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.

[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 cannot exactly be described as "silk shirts" by any measure...

[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.