Arms And Armor Of The Medieval Knight

Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight by David Edge and John Miles Paddock is an extremely great overview of the development of the knights' armor and weapons, covering the evolution of the knight from the eleventh century all the way to the sixteenth century. The novel also shows illustrations of the weapons and armor that the knights used so the reader can get a better understanding of the material. On top of covering armor, weapons, and the evolution of the knight the book goes over the role of a knight and how a knight would live a life of chivalry.

One of my favorite parts to the book was reading about the evolution of the knights' armor, and how it went from just wearing chain mail to wearing a full suit of armor. It was interesting to see how many a knight's armor changed and all of the strange designs it had in some cases. Also I found it very interesting that a knight had a set of armor for normal battle and tournament armor, not to mention the armor a knight had for their horse. After reading the book I can look of the development of modern day body armor and see that we have improved an incredible amount since the Medieval Knight's time period.

Another great part to the book I enjoyed reading about was the Knight's combat weapons and how overtime the weapons become much more deadly and lethal. Before reading the book I thought a sword was just a sword, however I did not know how many different kinds of swords there were, or the great variety of sword to choose from. Some swords are only meant for piercing and some are only meant for cutting, there is a long sword, a great sword which requires two hands, and the falchion which is a specialized sword form intended solely for chopping, and is used in one hand only. Also before reading the book I did not know of the great variety of weapons a knight could choose from. I thought a knight had a sword, horse, and armor; however the knight could choose many different types of weapons such as lances, the battle axe, mace, dagger, flail, war hammer, and a bow or crossbow. Comparing these weapons to modern day weapons there is no comparison, guns have taken over all of these weapons; however the sword is still around.

Another section I also greatly enjoyed was the one about the medieval tournaments a knight would enter. When real fighting wasn't going on knights' would entertain royalty and gain respect by fighting other knights in tournaments. One of the most popular is the joust, which consisted of two horses charging at each other from opposite directions with a rider holding a sharp lance. They were only separated by a low wooden fence. The object was to knock your opponent off their horse. Another type of tournament was called melee. The melee consists of two teams with flags on their backs using clubs and blunt swords; the object was to knock the flags off of your opponent. There were also man to man fights in an