge goes, but rather as a way of making the arrow easier to remove. As such it was simply meant as a way to alleviate the danger of such things as barbed arrow heads which were very hard to remove.

And on Mongols not being big silk buffs -- silk first came to Europe in big quantities over the Mongol silk road. They had plenty after raiding the Chinese, mind you, and an endless supply once they had conquered them.

[Watchman]

The Silk Road was there long before the Mongols were anything but a bunch of herdsmen among many and long after their empire had gone to bits. As was the silk, for that matter. I'm somewhat sceptical as of whether the Mongols ever saw it as more than what steppe nomads usually regarded it as - fine and prestigious clotch you normally don't get very easily. There's a reason the Chinese could use silk as part of the bribes they used to keep all those damn nomad khans off their backs, and one suspects its practical applications aren't it.


The mongols probably had a separate division of heavy cavalry more heavily armed and armored with bigger horses like the mailed lancers of the Parthian general Surena.Nothing "probably" about it - they had. Most nomads did. Heavy shock troops were quickly found to be so useful anyone who could afford to equip and mount them wielded them in some version. Although AFAIK the Mongols favoured the old steppe standby of lamellar for armour, and I've read their heavy cavalry didn't employ shields (they probably needed both hands to wield long spears and/or simply trusted their harnesses that much).

[matteus the inbred]

Nothing "probably" about it - they had. Most nomads did. Heavy shock troops were quickly found to be so useful anyone who could afford to equip and mount them wielded them in some version. Although AFAIK the Mongols favoured the old steppe standby of lamellar for armour, and I've read their heavy cavalry didn't employ shields (they probably needed both hands to wield long spears and/or simply trusted their harnesses that much).

Yes, I think that is correct...according to contemporary Western sources wealthier or more elite Mongols used leather or iron armour in this style, including horse barding, although not all used lances. This does not seem to have changed much by the time of Golden Horde, when tactics consisted of 'arrow strikes' by horse archers followed by a shock charge of armoured cavalry.
Other earlier or non-Mongol semi-nomadic tribes like the Jurchen and Qara-Khitai certainly used heavily armoured lancers, and the Khitan-Liao of Manchuria had their regular (Ordos) troops ranked according to equipment and armour...

[Orda Khan]

Can I just point out that arrows DO rotate in flight. Usually fletchings of the left wing pinion feathers are used and it is the curvature of the feathers that cause rotation in flight

........Orda

[Gealai]

Clearly they do rotate in the air --> with no rotation they simply don't stabilize good enough..:sweatdrop:

However the rotation force is weak, to keep the airresistance low. In a material like to human body the rotation force is most easily countered by the lateral resistance to flat/triolobate blade. Therefor rotation in the air, no rotation in body.:bow:

Gelai

[Orda Khan]

I would be inclined to believe that rotation would continue into the flesh, until resistance halted it. The silk undergarment played many roles. It was fairly common for arrowheads to be poisoned so some protection against this would help. Also the silk would help staunch a wound, preventing the loss of too much blood and theoretically keeping the wound clean

.......Orda

[orangat]

There is simply no way that arrows rotate with so much force that wounds are increased because of the rotation.

Silk is useful as a last layer of protection because of its high tensile strength but its main purpose is probably as a wicking layer since its worn as an undershirt.

[Orda Khan]

Nobody said that rotation increased the size of a wound. If anything enters the body and cuts its own course, as the receiving party you would want it to be removed along that same course. Should this not be the case the odds are that more damage will be inflicted

........Orda

[matteus the inbred]

typical hunting arrows, which have large leaf shaped heads, presumably don't rotate at all or not much, as they're designed to penetrate between the ribs of the target and therefore have to have a good chance of hitting with the head vertical, not horizontal or rotating.
war arrows tend to have smaller or pointed heads for penetration power (i know there are many many kinds of military arrowheads, let's not go into that here!), so does this have an effect on rotation in flight? do war arrows have more or larger flights?

then again, the use of barbed arrowheads surely implies that some rotation is expected.

[orangat]

Nobody said that rotation increased the size of a wound. If anything enters the body and cuts its own course, as the receiving party you would want it to be removed along that same course. Should this not be the case the odds are that more damage will be inflicted


This was the statement I disagreed with - that the rotating force is so strong that it continued into the flesh.
"I would be inclined to believe that rotation would continue into the flesh, until resistance halted it"

If the arrowhead does not cause rotation wounding, the wound cavity would be smaller assuming the arrowhead is flat and broad. And rotation of a broad bladed head against armor and layers of clothing would help to dissipate some of the entry force. If the arrowhead is rod-like or bodkinpoint, rotation is not a significant factor in wounding.